ID cards, Oracle, iPlayer and how to save your job...

ID cards, Oracle's move for Sun and the ever-interesting issue of how to keep hold of your job were three of the biggest stories on silicon.com in April.

This month silicon.com's refreshed A to Z of ID cards was unveiled - giving the lowdown on 26 big aspects of this controversial government project (from Act to Zeitgeist in case you were wondering).

So just how much cash is the government splurging on small plastic cards containing your data?

To brain up on all aspects of ID cards click here.

Elsewhere on the site, BBC iPlayer was getting readers excited as news emerged that Auntie's independent regulator was suggesting tweaks may be needed to TV licence fee legislation - and iPlayer is to blame. News that selected programmes might soon be being piped to iPlayer viewers in glorious HD also got readers clicking.

Ten ways to make your boss love you was a popular feature - indicating lots of people are keen to make a good impression at work, not least with the spectre of redundancies haunting the IT department. Job-saving tips being doled out by writer Andrew Donoghue include making your boss look good (not, however, in a 'buy him a spa treatment weekend and personal shopper discount voucher' way), and being positive and pro-active. Wise words. For more click here.

Also big on the site last month was an exclusive interview with Turing Award winner and computing professor Barbara Liskov - discussing, among other things, data breaches, writing good code, and barriers to women getting into IT.

"I don't believe [the relative lack of women] has to do with basic abilities but I do think it has a lot to do with the way that our society is - what we think is appropriate for women to do [and] what we think is appropriate for men to do," Liskov told silicon.com.

There was also big acquisition news in the form of Oracle pocketing Sun for $7.4bn.

And silicon.com columnist Mark Kobayashi-Hillary posed the question Is offshoring to blame for job losses?

Meanwhile the director of information for the Association of Chief Police Officers revealed the police are looking into how mobile phones could be used to record and shop criminals in the future. In other words user-generated arrests?