NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet unit will launch a version of its portal in India on Thursday, including sections devoted to Bollywood, Cricket and international music.

AP - The powerful 'Cell' microprocessor that fuels Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 video game console will be available in IBM mainframe computers so those high-performance machines can run complex online games and virtual worlds.

TechWeb - In light of an alleged stock-option backdating scheme, members of Apple's board released a statement expressing "complete confidence" in Chief Executive Steve Jobs.

TechWeb - The computer maker is hoping the solid-state's faster boot time and improved system performance will be selling points for its corporate customers.

TechWeb - The BlackBerry 8830 World Edition smartphone, which can automatically detect and switch between CDMA and GSM wireless networks, will be available next month.

Reuters - Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet unit will launch a version of its portal in India on Thursday, including sections devoted to Bollywood, Cricket and international music.

AP - Faced with declining circulation, many U.S. newspapers are trying to engage readers by allowing them to respond to news stories online. But the anonymity of the Internet lets readers post obscenities and racist hate speech that would never be allowed in the printed paper.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese counterfeiters, determined to cash in on the hype of 'Spider-Man 3', have taken piracy one step further, releasing faked copies of different movies in Spider-Man sleeves.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. said on Thursday it will launch a video-sharing site on Friday, making the electronics and entertainment conglomerate the latest challenger to Google Inc.'s YouTube service.

SEOUL (Reuters) - LG Electronics Inc. said on Thursday its recently launched Shine handset model had just reached its million-unit sales mark, and added it may launch another groundbreaking model later this year.

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India plans to allow new international players to bid in auctions for third generation (3G) mobile licenses, Indian media reported on Thursday.

Reuters - Chinese counterfeiters, determined to cash in on the hype of "Spider-Man 3," have taken piracy one step further, releasing faked copies of different movies in Spider-Man sleeves.

Reuters - Sony Corp. (6758.T) said on Thursday it will launch a video-sharing site on Friday, making the electronics and entertainment conglomerate the latest challenger to Google Inc.'s YouTube service.

Reuters - LG Electronics Inc. (066570.KS) said on Thursday its recently launched Shine handset model had just reached its million-unit sales mark, and added it may launch another groundbreaking model later this year.

Reuters - India plans to allow new international players to bid in auctions for third generation (3G) mobile licenses, Indian media reported on Thursday.

AP - 100,000. That's the number of new jobs that India's top five software companies plan to add this fiscal year, riding a boom in outsourcing that's fattened profits. That's on top of a record 76,500 new employees who joined these companies last year.

OSAKA, Japan (Reuters) - Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co. Ltd. said on Thursday it aims to double its combined annual Wii and DS software sales to 300 million units, without giving a specific time frame.

AP - South Korea's antitrust watchdog said Thursday it has decided to drop a probe into whether four global computer memory chip manufacturers violated the country's fair trade law, citing insufficient evidence.

PC World - Verizon's V Cast Mobile beams programs packaged for tiny screens. Is it worth it?

AFP - MySpace announced its launch in China Thursday, following months of speculation about the Rupert Murdoch-controlled social networking site's plans for the nation's 137 million Internet users.

AFP - India's foreign investment body is expected to decide Friday whether to clear Vodafone's 11.1-billion-dollar plan to buy mobile phone operator Hutchison Essar, a government official said.

AP - Blistering sales of the popular Wii and DS game machines lifted Nintendo Co.'s earnings 77 percent in the latest fiscal year, the Japanese maker said Thursday.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Central European nations have closed in fastest amongst emerging economies on the digital elites in North America and western Europe, a ranking of Web-savvy nations showed on Thursday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Video gaming's summer blockbuster season swings into action on May 4 when 'Spider-Man 3' swoops into stores backed by the hype of a major Hollywood movie that should help spur big sales of the game.

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Lawmakers piled pressure on Thursday on the companies charged with building a European Union satellite navigation system and expressed alarm that growing delays would increase the project's costs.

USATODAY.com - NEW YORK - Verizon Wireless is introducing a BlackBerry e-mail phone that's compatible with the cellular technology more common in other countries in addition to the standard used on the company's U.S. network. The device, a variant of the 8800 line, will be priced at $400 but will be available for as little as $200.

USATODAY.com - SAN FRANCISCO - Apple blew past Wall Street expectations Wednesday, posting quarterly profits that jumped by 88%, fueled by strong sales of its iPod players and Macintosh computers.

Reuters - Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co. Ltd. (7974.OS) said on Thursday it aims to double its combined annual Wii and DS software sales to 300 million units, without giving a specific time frame.

AP - The flood of pirated movies and other goods from China is growing despite increased enforcement, two U.S. business groups said Thursday, appealing to Beijing for tougher action.

Reuters - Ericsson (ERICb.ST), the world's largest supplier of equipment for mobile phone networks, reported a 24 percent rise in first-quarter pretax earnings on Thursday and said it was taking market share from rivals.

AFP - Nintendo said Thursday its net profit grew by more than two-thirds in the last fiscal year thanks to strong sales of its next-generation Wii video game console and its handheld machines.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc. Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said on Wednesday the company's iPhone is on track to ship in late June.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. said on Thursday it will launch a video-sharing site in Japan on Friday, marking the electronics and entertainment firm's first step towards challenging Google Inc.'s YouTube service.

InfoWorld - South Korea won out as the location for a 3.8 trillion won ($4.1 billion) chip factory for Hynix Semiconductor, despite speculation China might win the project.

InfoWorld - A worldwide semiconductor glut hit bottom in the first quarter, as did sales at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the company said Thursday.

PC World - Toshiba Corp. saw healthy increases in sales at its main business units in the fiscal year just ended, but competition in the mobile phone market and price declines of memory chips hurt profitability in its electronics operations.

Reuters - Apple Inc. Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said on Wednesday the company's iPhone is on track to ship in late June.

InfoWorld - The U.S. Army’s Communications Electronics Research & Development Engineering Center (CERDEC) will spend several months evaluating Mobile WiMax for possible military use, according to Samsung Electronics, which is supplying the equipment.

InfoWorld - In an effort to build a larger community of developers for its Flex environment, Adobe Systems said Thursday it plans to open-source the Flex software development kit (SDK), designed to let developers build multimedia-rich Internet applications, by the end of the year.

InfoWorld - Microsoft is posting the final beta and first publicly available and feature-complete version of Windows Server "Longhorn," marking the final time the product will be available for testing and feedback before the long-awaited server update is available later this year.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs indicated on Wednesday he is unlikely to give in to calls from the music industry to add a subscription-based model to Apple's wildly popular iTunes online music store.

PC World - Nintendo Co. Ltd. reported a big increase in sales and profit for its financial year just ended, although sales of its smash-hit Wii console missed their target by a whisker.

InfoWorld - Amid rising prices for the LCD (liquid crystal display) panels used as screens in LCD TVs, laptop PCs, and flat desktop displays, Corning announced plans to spend an additional $129 million to expand a glass substrate factory in Taiwan.

Reuters - Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs indicated on Wednesday he is unlikely to give in to calls from the music industry to add a subscription-based model to Apple's wildly popular iTunes online music store.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The inventor of Sony Corp.'s PlayStation video game consoles, Ken Kutaragi, will retire as chief executive of the Japanese company's game division on June 19, Sony said on Thursday.

InfoWorld - IBM has a plan to stop the computing delays familiar to users of virtual worlds and online games, simply by adding its Cell gaming chips to its mainframe servers, the company said Thursday.

PC World - A worldwide semiconductor glut hit bottom in the first quarter, as did sales at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), the company said Thursday.

Reuters - The inventor of Sony Corp.'s (6758.T) PlayStation video game consoles, Ken Kutaragi, will retire as chief executive of the Japanese company's game division on June 19, Sony said on Thursday.

PC World - Ken Kutaragi stepping down as chairman and CEO of Sony's game console division.

PC World - Plus: a (much) nicer Linux interface and second-gen UMPCs.

InfoWorld - The mobile phone industry has moved forward in its efforts to agree to a global standard for delivering secure services such as credit-card payments on handheld devices, according to an industry executive.

PC World - Mobile phone industry is moving forward on global standard for secure payment services on handheld devices.

NewsFactor - Because of feature-packed cell phones, users can leave their camera, music player, or portable game machine at home. If a growing consortium of cell-phone makers and operators is successful, users throughout the world will someday be able to forget their wallet as well.

LiveScience.com - Unseen, unnamed forces are barraging you with lies, and if you weaken and believe them your computer will be turned into a zombie. No, that’s not a blurb for a bad sci-fi movie—it’s a description of what’s happening on any desktop containing an Internet-connected PC. Before the month is even done, April has set a record for virus e-mails, thanks to a virulent and successful malware called the Storm Virus, Adam Swidler, a manager at Postini Inc., a spam filter service in San Carlos, CA, told LiveScience. ...

FT.com - The Indian regulator's decision, expected on Friday, on whether to allow Vodafone's purchase of a controlling stake in Hutchison Essar to go ahead is a big one, for the British mobile phone company - and for India.

InfoWorld - New details emerged Thursday of virtualization software provider VMware's plans to sell its stock to the public.

NewsFactor - "Longhorn" is now out on the range. On Wednesday, Microsoft released the first publicly available test version of its new Windows Server software, which it has nicknamed after a highly distinguishable breed of cattle.

AP - The chief architect of Sony Corp.'s flagship PlayStation game console will retire in June as the company struggles to retain its dominance in the video game industry.

NewsFactor - Verizon Wireless and BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion announced on Wednesday the first global CDMA/GSM BlackBerry along with a new Global BlackBerry service that supports it.

NewsFactor - News headlines announcing battery recalls are a familiar sight in recent months. The latest PC maker to acknowledge problems with laptop batteries is Acer -- and the manufacturer at fault, once again, is Sony.

Reuters - Legislation that would lift an online gambling ban imposed by Congress last year was introduced on Thursday by the chairman of U.S. House Financial Services Committee.

LOS ANGELES/TOKYO (Reuters) - The architect of Sony Corp.'s PlayStation, Ken Kutaragi, will step down on June 19, at a time when the Japanese company is fighting to reassert its lead in the video game market.

PC World - IBM Corp. has a plan to stop the computing delays familiar to users of virtual worlds and online games, simply by adding its Cell gaming chips to its mainframe servers, the company said Thursday.

AP - The founder of the ambitious '$100 laptop' project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175, and it will be able to run Windows in addition to its homegrown, open-source interface.

Reuters - The architect of Sony Corp.'s (6758.T) PlayStation, Ken Kutaragi, will step down on June 19, at a time when the Japanese company is fighting to reassert its lead in the video game market.

PC Magazine - Ken Kutaragi steps down as head of the Sony group responsible for the PlayStation.

AP - An anti-spam organization filed a federal lawsuit Thursday targeting so-called spam harvesters, who facilitate the mass distribution of junk e-mail by trolling the Internet and collecting millions of e-mail addresses.

PC World - One Seattle company using a new site optimization service from Google Inc., introduced in beta to select users in October and to all AdWords customers earlier this month, is already seeing improvements on its site.

FT.com - The US military announced on Thursday that it had filed charges against a commander at a major detention facility accused of "aid[ing] the enemy" by providing detainees with an unmonitored mobile phone.

InfoWorld - The most significant development in the next major release of MySQL's open source database, MySQL 6.0, will be the inclusion of the vendor's homegrown Falcon storage engine, according to company CEO Marten Mickos.

AP - Microsoft Corp. fiscal third-quarter profit jumped 65 percent, buoyed by sales of its new versions of Windows and Office and by upgrade coupons for the operating system issued over the holidays.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mattel Inc. is using technology to come up with a new twist on a toy launched in 1959 to appeal to today's Web-savvy, multimedia girl shoppers.

AP - The ban on Internet gambling enacted last fall would be overturned under legislation proposed Thursday by a senior House Democrat, but the bill faces long odds in Congress.

Reuters - SanDisk Corp. , a maker of flash memory for cell phones and digital cameras, reported a quarterly loss on Thursday as prices for its main products fell, sending its shares down more than 6 percent.

InfoWorld - Sun Microsystems opened up its labs Thursday, spotlighting projects in areas ranging from wire-free chip-to-chip communications to Web 2.0 security.

NewsFactor - The PlayStation 3 is getting its own eye, with Sony announcing Thursday that the PS3 Eye camera will be released this summer. The Eye is the next generation of the EyeToy, a USB camera that had been available for the PlayStation 2. But Sony has decided that this Eye is no toy, instead marketing it as a device "designed specifically to work with the next generation of social gaming titles and new services being developed for PS3."

Reuters - A project that aims to deliver low-priced laptops with string pulleys to the world's poorest children may have a new market: U.S. schools.

PC Magazine - Wal-Mart denied rumors that it had placed a substantial order with a Taiwan supplier for ultra-cheap HD DVD players that could swing the format wars in that direction.

AP - Baidu.com Inc., China's most popular Internet search engine, said Friday its first-quarter profits jumped 143 percent on strong traffic growth and higher advertising revenues.

InfoWorld - IP communications company Mitel Networks plans to acquire Inter-Tel for $732 million, the companies announced on Thursday.

InfoWorld - Sun Microsystems opened up its labs Thursday, spotlighting projects in areas ranging from wire-free chip-to-chip communications to Web 2.0 security.