So a bitcoin is like a dollar only a dollar is backed by the us govt and a bitcoin is not. What that means is the us govt forces acceptance of dollars through the courts, I can't refuse to take your dollar bills as payment.
Thus dollars are thought to be pretty safe as far as always having some value. Bitcoins however have risk in that no one forces their acceptance and govts like the united states one day make them illegal for trade or take their servers rendering the currency worthless.
The mining stuff you see is that a "bitcoin" is digitally created by your computer solving an algorithm. Thus there isn't really a shortcut to creating bitcoins. It was also constructed as such where the algorithm gets more and more complex so that the money creation gets slower and slower or stays even as computers advance. So when somebody solves the algorithm they get a bitcoin.
Bitcoins are an interesting idea and have gotten a lot of pop culture play as being something that will go up in value thus people want to buy bitcoins. However as noted above the rate at which bitcoins are created is limited. So you have more and more demand and a limited supply and the price goes up naturally. In the future who knows how it goes.
My personal take is that feel free to buy a few bitcoins here if you feel the need with a small amount of your portfolio as I could realistically see the price going higher due to the factors above continuing. However using any singnificant amount of your money to buy bitcoins is foolish. Its high reward is countered by an extremely high risk that the us govt shuts it down or people just lose interest in it one day for whatever reason. You could be left with nothing.
Source: Yahoo Answer
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