PC World - Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) has been forced to truck water to its chip factories in the southern city of Kaohsiung after Typhoon Morakot muddied up local water supplies, making them difficult to use.

PC World - If you don't pant at the thought of the arrival of Windows 7 on October 22 and still use Windows XP on at least one of your PCs, PC World would like to know more about why.

AP - Google Inc. is now enabling authors and publishers who release their work under Creative Commons licenses to distribute it through Google Books, a free service that allows users to search and read books online.

PC World - India's software trade body on Thursday moved to reassure the government and customers that the industry was taking precautionary measures to protect high-tech workers from swine flu.

BusinessWeek - When Dan Pulver started business school, he thought his job leads would come through career fairs, campus recruiting, or maybe alumni networking events. One place he didn't think would yield employment -- the family reunion.

AP - State-owned China Unicom Ltd. said Friday it is talking with Apple Inc. about becoming an iPhone carrier but denied a report it has reached a deal and will buy 5 million handsets.

AP - Republicans have turned to terrifying people in the debate over overhauling the health care system because the GOP has no political clout to fight it, former President Bill Clinton told a gathering of progressive bloggers on Thursday.

PC World - Microsoft has officially announced its Zune HD, setting the launch date for September 15. Next, we hear Apple is planning a music-related keynote event for the week of September 7.

AP - Seabed movements believed caused by Typhoon Morakat damaged seven undersea cables linking Asian nations, disrupting Internet and telephone services, a Taiwanese telephone company said Friday.

PC World - To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ghostbusters -- doesn't that make you feel old? -- YouTube and Sony have brought the classic comedy to your home computer for a week-long showing. The film appears in a 16-by-9 aspect ratio and in 'high quality' rather than YouTube's hi-def. There are seven or eight short commercial breaks in the film.

Macworld.com - It’s been a while since we’ve had an update on the spectacle that the Apple v. Psystar case has become. When last we saw the Florida-based clone-maker, it was changing lawyers, after it had trouble paying off its first firm.

PC World - Nintendo and Microsoft sales led a fifth straight month of US retail video game sales declines, while Wii sales plummeted despite a strong debut for Motion Control Plus headliner Wii Sports Resort.

PC World - There was a time when a new version of Outlook for Macintosh would have been big and welcome news. Now, it and the rest of Office for Mac 2010 are a big yawn. With Apple poised to finally make its own Mail, iCal, and Address Book fully compatible with Exchange servers, who needs Outlook?

AP - A few weeks ago, Pasquale Castaldo was waiting at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport for a delayed flight, when a man sitting across from him pulled out an Amazon Kindle book-reading device.

AP - Investors seemed to look past dismal July video game sales on Friday to expectations of a better second half to the year, with shares of game makers holding up despite the fifth straight month of declines.

PC World - The browser wars have gotten livelier with new entries and updates, with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Apple's Safari all scrambling for attention. But a warrior from the first browser war is apparently gearing up for battle once more. Netscape founder-turned-investor Marc Andreessen is backing a new company, Rockmelt, that is developing a next-generation Web browser, according to the New York Times.

NewsFactor - Apple is reportedly cracking the mobile-phone market in China by selling $1.5 million worth of iPhones to China Unicom. The move is expected to help Apple enter the growing market in China while also giving China Unicom a leg up against competitors.

Macworld.com - It looks like id Software is at last ready to deliver on its promise of providing quality browser-based fragging to Mac users. Speaking at this past week’s QuakeCon 2009, id CEO Todd Hollenshead said Quake Live is expanding to Mac and Linux platforms on August 18.

AP - American companies counting on a favorable trade ruling against China to boost sales of CDs, DVDs, books and video games will need a crackdown on rampant piracy before they can reap big benefits.

AP - Twitter's been having a rough couple of weeks.

Reuters - Search market leader Google Inc holds greater loyalty among its users, who conduct more searches a month than those on Yahoo! and Microsoft, new data issued on Friday showed, posing a challenge for the new team of rivals to Google.

Macworld.com - The real question in the wake of Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent departure from Apple’s board of directors is yet to be answered. And that’s who will take his position as shortstop at the annual board of directors vs. Apple executive team softball game. Word is Apple’s board is eyeing several prospective candidates to fill the coveted roster slot.

PC World - IBM is trying to shore up flagging sales of its System z mainframe with a set of hardware, software and services combinations aimed at specific application workloads.

AP - The next installment of Microsoft's flagship racing franchise won't offer any clunkers.

NewsFactor - The blogosphere is abuzz with speculation that Apple is planning a major event for early September during which it may unleash a major iPod line refresh. The company has a history of making iPod and music-related moves in the month of September, but Apple declined an invitation to comment.

PC World - Verizon Wireless is again offering a second BlackBerry with each one purchased, but this time the deal includes any other device -- of equal or lesser value -- that Verizon sells.

AFP - The US agency behind Voice of America said Friday it is working on ways to slip news past tough Internet blockades in countries such as China and Iran.

Reuters - There is speculation that Radiohead will issue a new digital EP as early as Monday, after the leak of a track online assumed to be a new song by the band.

PC World - Internet Explorer 8 blocked about four out of every five sites that attempt to trick visitors into downloading malicious software in browser security tests performed by NSS Labs, according to a report released yesterday.

PC World - With all the Apple-bashing lately, you’d think that iPhone users—typically a satisfied lot—might be a little less thrilled with their chosen smartphone. Not so, according to a new survey by RBC/IQ ChangeWave. The market researcher polled iPhone 3GS owners and found that an astounding 99 percent of 200 respondents were satisfied with the device. And 82 percent said they were “very satisfied” with the 3GS.

AP - Call this city blogger central. Two grassroots groups � one left leaning, the other right leaning � are holding their annual conferences here and teaching members how to wield clout online.

AFP - The planned Microsoft-Yahoo! online search tie-up has promise but must overcome people's fierce loyalty to market king Google, industry tracker comScore said Friday.

PC World - What'll Windows gamers say when they load id Software's first-person shooting and racing game Rage sometime next year?

PC World - This week on the podcast, PC World editors Steve Fox, Robert Strohmeyer, Tim Moynihan, and Darren Gladstone explore the world of handset hacks.

PC World - With all the Apple-bashing lately, you’d think that iPhone users -- typically a satisfied lot -- might be a little less thrilled with their chosen smartphone. Not so, according to a new survey by RBC/IQ ChangeWave. The market researcher polled iPhone 3GS owners and found that an astounding 99 percent of 200 respondents were satisfied with the device. And 82 percent said they were “very satisfied” with the 3GS.

Investor's Business Daily - For years, computer users have accomplished minor functions -- CD burning, MP3 downloading, game playing -- by searching for apps online and downloading them from the Web. But some techies have also been using this method to find much bigger, pricier items.

PC World - Amazon Web Services has expanded a shipping service for large data sets on its S3 cloud storage platform so customers can get their content back instead of just sending it.