"Paul Allen doesn't give many interviews, but Microsoft's famously eclectic co-founder recently decided to sit down with 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl, to discuss his juicy new memoir, The Idea Man. It's a book peppered with old stories of Allen's early days as a programmer, when he and Bill Gates would spend their days searching for discarded code in dumpsters and building software for the original Altair computer.

Can't get into that high-level university? Soon you may be able to get the equivalent, and better, on the Internet for free.

ZoomDuring the Techonomy conference held in Lake Tahoe, California, Bill Gates predicted that the traditional means of getting a higher education at universities--especially the place-based institutions--will dramatically change over the next five years.

"Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world," he said. "It will be better than any single university."

The first trials of controversial sunshielding technology are being planned after the United Nations failed to secure agreement on cutting greenhouse gases.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.

Billionaire and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates is managing to stay pretty busy in his quasi-retirement from the software giant.

Usually, he is in the news through his philanthropic efforts to help poor countries around the world through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Recently, he got a lot of attention after losing his status as the world's richest man to Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu.