The market place is also uneasy regarding a serious territorial dispute between China and Japan regarding ownership of a small chain of islands.

FORBES: Gold Weaker amid Bearish Outside Market Forces; Bulls Still in Technical Control

But of course not all machines uses Intel's hardware and until companies start talking to each other our digital devices will remain a chain of islands rather than a border-free mainland.

BBC: NEWS | Technology | Battle over the digital living room

The Florida Keys, a 113-mile-long chain of islands, is one of the five suggestions in Lonely Planet's top five day trips from Miami, but the laid-back streets feel more like they belong in the Caribbean.

BBC: This is Miami week

Its breezy cosmopolitan capital, Papeete, sits on Tahiti's northeastern tip and is the gateway to a captivating world of indigenous culture that infuses a chain of islands spread across 5 million square kilometres of sparkling ocean between Australia and South America.

BBC: Getting in the Tahitian spirit

Hartman died in 1991, but the do-it-yourself ethos among U.S. expatriates continues to pave the way for better tourism in the Exumas, a chain of 365 Bahamian islands and cays (pronounced "keys"), low reefs of sand or coral.

FORBES: Blackbeard's Beach

The first group of islands in the Bahamas chain, Bimini -- with the small islands of North Bimini and South Bimini at its core -- is only about 50 miles from Miami, but the slow-and-easy lifestyle on the historic atoll feels like a world away.

CNN: A beach break in Bimini

It is the largest island in the Santa Cruz island chain, part of the Solomon Islands nation.

BBC: Quake off Solomon Islands triggers deadly tsunami

The families of the would-be refugees are clinging to the hope that they have managed to take shelter in one of the deserted islands in the Bahamas chain.

BBC: Hopes fade for Cuban baseball refugees

Then attention turned to French nuclear tests in the South Pacific and the discovery of Chinese structures on islands in the Spratly chain that are claimed by the Philippines.

CNN: TEST OF WILLS

Taiwan was handed back to China at the end of the second world war, but the islands remained under the control of the Americans, who administered them as part of the Okinawa island chain.

ECONOMIST: A row over disputed islands goes from bad to worse