Good morning and a Happy St. Patrick's Week to you! Listen to your own head, but I'd lay off the green beer -- if only because it's, um, green. Anyway, here are some headlines to keep you buzzin'...

All aboard the SXSW Express: Our friends at CNet have a roundup of the biggest stories from the conference.

Remember seeing a prototype of Microsoft's Surface -- its tabletop touch-screen computer? Turns out, the company is already working on a 2nd-generation model.

Who doesn't love a good Cupcake? Such is the name of the 2nd-gen version of Google's Android mobile platform. Rumors are saying it may be available as soon as April.

Green beer or a green apple? In a press conference set for this March 17, Apple is set to announce a 3.0 version of its iPhone, and speculation abounds... In a side note, I think I'm getting personally closer to buying an iPhone for myself. But I'd rather stay with Verizon. Hmm...

Google Earth has gone interplanetary with an updated map of Mars.

Ew and cool at the same time... A Finnish hacker who lost part of his finger last year now wears a prosthetic finger that doubles as a hidden UBS flash drive with 2 gigs of memory. I know I love a good USB device, but this is taking the Robocop image a bit far for me...

In other news completely -- I'd like to talk to you all for a moment about the current upswing and intensified media coverage of Twitter.

I have a hard time thinking something is still cool when I see CNN newscasters hailing it as the technology of the future (aside from the fact they look like soccer moms desperately trying to look cool for their kids) and people shifting from blog posts to tweets. I just can't understand the fascination with reading short, mundane bits about people's lives multiple times a day.

Another editor here at Captivate tried to explain to me that it's news instantly with no delay -- but if this is the direction news is going, it's seems bass-akwards to me. People didn't like being given the news from various sources -- that's why newspapers were invented. Then, people wanted instant access, which is why news web sites and RSS feeds were invented.

Do we really want to go back to various sources, with the added pleasure of sifting through all the useless garbage in the numerous feeds you're subscribed to for a rare morsel of actually interesting content?

I'm all set. There, I said it.

Now, let's see what you've got to say. Send your emails to me at bytesized@captivate.com to weigh in on the topic.

That's all for today. Stay tuned later this week when I'll announce the winners of the Byte-Sized Spring Cleaning Giveaway! A huge thanks to everyone that entered -- this contest was a great success!