PC World - Comcast just became the wireless Internet vendor to beat by offering 4G wireless Internet in Portland, Oregon. Leveraging Clearwire’s WiMax network, this move leaves LTE (Long-Term Evolution), the competing technology, a step behind.

PC World - Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), China's largest chip maker, raised its guidance for the second quarter, saying demand for semiconductors is growing faster than previously expected. But even if the chip maker's second-quarter results come in at the top end of its revised forecast, sales will still be down sharply over the previous year.

PC World - A wide-ranging group of trade associations has urged China to lift its requirement that an Internet filtering program be distributed with all new PCs, with the order set to take effect this week.

InfoWorld - Call it serendipity. As I was working through my review of OpenOffice.org 3.1 and SoftMaker Office 2008, an early version of the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Microsoft Office 2010 was conveniently leaked to the Internet.

PC World - Mobile carriers may start giving away netbooks for free, and Linux-based application stores could help them profit by doing it, the head of a Linux advocacy group told Chinese companies on Monday.

InfoWorld - In InfoWorld's tests using complex Word and Excel documents, OpenOffice.org 3.1 failed to deliver on its promise of better Microsoft Office interoperability, severely mangling our Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel test data files.

InfoWorld - In the kingdom of business productivity, Microsoft Office reigns supreme.

Reuters - What do Johnny Depp, Garfield, Paris Hilton and roast pork have in common? In China, the answer is that a new government-mandated Internet filter rates some pictures of all four of them as bad for your moral health.

InfoWorld - A year ago today, Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP, no longer selling new copies in most venues. The June 30 kill date for XP followed a six-month outcry from users about Windows Vista, with demands that Microsoft keep XP available alongside Vista for the many users who were frustrated by ease-of-use, compatibility, and retraining issues.

Macworld.com - Electronic Arts (EA) on Tuesday announced the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a video game based on the upcoming movie. It debuts simultaneously on multiple platforms including the Mac. It costs $30.

Reuters - Dell Inc, the worlds No.2 PC maker, is developing a pocket-sized device for tapping into the Internet, the Wall Street Journal said citing people familiar with the company's plans.

PC World - Citibank is starting a large trial of the use of mobile phones to make credit card payments at retail outlets and other points-of-sale in Bangalore, which the company is branding as 'Citi Tap and Pay'.

AP - China postponed a plan to require personal computer makers to supply Internet-filtering software Tuesday, retreating in the face of protests by Washington and Chinese Web surfers just hours before it was due to take effect.

Reuters - China will delay a controversial policy to force manufacturers to install mandatory filtering software on all new computers, state news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday.

AFP - Following worldwide criticism, China will delay a plan to require that all new computers come with a Chinese-made Internet filtering software programme, state media reported on Tuesday.

Macworld.com - The Maine Department of Education on Tuesday announced that it has expanded its student laptop program to include high school students. It’s a huge win for Apple, because the state will be acquiring another 64,000 MacBook laptops, with up to 7,000 additional MacBooks possibly ordered in the coming weeks.

PC World - The manager at my local Apple Store looked a little grim when I mentioned iPhone 3GS overheating and battery problems yesterday. 'If that's what it is, you're going to have a flood of phones coming back,' I told him. As if he had to be told.

PC World - Dell is developing a pocket-sized gadget fashioned after Apple's iPod Touch that will play music, videos, and connect with the Web and is based on the Google Android mobile operating system, according to reports in today's Wall Street Journal.

AP - A San Francisco man who allegedly had 1.8 million stolen bank and credit card numbers on computers at his California apartment has pleaded guilty to wire fraud for his role in an online clearinghouse where identity thieves could share stolen information.

AFP - Chinese music pirates have issued a set of Michael Jackson commemorative DVDs less than a week after his death, with the pop star's 'Complete 50 Year Record' on sale in Beijing video shops Tuesday.

AFP - China has delayed a plan requiring that all new computers come with a Chinese-made Internet filtering software programme, state media reported Tuesday, hours before it was to take effect.

AFP - European travellers will pay less to use their mobile phones while abroad in the EU from Wednesday when new regulated price caps take effect across the 27-nation bloc.

Reuters - Making a telephone call, sending a text message or reading emails on a mobile phone from across the European Union will cost less from Wednesday.

AFP - Access to affordable high-speed Internet and mobile phone service are key to economic growth and job creation in developing countries, the World Bank said in a report released on Tuesday.

PC World - Is shopping mania for the iPhone 3GS finally over? It's hard to say. Apple recently released an online tool that tracks the status of iPhone 3GS shipments across each of its 210 retail stores in the United States. This suggests that Apple is still concerned about the retail availability for it customers. While store employees might welcome the decrease in the number of times they have say, 'yes we have it' or 'no we're out' over the phone, the question remains: Isn't the whole concept of availability-tracking a little too late?

PC World - Leading the charge of beefier iPhone games, Doom Resurrection hits the iPhone App Store today. The game pulls its art assets and concepts from Doom 3, originally released for the PC in 2004.

PC Magazine - The BlackBerry Tour will be available on July 12, Verizon Wireless said Tuesday, priced at less than $200 after rebate.

Reuters - Cisco Systems Inc is considering offering Web-based alternatives to Microsoft Corp's popular Office software as the networking giant expands on the Internet.

Macworld.com - When is a point update not just a point update? When it’s a point-five release, naturally. On Tuesday, Mozilla released Firefox 3.5, the latest version of the popular open-source Web browser, bringing joy into the hearts of children and adults alike.

NewsFactor - People may not camp out on the street to get a copy of Windows 7, but the latest version of Microsoft's flagship operating system is ringing up pre-orders.

PC World - When it comes to the PlayStation 3, it's apparently easy to confuse the game blogs. They've picked up on an incidental story by a tech site that communicates in fragments concerning Sony's recent filing to patent emulation of its legacy PS2 Emotion Engine vis-a-vis its 'cell' processor. The cell processor, you'll recall, is the cerebral cortex of the PS3's multi-processing brainpan.

AP - In a rare reversal, China's government gave in to domestic and international pressure and backed down Tuesday from a rule that would have required personal computers sold in the country to have Internet-filtering software.

AP - Specialty glass maker Corning Inc. said Tuesday it is getting a big lift from rising sales of flat-screen televisions, most notably in China.

AP - People are clamoring to see Michael Jackson's old videos in the wake of his death � especially 'Thriller.'

NewsFactor - Comcast launched a high-speed wireless data service in Portland on Tuesday as the first step in what the cable-TV network operator expects to eventually become a nationwide rollout -- with Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia expected to go online later this year.

Joost - Joost, an online video portal which has failed to live up to the buzz surrounding its launch, announced a management shakeup and layoffs Tuesday and plans to reinvent itself as a technology provider.

InfoWorld - IBM is announcing on Tuesday availability of an open source machine learning compiler, which the company said intelligently optimizes applications, thus meaning shorter development times and bigger performance gains.

Reuters - Cisco Systems Inc is considering offering Web-based alternatives to Microsoft Corp's popular Office software as the networking giant expands on the Internet.

Reuters - Joost, an early pioneer in bringing popular TV shows and movies to the Web, is dropping its consumer service, cutting jobs and losing its high-profile chief executive as it struggles to find revenue to survive.

PC World - Upcoming real-time strategy Windows game StarCraft II will ship without Local Area Network multiplayer support in an effort to combat piracy, says Blizzard, in an official statement sure to annoy if not outright confound series fans the world round.

Macworld.com - Apple on Tuesday released an update to its iPhoto 8 software, part of the iLife '09 suite of applications. iPhoto 8.0.4 fixes a rare bug in which updating to iPhoto 8.0.3 could cause the application to quit unexpectedly, as well as corrects references to some incorrectly labeled points of interest and location names.

AP - Computer networking gear maker 3Com Corp. said Tuesday it has named J. Donald Sherman, the chief financial officer of Akamai Technologies Inc., to its board.

NewsFactor - Mozilla on Tuesday released a Web browser that it said is 10 times faster than its original browser. One year after releasing Firefox 3.0, the Mountain View, Calif.-based nonprofit released Firefox 3.5, which it said is two times faster than Firefox 3.0 and 10 times faster than Firefox 2.

PC Magazine - AMD has begun circulating a special demonstration version of its Phenom II X4 processor that it won't actually sell.

Macworld.com - Users who turn to Cadent Computing's wineCellar to log and organize their wine collection will now be able sync entries via a new synchronization service added in the latest update. wineCellar 2.0 introduces Cadent Cloud, a service that lets the app sync up to 500 wines to a cloud where they can be viewed through either a standard Web site or a site for mobile devices.

PC World - Google has fixed an issue with the Outlook synchronization tool it released recently for its Apps hosted communications and collaboration suite, Google said Tuesday.

Macworld.com - Cooliris, the visually-enthralling free browser plug-in that allows you to navigate through online photos and video via a 3-D image wall, has been updated to version 1.1.1. New to this version is support for displaying Cooliris within tabbed windows, sharable URLs, and greater support for Flickr information and MySpace content.

PC World - Cisco Systems believes networking among doctors as well as among sensors in the field can help prevent pandemics, Chairman and CEO John Chambers said in a keynote address at the company's annual Cisco Live customer conference that was briefly disrupted by a protest and a technical glitch.

PC World - Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 is off to a running start. The new browser, boasting significant speed increases and a host of added features, was officially released Tuesday morning. By mid-afternoon, the program had surpassed 1.6 million downloads worldwide and was steadily climbing, according to Mozilla's real-time tracking utility.

PC World - Calling The Pirate Bay’s owners “sellouts” who made a “deal with the devil,” users of the notorious torrent-tracking site expressed their frustrations across the Internet today.

PC World - YouTube plans to soon switch all of its members to a redesign of its channel pages that it has been testing for several months, although many people want the Google video-sharing site to give them the option to keep the old layout.

Reuters - China's ambitions to strengthen control of the Internet with filtering software became a show of the limits of its power on Wednesday, as Internet activists and businesses welcomed the abrupt delay of the controversial plan.