Happy birthday silicon.com - nine today

Happy birthday to us - silicon.com is nine years old today.

Launched back on 6 July 1998, silicon.com has weathered the storms of the dot-com boom and come out the other side as a leading publication covering business and technology issues.

silicon.com editor and site director Tony Hallett said: "We've seen a huge amount of change to the industry in the last nine years, with the dot-com boom and bust giving way to a more mature understanding of the role that technology has to play in business."

Nine of the best from silicon.com

Read some of our favourite stories from the last year…

♦ Photos: The best of Google Earth
♦ Photos: Top 10 mobile design classics
♦ The A to Z of security
♦ Ten things not to do with your data
♦ Q&A: James Gosling, 'father of Java'
♦ Top 10 uses of an iPod you'd never expect
♦ Top 10: The best, worst... and craziest uses of RFID
♦ Photos: Second Life - whose HQ can you view?
♦ Photos: Roll-up, roll-up, for the roll-up laptop

Even at the grand old age of nine silicon.com is still coming up with innovative ways of delivering the information its readers need - for example this year launching the silicon.com CIO 50, celebrating the top technology leaders in the UK, as well as branching out into new video formats, podcasting and ways for users to benchmark their IT.

And silicon.com's CIO Forum, coming up in October, is now in its fourth year.

This year the hot-ticket show for CIOs is tackling the IT talent challenge, exploring how IT chiefs can find and keep the brightest people to work on their most crucial projects, and revealing the talent management secrets of the most successful UK CIOs.

To celebrate our birthday we've come up with a list of our nine favourite - and most popular - stories over the past year, including our sightseeing tour through Google Earth and our list of some of the more unusual uses of the iPod (see the grey box above for the full list).