Reuters - Cingular Wireless said on Thursday it redesigned its wireless Web offerings with a ticker service and options that make it easier to get news and weather on phones.

TechWeb - Asia-Pacific semiconductor sales are projected to grow 16% in 2005, versus a 3% growth forecast for the Americas and less than 1% for Europe.

TechWeb - There's some disagreement with the Semiconductor Industry Association's crystal ball, though, with another forecaster more positive.

TechWeb - A peer-to-peer filing sharing network used by college students to download music and movies over academia's ultra-fast Internet2 network shuts down.

TechWeb - OQO Inc.'s ultra-mini computer scared up $20 million in financing from Motorola and at least two former national intelligence officials.

TechWeb - Mobile phone giant Nokia will acquire mobile wireless messaging leader Intellisync Inc. for $430 million in cash.

AFP - Chinese Internet firm Alibaba.com has vowed to defeat US giant Google in the battle to become the dominant search engine for the potentially lucrative Chinese market.

TechWeb - Mondrian On-Line Analytical Processing project is joining forces with Pentaho to become a permanent feature of the Pentaho BI project.

TechWeb - Browser-maker Opera Software ASA has released in beta a set of tools for building and running software on mobile phones.

AP - Microsoft Corp. said Thursday it will start marketing Japanese versions of two new server software products in February, as the U.S. software giant moves to bolster its enterprise business in Japan.

AFP - Bangladesh's leading mobile phone company said it signed up one million new subscribers in a record 40 days as the market continues to boom amid fierce competition.

PC World - This month's gadgets include a camcorder for the slopes, MP3-playing sunglasses, and an electric kettle that can be activated via SMS.

Reuters - The mobile industry is ramping up for a new generation of cellphones and services combining the long-distance strengths of traditional cellular service with the short-distance, low-cost advantages of wi-fi.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese electronics makers Sony Corp. 6758.T and NEC Corp. 6701.T said on Thursday they have reached a basic agreement to set up a optical disk drive joint venture.

AP - An Australian federal judge on Thursday ordered the chief executive of the company that owns file-swapping giant Kazaa to face cross-examination from recording industry lawyers about her assets pending a damages hearing in the landmark music piracy case.

AFP - Machines will take over from humans as the biggest users of the Internet in a brave new world of electronic sensors, smart homes, and tags that track users' movements and habits, the UN's telecommunications agency predicted.

Reuters - More than 700 computer game enthusiasts are gathering in Singapore to take part in the world's biggest competition for computer and video games.

Reuters - Search engine Google Inc. on Thursday said that it has opened offices in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Mexico City, as it looks to accelerate growth in Latin America.

Reuters - Users of the popular BlackBerry wireless device will not lose their service if maker Research In Motion Ltd. is hit with an injunction in a U.S. court case, a top RIM executive said on Wednesday.

AFP - Rival Japanese electronics giants Sony and NEC have announce plans to set up a joint venture to produce optical disk drives for personal computers and other products.

USATODAY.com - Apple Computer is the latest tech powerhouse to stake a claim to your living room. Its new iMac G5 computers, unveiled last month in the shadow of the video iPod introduction, are all about enjoying your digital treasures from the couch-potato comfort of your sofa.

AP - A typical Chinese Internet user is a young male who prefers instant messaging to e-mail, rarely makes online purchases and favors news, music and games sites, according to a new study.

USATODAY.com - So Sony BMG has been getting a lot of flack lately for, well, for a bunch of things. First it installed Trojan horse software on users' computers, then claimed it wasn't a problem, then released a 'removal' tool that was actually spyware. It's enough to make you turn to pirated music.

NETANYA, Israel (Reuters) - A new walk-through airport lie detector made in Israel may prove to be the toughest challenge yet for potential hijackers or drugs smugglers.

AP - This week's second initial public offering in the semiconductor industry got off to a strong start Thursday, its first day of trading.

AP - Two new buddies greeted chatters on America Online Inc.'s instant-messaging service this week, but not everyone wanted to be their friend.

PC World - Revolution system will sync with built-in game ratings.

InfoWorld - Google has opened offices in Sao Paulo and Mexico City to extend its search services and advertising business to Latin America, the company announced on Thursday.

AP - Virgin Mobile Holdings PLC reported a 40 percent increase in half-yearly net profit Thursday and painted a rosy picture for future growth despite strong competition in the heavily saturated British cell-phone market.

FT.com - An excess of the fair value of the identifiable net assets of an acquired enterprise over the cost of buying it. Under IFRS 3, negative goodwill should be treated as immediate income.

MacCentral - Users’ appetites for gadgets like digital cameras and iPod music players has sent sales of NAND flash memory chips soaring, along with the fortunes of major producers like Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

The Motley Fool - Recently, Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) Bill Gates and his recent hire, legendary programmer Ray Ozzie, issued memos to their troops, declaring that Microsoft needs an extreme makeover. The world of software is undergoing disruptive change, and so far, Microsoft seems to be lagging behind. The memos mention a leader in the brave new on-demand software world: Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM - News).

Ziff Davis - The company continues to reach for the handheld device market with its latest flash memory products, designed to support wireless video and Web browsing.

PC World - Unnamed new company will develop, produce both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats.

AP - While they're out chasing the news, employees at a local television station are wondering if anybody is tailing them.

NewsFactor - Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) this week got approval to launch free Wi-Fi service on its home turf, marking the search giant's first foray into the wireless LAN market.

NewsFactor - Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) is taking mesh networking to the next level with the launch of technology that links indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi deployments in a unified system for cities and towns, as well as for enterprise networks.

AP - Microsoft Corp. is looking for a new leader for a unit that sells specialized software for small- and mid-sized businesses, after the unit's current top executive announced plans to step aside.

NewsFactor - When the wireless revolution hit, Linksys was among the first to create an effective wireless networking kit that was a snap to set up. The company has continued this tradition with a new MIMO (multiple-in, multiple-out) router, called the Wireless-G Router with SRX200.

PC World - New Asustek motherboard provides support for the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 processor.

Reuters - Controversial copy-protection software used by music publisher Sony BMG (6758.T) on music CDs appears to have tapped an open source project, raising questions about copyrights, software experts said on Friday.

AP - Suddenly the universe of downloadable audio files known as podcasts seems as enormous as the Internet. Name a topic — from the weather in Asuncion to the ZigBee wireless technology — and there is a podcast about it.

Investor's Business Daily - As people rely on cell phones for more tasks, such as e-mail, Web connections and office work, many are getting less tolerant about losing a signal.

InfoWorld - Boosting its Solaris OS, Sun Microsystems plans to distribute the PostgreSQL open source database with Solaris and will enable Red Hat Linux binaries to run unmodified on the OpenSolaris open source version of the operating system.

AP - The company behind the commercial online file-sharing software Peer Impact said Thursday it struck a licensing deal with NBC Universal to sell feature films and television programming over its service.

Reuters - Hewlett-Packard Co. , the No. 2 computer maker, on Thursday posted a quarterly profit ahead of expectations on strong gains in its server and storage business and a healthy rise in PC sales, sending its shares 6 percent higher.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Five Japanese chip makers including Hitachi Ltd. 6501.T and Toshiba Corp. 6502.T have agreed to set up a chip manufacturing plant for up to 200 billion yen, the Yomiuri newspaper said on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawyers for a U.S. patent holding company on Thursday said they met with the Justice Department to try to allay fears a patent infringement suit against the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail device would disrupt government users.

AP - Six more people pleaded guilty Thursday to operating a Web site that investigators claimed was one of the largest online centers for trafficking in stolen identity information and credit cards.