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Let's say you're a Middle Eastern dictator with an atrocious human rights record and repressive domestic policies. Currently, many of your constituents are in the streets, loudly decrying your government calling for you to step down, if not for your execution. In many ways, the situation doesn't look that different than it did in other countries in the region just before their leaders were overthrown.

Despite a violent crackdown on the protests, the rabble rousers just won't quit, and they're using their smartphones to keep in touch and get around your stringent controls on freedom of the press. What ever do you do?

You're already paying a monthly fee for Internet access at home and an additional fee of equal or greater size for your smartphone's data plan. When all is said and done, you end up paying nearly $2,000 a year to access the Web from two devices, but only one of those connections is mobile and ubiquitous, unless you pay extra to take your home ISP with you on the road.

With these costs, paying an additional $15 to $50 to tether your iPhone to your laptop can seem difficult to stomach. Well, now you may not have to. For whatever reason, Apple has approved an iOS app that lets you do exactly that for a one-time fee of $15.

Google shipped a major redesign of its Google Search app today with a faster and more tablet-friendly interface for the iPad version. The launch page is now a spare, simple descendent of the iconic Google.com homepage for the post-PC era.

The search bar is front and center, collapsing to a top menu bar instantly when you put in your query. You can also access search history, Google Web apps, voice search and "Goggles" - image search using the iPad's camera - right underneath. The new Gmail app for iOS may be a dud, but this update to an already-great Google Search app makes it the best Google iOS app by a longshot.

Ever since the eruption of the series of political uprisings now known as the Arab Spring, there's been much speculation over the role of social media and mobile technology. Whether revolutions in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and elsewhere could have happened without Twitter and cell phones is something historians will probably continue to debate years from now.

What's indisputably clear is that regardless of what's sparking and fueling these revolutions, technology is certainly helping to spread information and facilitate communication among the protesters.

Over the weekend I finished reading the authorized biography of Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. It's a hefty 650 pages and spans the entire life and career of Steve Jobs, the iconic Apple co-founder who sadly passed away a month ago. The biography is well worth reading, I gave the book 5/5 stars. I'll even say that it should be required reading for technology entrepreneurs and anybody who wants to be a leader in our industry. The biography is a sympathetic one, so don't expect to read a great deal of criticism about Steve Jobs. Despite that, it's a well-rounded portrayal of a man destined to be remembered as one of the great product visionaries of our time.

There's plenty to learn from the biography. Here are three of the main lessons that I took from the book. Each comes from an aspect of Steve Jobs' own personality, which he managed to instill into his company Apple. (Note: don't worry, there aren't any spoilers in this post!)

People didn't understand the iPad immediately. No one believed in the form factor. "Just a big iPhone," people called it. But it caught on, it took off, and now consumers can't let go of their tablets. The intimate, intuitive interface has created its own use case. People curl up with the device and they read.

Publishers and app developers have provided a bonanza of ways to read on the iPad and iPhone. Some are free, some cost money, some require monthly subscriptions. All of them are vying for your attention in that new, valuable hour or two of tablet time in the evenings. But one app, Instapaper, sits in the iPad Hall of Fame on iTunes, pushing forward reader behavior just like the iPad itself. Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, answered some questions for us about where this is all heading.

Cloud printing vendor Electronics for Imaging (EFI) announces today a new PrintMe Mobile version. The only issue is why has it taken so long to get printing to these smartphones and tablets?

The world of mobile content creation just got a whole lot more functional. Seven months after releasing its music recording and sequencer program Garage Band as an iPad app, Apple has shrunk the app down even further to fit it on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Garage Band for iPhone is impressively capable for a mobile application. It may be a bit tedious, but one could viably use the software to record and edit an entire album of music, albeit with a few limitations. It comes with built-in synthesized instruments, as well as the ability to plug a guitar or microphone into the device to capture real sounds.

The imaginative team at RedPepper have dreamed up the most fun, automated way to have Siri deliver you a beer... RC car. Google also stepped into the limelight when it announced it had denied some requests from law enforcement to remove alleged police brutality videos.

After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

Founder of 4Chan, Chris Poole, aka moot, gave a particularly strong talk at Web 2.0 Expo, in which he asserted that Facebook and Google were doing it wrong, and that they should emulate Twitter's stance on identity.

After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - Mobile, App Stores and Identity - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.