PC World - Heading off our monthly round-up of the hottest gadgets from Asia is Sony's Party-shot, which attempts to make the cameraman obsolete -- or at least a little less necessary. The device is coming with a couple of new digital still cameras that also bring improvements on previous models. But Nikon takes the prize for the most innovative camera of the month with its projector-equipped Coolpix.

Dear Abby - DEAR ABBY: My 18-year-old sister, 'Cheryl,' left home abruptly a week ago. She suddenly stopped taking all her medications, shut off her cell phone and left town with her underage boyfriend. She is a delightful person who also happens to be diabetic, asthmatic and bipolar. Mom received one phone call (from a landline) mentioning that she 'might' be heading toward the East Coast.

Reuters - After relying on a pacemaker for 20 years, Carol Kasyjanski has become the first American recipient of a wireless pacemaker that allows her doctor to monitor her health from afar -- over the Internet.

Macworld.com - Roku on Monday announced that its $99 video player box, which previously played only Netflix and Amazon video content, would also support both live and pre-recorded video streams from Major League Baseball.

InfoWorld - As they say, everything old is new again. The emergence of virtualization as a widely accepted computing platform has moved us that much closer to the age-old concept of centralized server-based computing that originated with the first mainframes in the 1970s.

AP - Luxembourg-based wireless service provider Millicom International Cellular SA said Tuesday it agreed to sell its Cambodian operations to the Royal Group, its partner in Cambodia, for $346 million.

AP - Huawei, a Chinese company that is edging into the U.S. market for telecommunications gear as a competitor to Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent, has scored another contract win.

AP - If you have a spouse, a sibling or some other relative or friend who loves football and video games, don't expect to see much of him (or her) this weekend. 'Madden NFL 10,' the latest installment of the series that took armchair quarterbacking to a new level, comes out Friday.

Investor's Business Daily - Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console has become the living-room entertainment and communications device the company long envisioned, thanks to its popular Xbox Live service.

Macworld.com - Moving the entire Mac lineup to shiny, glossy displays has been one of Apple’s many controversial decisions in recent times.

PC World - Flip on your Xbox 360, sign into Xbox LIVE, and you'll discover Microsoft's new dashboard update ready to deliver its freshly feature-laden payload. That payload amounts to over a dozen new attributes (see my review for the complete list) including user interface improvements, new avatar props, expanded Netflix viewing features, and full versions of Xbox 360 games downloadable to your hard drive.

PC World - According to UBS Investment Research analyst Maynard Um, Apple might be close to announcing a partnership with Verizon Wireless. He suggests people could see a data-centric Apple device being offered through the wireless provider. While this reeks of the fabled Mac tablet, I'm hoping that the iPhone will come along for the ride. Here are five reasons why Apple should offer the iPhone through Verizon.

PC World - Want to get your hands on Microsoft's new Zune HD?

AP - Google has lifted the lid on a new version of its search engine, allowing users to look at the results it will generate.

PC World - Speculation that Facebook is on its way to becoming a full-fledged search engine is, well, odd. Merely buying four former top Google engineers when acquiring FriendFeed does not a new search engine make. And it's a bad idea, besides.

AP - Shares of Brightpoint Inc. got a boost Tuesday after an upgrade from a Citi Investment Research analyst upgraded the cell phone distributor and said it should benefit from a cyclical recovery in the handset market.

PC Magazine - Micron and Intel have jointly announced a new 3-bit-per-cell NAND device that Micron will begin producing in the fourth quarter of 2009. Expect the chips to reduce the cost of flash cards, for cameras and other devices, even further.

PC World - With the constant buzz around Apple's every iPhone-related movement, you'd think the smartphone was dominating the industry. Revolutionary as it is, that's not the case. A new analysis from The Nielsen Company shows that when choosing a wireless carrier, getting a specific phone is as low on the priority list for U.S. cell phone users as it was before the iPhone's existence.

PC World - Microsoft has launched an Xbox LIVE dashboard update that contains all kinds of new goodies, plus a look towards the future. While you can download the update today, some of the newer features won't be available until Thursday, August13. Here's a quick breakdown of what you have to look forward to

NewsFactor - Google is putting Caffeine in its search engine, and it could be a wake-up call for businesses to tune up their Web sites. The previously secret project, announced Monday on the company's Webmaster Central Blog, is intended to provide the 'next-generation architecture' for Google's Web search, especially as Microsoft's Bing, a reinvigorated Yahoo, and Wolfram Research's Wolfram Alpha gear up.

Reuters - Britain's Royal Opera House (ROH) wants Twitter users to help create the 'world's first online opera.'

Reuters - Business software maker VMware Inc has agreed to buy privately held SpringSource for $420 million, its biggest-ever acquisition, to beef up a portfolio of programs that help companies run data centers.

PC World - Apple is reportedly working on an overhaul of iTunes that will include social networking tools that will allow you to broadcast and share music to friends. The reports are iffy at best and come from anonymous sources at BoyGeniusReport. If true, though, the update could breathe some needed new life into the iTunes software.

NewsFactor - Intel and Micron Technology have developed a new technology to expand the densities of the memory chips used in consumer storage devices such as flash cards and USB drives. Their joint-venture company, called IM Flash Technologies, has already begun sampling NAND memory chips capable of storing three bits of information per memory cell and it expects to begin mass-producing the devices in the fourth quarter.

AFP - US and Canadian college students can pack textbooks into their pockets instead of spine-bending backpacks courtesy of an iPhone application released by CourseSmart.

Macworld.com - Cultured Code has been relatively quiet since making a splash with Things at Macworld Expo '09. Its Mac and iPhone clients have received a few minor updates since then—and won an Apple Design Award—but now the company has laid out a sort of non-roadmap for the two products. If you read between the lines, this list of upcoming, evolutionary improvements may reveal a fairly significant new feature in the works.

Macworld.com - The National Football League doesn’t kick off its season for another month—well, 30 days, but who’s counting—but iPhone and iPod touch users can get a jump on the season with NFL 2010 from prolific iPhone game maker Gameloft. The football $8 football game made its debut on the App Store last week and is climbing its way up the store’s charts.

PC World - John Carmack thinks Sony's next-gen console--call it the PlayStation 4 if you will--seems likely to be first to market in the inevitable next generation cycle. That's what he told Polish site CD-Action, anyway, noting that Sony going first would probably be to prevent 'the same kind of 360 lag from happening to them again.'

AP - Twitter has suffered from another attack following one that left the site down for several hours last week.

AFP - Google has rolled back the curtain on a secret project codenamed 'Caffeine' focused on building a new iteration of its winning Internet search engine.

Macworld.com - Electronics vendor iHome today announced the official release of the Studio Series iP1 audio system.

PC World - Apple is reportedly working on an overhaul of iTunes that will include social networking tools that will allow you to broadcast and share music to friends. The reports are iffy at best and come from anonymous sources at BoyGeniusReport. If true, though, the update could breathe some needed new life into the iTunes software.

AP - Nu Horizons Electronics Corp. said Tuesday that it has been named a master distributor in North America for Alcatel-Lucent telephony and networking solutions.

AP - Applied Materials Inc., which makes equipment used to produce semiconductors, said Tuesday it slid to a fiscal third-quarter loss, reversing a year-ago profit, as revenue plunged 39 percent. But the results still beat Wall Street expectations, sending shares up 3 percent in after-hours trading.

Macworld.com - Mac users running Windows via Mac OS X’s Boot Camp feature on a laptop can look forward to an improved experience with their computers’ trackpads. Apple Tuesday released Multi-Touch Trackpad Update 1.1, which promises improved reliability when running Windows XP and Vista through Boot Camp.

NewsFactor - Xbox Live grew a notch Tuesday with the release of several updates to the service. The new features include the ability to download complete video games and play them without a disc, expanded capabilities for Netflix movies, new ways to make your avatar snappier, and an better rating ability.

PC World - Lately Apple has been the piñata at a kids' party, getting battered around by a mob of overexcited pundits critical of the company's iPhone and its App Store policies. Bloggers have denounced Apple's authoritarian style, which they view as arrogant, anti-competitive, anti-consumer, heavy-handed, hypocritical, monopolistic, and, well, just plain rude.

PC World - With prices of consumer electronics plummeting, it is a good time to buy devices like digital cameras. Fujifilm is offering full-featured digital cameras at an entry-level price of around US$90, while Shure has introduced professional-level headsets at $60. For those with plenty of cash to spare, a $2 million speaker system from Transmission Audio may catch your fancy.

AP - You might call it 'Son of the Netflix Prize.'

InfoWorld - Social media sites like Facebook are changing the game in the Internet search space, attracting large audiences and search activities and encroaching on search engine turf, panelists stressed during a technical conference Tuesday. But SEO (search engine optimization) remains very much alive, they added.

Reuters - Microsoft Corp said it will announce an alliance with Nokia (NOK1V.HE) on Wednesday, likely unveiling plans to make the software company's Office suite of applications available on devices made by the world's top cellphone manufacturer.

PC World - Microsoft's nine security bulletins released today close a range of security holes involving ActiveX controls, Windows Media files and other software that affect the full array of Windows versions.

Macworld.com - Safari 4.0.3, I presume? Apple dropped the latest update to its Web browser on Tuesday, bringing with it some stability improvements, bug fixes, and security patches. Those who hoped for anything fancier—I’ve still got my fingers crossed for VRML support—will have to wait until a more substantial update.

Reuters - Canadian John Wrenshall stands accused of bringing American child predators to Thailand to have sex with children, filming their crimes and then distributing the images over the Internet.

Macworld.com - If you primarily use a small point-and-shoot camera, chances are you don't haul around a cumbersome tripod as well. Just because you're packing light is no reason to let shaky hands or low-light keep you from getting a steady shot. Up your game by having a small, portable and, yes, adorable tripod on your person at all times.

PC World - VMware will gain a substantial footprint in enterprise Java application development with its pending acquisition of SpringSource, which was announced Monday. But the virtualization giant may follow up that move -- made in support of a new PaaS (platform as a service) cloud-computing strategy -- by investing in distributed caching technology, a class of middleware that boosts application performance and scalability.

PC World - Penguin Computing, which builds high-performance Linux clusters for tasks like weather modelling and product design, is taking its business into the cloud.

AP - A federal judge has barred RealNetworks Inc. from selling a device that allows consumers to copy DVDs to their computer hard drives, pending a full trial.

AFP - Children are searching online for videos, social networks, games and, yes, porn as they grow up in an Internet Age, according to computer security firm Symantec.