Reuters - Oswaldo Castillo, the Nicaraguan laborer who rose to fame as the heavily accented sidekick of TV/radio personality Adam Carolla, has been cast in Carolla's untitled comedy pilot at NBC.

AFP - Australians are more likely to pay for music and movies online than to hand over money to read newspapers on the Internet, a survey released Thursday said.

PC World - A Chinese company is tweaking Google's Android operating system to run on a laptop using homegrown Chinese microprocessors, which are backed by the government.

Macworld.com - When it comes to mobile voice recognition, the big name in the business right now is Nuance Communications and its line of Dragon NaturallySpeaking products. The only real problem with Nuance’s lineup lies in multitasking—Dragon Dictation can only take down a note, e-mail or text message; I have to open a different app like Dragon Search if I want to look up something.

AFP - South Korea's Samsung Electronics Thursday unveiled a hi-tech alternative to the fridge magnet -- a refrigerator with Internet access that can display family photos or recipes on a screen.

PC World - A research partnership between Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft has produced a novel method of physical interaction targeted at mobile devices that uses skin as an input interface. This input method, known as 'Skinput,' measures the generated by tapping on your body.

PC World - North Korea has reportedly developed its own version of the Linux operating with a graphical user interface that closely resembles Microsoft Windows.

PC Magazine - Magensa's QwicKey uses a credit card as an authentication factor, so it should come as no surprise that the company's new iDynamo technology with QuikPay should use a credit card as well. The technology may end up taking on Square as a mobile payment-processing technology.

PC World - IBM researchers are a step closer to developing chips that use pulses of light instead of electrical signals to carry information between them.

Reuters - Japanese group Olympus Corp is aiming for its small, lightweight models to have 20 percent of the high-end digital camera market in three years, up from 5 percent now, its president said.

Reuters - Afghanistan will block Internet sites with sexual or violent content, a minister said on Thursday, but the government denied the ban was another attempt at censorship or would include the Taliban's website.

Reuters - Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is in no rush to take the popular social-networking site public, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

NewsFactor - As the smartphone world waits to see how the patent battle between Apple and HTC plays out, Google continues to forge ahead with mobile innovations. On Wednesday Google announced yet another application for its Android mobile operating system that adds a new twist to smartphone searches.

PC World - Google announced an experimental application for its Android mobile operating system, which allows you to search your phone using written gestures. Instead of bringing up the keyboard, users of the newer Android phones can just draw letters on the screen to search through contacts, music or apps.

PC World - Foxit Software will soon release a new version of its eSlick e-book reader, which has been redesigned to better fit into a pocket.

AP - NATO is facing new threats in cyberspace that cannot be met by lining up soldiers and tanks, the alliance's secretary-general said Thursday in an apparent reference to terror groups and criminal networks.

AP - A federal appeals court has sided with TiVo in the second phase of its long-running patent lawsuit against Dish Network.

NewsFactor - Score one for Hollywood. RealNetworks agreed this week to settle lawsuits with major movie and TV studios for its RealDVD product, which allows users to copy DVDs onto hard drives.

AFP - Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo said Thursday it would launch a paid news application for the Internet and smartphones like Apple's iPhone next week but would keep access to its website free.

Macworld.com - With all the attention focused on Apple suing HTC in the last few days, you might have forgotten that Apple has been embroiled in another legal dispute, instituted by rival mobile phone maker Nokia. But if you’ve been waiting to see those two companies duke it out in court, you’ll have to wait a little longer: the Associated Press reported on Thursday that a federal judge has suspended the case.

PC World - RealNetworks has decided to resolve the legal challenges brought against it by Hollywood, and permanently discontinue its RealDVD software. As part of the settlement, RealNetworks will also pay $4.5 million in legal fees to the parties that brought the lawsuit against the company including six Hollywood studios, Viacom and the DVD Copy control association.

PC World - First adult apps, now Wi-Fi.

AP - Shares of Take-Two Interactive Inc. got a boost Thursday after the video game publisher posted first-quarter results and a profit forecast for the current period that surpassed Wall Street's expectations.

PC World - Microsoft has sold 90 million copies of Windows 7 to date, making it the fastest-selling operating system in history, according to Peter Klein, Microsoft's chief financial officer.

AFP - Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says he is in no hurry to launch an initial public offering for the wildly popular social networking site.

AFP - NATO must be ready to address the security threats posed by potential enemies in cyberspace, the secretary general of the western military alliance, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said Thursday.

NewsFactor - TiVo on Thursday won a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling against major satellite operators in a long-standing intellectual-property battle. The court ruled that Dish Network and EchoStar still infringe on TiVo's patent and should stop offering DVR services.

Reuters - A federal appeals court affirmed on Thursday a contempt finding against Dish Network Corp and EchoStar Corp in their long-running patent case against digital video recorder maker TiVo Inc, sending TiVo shares soaring 52 percent.

PC World - Is Sony ready to rumble with Apple? The Wall Street Journal thinks so. Citing 'people familiar with the matter,' the Journal says Sony Corp. has plans to release a smart phone capable of playing PlayStation games, that it's already in development, and that we'll see it later this year.

PC Magazine - A federal appeals court this week upheld a lower court decision that accused Dish Network and EchoStar of continuing to infringe on TiVo patents.

NewsFactor - Despite an analyst's report that Apple is experiencing production delays on the iPad, which is supposed to hit stores at the end of March, Apple's Taiwanese supplier insists production is on track to deliver 600,000 to 700,000 iPads and another million in April.

Reuters - Microsoft is still seeing a lot of interest in its Windows 7 computer software launched last year and a new budget cycle will help a gradual recovery in business spending, its chief operating officer said.

PC World - CRM vendor RightNow announced a new SaaS (software as a service) pricing and licensing model on Thursday that it says provides customers with fairer, clearer deals. The company also issued a 'Cloud Challenge' to competitors, urging them to adopt similar principles.

Macworld.com - While Apple may not have had a chance to compete in the recently concluded Winter Olympics—and that’s a shame, too, as we understand the legal department boasts quite a formidable four-man bobsled team—the company did manage to take home a gold medal in Fortune’s annual list of “most admired” companies. That marks a three-peat for Cupertino, as Apple had previously claimed the top spot in both 2008 and 2009.

NewsFactor - Japanese electronics giant Sony has been busy developing new handheld devices in an effort to better compete in the mobile market. Under way is a suite of new devices, including a PlayStation game-playing phone.

AP - The son of legendary photographer Ansel Adams is suing the Fresno Metropolitan Museum to keep the now-defunct museum from auctioning off six of his father's prints.

AP - THE CASE: TiVo Inc. argues that Dish Network Corp. infringed on TiVo's patent on technology for storing and retrieving TV shows and movies on digital video recorders.

PC World - Nero, makers of optical media-burning software, has announced a new version of its SecurDisc data- protection technology, which should increase your chances of recovering content from damaged CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

PC World - Sony is countering Apple by developing its own handheld products that include a tablet-like device and a smartphone that can download and play PlayStation games, The Wall Street Journal said in a news report on Thursday.

PC World - Last week, an observant member of the Valve forums pointed out that there were resources and code added to the new Steam beta that pointed to a possible port to OS X. The forums were churning with rumors and speculation of the gaming giant’s future Mac plans. Some disregarded the additional resources as either just a new OS X-like theme or simply a coding experiment for the beta.

AP - Two game studio heads fired by Activision this week are suing the video game publisher, saying it let them go to avoid paying hefty royalties from the popular 'Call of Duty.'

AFP - YouTube, in a significant development for millions of deaf Internet users, extended automatic caption capability Thursday to all English-language videos on the video-sharing website.

PC World - Home networking giant Netgear plans to introduce a 500 megabit-per-second line of HomePlug AV powerline products this fall. Netgear announced a slew of products, including next-generation powerline and advanced multimedia-optimized Wi-Fi products this week at CeBIT, the giant tech trade show in Hannover, Germany.

Macworld.com - The murky and untested waters of e-book publishing can be hard to navigate, and many a company has been seen flailing its arms in an attempt to keep its head above water. Perhaps they should take a lesson from Penguin Books—a company that seems to have no fear of diving into the deep to try something new.

PC World - When Google introduced its Nexus One phone in January, it unveiled a whole new business model in the mobile phone market.

AP - Move Inc.'s fourth-quarter loss widened as the online real estate service's revenue drooped in a still-sluggish market for home buying and renting.

Reuters - Microsoft Corp is aiming to launch two phones that will be sold by top U.S. mobile operator Verizon Wireless in late spring or early summer, a person briefed on the matter said on Thursday.

AP - BigBand Networks Inc., a digital video software company, on Thursday announced that its chief operating officer and a top sales executive have resigned.

Macworld.com - I have a not-so-secret confession to make: I hate doing chores. You’ve got to find the time for it, then work up the motivation, and once you finally have both of those things, you need the supplies to finish the job. I’ve tried organizational apps before, but they only really help with time management and supplies—motivation is an entirely different story.

NewsFactor - Evidence from the recent Aurora hack attacks on major American corporations suggest that many may have tightly locked virtual front doors, but no cybersecurity inside their systems, a McAfee expert warned on Wednesday. In a Security Insights blog post, Paul Kurtz, McAfee's chief technology officer, discussed his study of the December-through-February attacks on Google, Intel, Adobe Systems, and other large firms.

InfoWorld - OSGi, which is intended to provide modularity for Java, is the focus of efforts afoot at IBM and the Eclipse Foundation, with IBM leveraging OSGi in its application server and Eclipse using it in a new framework for accessing enterprise technology.

Reuters - If there were an Oscar for the best TV commercial for a best picture nominee, it would go to 'Up in the Air.' And it wouldn't even be close.

AP - YouTube is adding captions to millions of Internet videos.

PC World - YouTube is opening up its auto-caption feature to everybody, a move that benefits not only deaf users, but also people who watch videos in really noisy places, like airport terminals. And since the tool will be able to translate captions into your choice of 50 languages, it should be handy for viewing YouTube clips from around the world. (For now, however, auto-captioning works only with videos in English.)

AP - ArcSight, a provider of network security software and services, said Thursday that its fiscal third-quarter profit fell 57 percent as higher operating expenses overshadowed growth in product and maintenance sales.

AFP - Terrorists, crooks and nation states are ramping up cyberassaults that are eating away at data, cash and security in the United States, the head of the FBI said.

Macworld.com - If you’ve been interested in becoming an official Mac developer but shied away from high membership fees, this might just be your lucky day.

Reuters - Militant groups, foreign states and criminal organizations pose a growing threat to U.S. security as they target government and private computer networks, FBI Director Robert Mueller said on Thursday.