AFP - Chinese film starlet Zhang Ziyi has taken the blame for an earthquake donation scandal in her first comments on a flap that sparked a firestorm of Internet criticism and questions about her honesty.

AP - China without Google — a prospect that looks increasingly likely — could mean no more maps on mobile phones. A free music service that has helped to fight piracy might be in jeopardy. China's fledgling Web outfits would face less pressure to improve, eroding their ability to one day compete abroad.

PC World - Are you excited to start gaming in 3D? NVIDIA wants to show you how awesome 3D video games and movies can be, and it has teamed up with Panasonic for a US-wide road tour to showcase the latest in 3D home theater technology. As part of the tour, you'll be able to test out PCs running NVIDIA's 3DTV Play software with Panasonic's 3D HDTVs and shutter glasses (what a mouthful!).

AFP - China on Tuesday again warned Google not to stop filtering its web search engine results, as speculation mounted about the company's plans following its threat to leave over censorship and cyberattacks.

PC World - During a New York panel discussion on social media and digital activism held Monday, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei secured a promise from Twitter creator Jack Dorsey that his company will offer a Chinese version of its social networking service.

InfoWorld - In the year since Intel released the Nehalem-EP quad-core Xeon CPU, all the hubbub surrounding that chip and its new design has proven accurate. Bigger, better, faster, more -- a whole lot more than anything that Intel had ever released before. But that was then, this is now, and as they say, what have you done for me lately?

PC World - Intel introduced a line of Xeon server chips that operate up to 60 percent faster than previous server processors, the company said on Tuesday.

PC World - Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM rolled-out new servers on Tuesday based on Intel's latest Xeon 5600 microprocessors, which promise better performance and power consumption.

AFP - Sony and the estate of late music legend Michael Jackson have signed a record-breaking 250-million-dollar deal for distribution rights through 2017, US media said Tuesday.

PC World - Wep Solutions, an Indian security software and services startup, is offering its unified threat management appliance software free to small businesses around the world.

AP - Driven by the personal computer, television and smart phone markets, demand for semiconductors continues to improve and is ahead of what's generally expected for this time of year, according to Oppenheimer analyst Rick Schafer.

PC Magazine - Nearly a year after the company launched its Nehalem processor into the Xeon space, Intel on Tuesday announced the Xeon 5600, the so-called 'Westmere EP'.

Reuters - A Chicago insurance salesman was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Monday for making nude videos through hotel peepholes of television sports reporter Erin Andrews and posting them on the Internet.

AFP - Sony and the estate of late music legend Michael Jackson have signed a record-breaking 250-million-dollar deal for distribution rights through 2017, US media said Tuesday.

AP - At first touch, the PlayStation Move feels awfully familiar.

Reuters - Egypt has begun enforcing a ban on international calls made through mobile internet connections, the head of the telcoms regulator told Reuters on Tuesday, potentially boosting voice revenues at landline monopoly Telecom Egypt.

Reuters - Intel Corp released its newest server chips on Tuesday, as it seeks to maintain its dominance over rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc, and prepare for an expected rise in demand.

NewsFactor - Intel rolled out a new range of Xeon processor chips Tuesday that are based on the chipmaker's 32nm logic technology featuring second-generation high-k metal gate transistors. Called the Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series, the new server and workstation devices promise to decrease energy consumption in data-center applications even as they boost processing speeds.

Macworld.com - Popular payment provider PayPal has released an updated version of its iPhone app that introduces a number of new features. Most interesting is the integration of the “bump to communicate” feature first introduced by the Bump app (which you may remember as the billionth download from the App Store). The PayPal app allows you to send money to another person by simply entering an amount and gently “bumping” your iPhone against theirs.

Macworld.com - Surely you must have played with a kaleidoscope at some point in your life. The combination of mirrors and colored beads can yield amazing geometric patterns when pointed at light sources and it's a great example of the principles of reflection. Now you can have the exact same experience on your iPhone, with App Cubby’s KaleidoVid.

PC World - Almost 40 percent of BlackBerry users would switch camp to an Apple iPhone, a recent study into smartphone brand loyalty shows. Google's Nexus One is almost as desirable, according to the study by Crowd Science (PDF link), which shows that a third of the BlackBerry users polled were willing to switch their device for the Android-based phone.

AFP - South Korea will offer gamers and other Internet addicts free software from next year to limit the time they spend on the web, the prime minister's office said on Tuesday.

AP - Software maker Broadsoft Inc. on Monday filed its intent to raise as much as $103.5 million in an initial public offering.

Reuters - Intel Corp shares jumped more than 3 percent on Tuesday on speculation the world's top chip maker is preparing to release a positive estimate of earnings for the current quarter.

PC World - Intel unveiled an array of new Xeon 5600 server processors. Like the Core i7 980x desktop processors, the Xeon 5600 chips deliver up to six CPU cores on the more efficient 32nm architecture.

Reuters - Google Inc's initial sales of its Nexus One smartphone have significantly lagged the pace of Apple Inc's iPhone and Motorola Inc's Droid sales coming out of the starting gate, an analytics firm said on Tuesday.

Macworld.com - There are a bunch of Wikipedia apps out there for the iPhone and iPod touch right now, all trying to serve different customers. Want an offline version for your iPod Touch?

PC Magazine - To satisfy its demanding Mac-using customers, Western Digital has released the high-capacity My Passport SE for Mac.

AP - Disney's plan to quickly release the blockbuster 'Alice in Wonderland' on DVD is sparking new heat in a debate between Hollywood studios and movie theaters over how quickly films move from the big screen to people's living rooms.

Reuters - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved on Tuesday a summary of the agency's national broadband plan, that aims to expand access, increase Internet speeds and shift airwaves to mobile services.

Reuters - The King of Pop is dead; long live the King of Pop.

NewsFactor - Microsoft isn't going to let Apple have all the app-store fun. On Monday, the software giant announced more details about Windows Phone 7 Series applications in its online store as it moves to get third-party developers excited about the new platform.

Macworld.com - If you weren’t quick enough to already order your iPad accessories, you might be wondering “What’s up, dock?”

Macworld.com - I was on an airplane Monday afternoon, so I missed what is doubtlessly the talk of elite Mac users this week—a pair of printer driver updates released by Apple.

PC World - Crowd Science has released the results of a smartphone survey which should serve as a serious wake-up call for RIM. Although RIM leads in smartphone market share in the United States, seven out of ten BlackBerry users surveyed indicated a desire to drop the smartphone platform in favor of the iPhone or an Android-based device.

AP - Maxi Sopo was having so much fun 'living in paradise' in Mexico that he posted about it on Facebook so all his friends could follow his adventures. Others were watching, too: A federal prosecutor in Seattle, where Sopo was wanted on bank fraud charges.

NewsFactor - It's not only Julius Caesar who should take note of the Ides of March. So should every business with a dot-com address, since that was the date of the first dot-com address -- 25 years ago Monday.

AFP - The 'God of War III' videogame hit the stores Tuesday eagerly awaited by US fans of the franchise based on a Spartan warrior's vendetta against Greek gods.

Macworld.com - Google’s Nexus One smartphone is the flagship of the Android fleet. Sold by Google itself via its online store, the phone was unveiled in January for use on the T-Mobile network, with future versions planned for other carriers. On Tuesday, the first of those took its bow as Google announced a Nexus One compatible with AT&T’s 3G network.

AP - Google is taking another swipe at Apple with an upgrade of its Nexus One mobile phone.

NewsFactor - Research In Motion may find that many of its customers are in motion, a survey of more than 1,000 smartphone users suggests. Asked about their next smartphone purchase, 39 percent of 159 RIM BlackBerry users told Crowd Science, an online research firm, that they 'definitely or probably' want an Apple iPhone.

Macworld.com - If you’re looking for a U.S. turn-by-turn GPS app for your iPhone, but you don’t travel much outside of your home base, you might consider Navigon’s new MyRegion app, available for the east coast, west coast, and center of the United States.

AP - Magazine publishers may have a new way to boost flagging circulation: the iPad.

InfoWorld - Potentially toughening the competitive landscape for its own Silverlight rich Internet application platform, Microsoft will expand support for the HTML5 specification in its Internet Explorer 9 browser, under a plan revealed Tuesday.

AP - The record-breaking deal in which Michael Jackson's estate will get up to $250 million in the next seven years probably isn't a huge gamble for the company that will pay the money out, Sony Music Entertainment.

NewsFactor - Microsoft has invited developers to test-drive Internet Explorer 9. The software behemoth on Tuesday released an early version of its new browser to developers during the MIX10 event in Las Vegas.

PC World - If you'd like to know what a targeted e-mail attack looks like, take a look at samples posted today by antivirus maker F-Secure.

PC Magazine - Tuesday's big chip news was the introduction of Intel's new six-core Xeon 5600 chip, along with new servers based on the chip from Dell, HP, and IBM. While the news itself wasn't surprising, what it will usher in in terms of server performance bears watching.

AP - Researchers say Microsoft's Bing search engine is gaining market share in the U.S.

AFP - Recognize Symbolics.com? Probably not. But 25 years ago this week the Massachusetts computer maker played a bit role in history -- it was the first company to register a .com address on what would eventually become known as the World Wide Web.

AP - The Federal Aviation Administration wants new software installed on Boeing 777s to prevent crews from inadvertently engaging the autopilot before takeoff.

PC World - If you're a power BlackBerry user, you've probably experienced the annoyance of scrolling through a long contact list to find who want. Xobni Mobile, a new app for BlackBerrys, is here to help.

AFP - Faded Internet star AOL is reinventing itself as a digital age news operation with an army of freelance writers wielding online tools.

AP - Microsoft Corp. has been hit with a nearly $106 million fine for violating two patents held by a communications company.

AP - THE PROBLEM: An issue involving the Boeing 777 can result in a high-speed aborted takeoff and increase the chance of a runway overrun.

AFP - Faded Internet star AOL is reinventing itself as a digital age news operation with an army of freelance writers wielding online tools.

AP - A jury has awarded communications company VirnetX Holding nearly $106 million after determining Microsoft violated two of its patents.

PC World - Fujitsu is rolling out a new server designed specially for cloud computing providers.

PC World - Microsoft's next-generation Internet Explorer 9 browser may not be anywhere close to competition, but you can test drive a 'platform preview' of the software that provides a taste of IE9's capabilities. So what's the deal with Redmond's upcoming browser, and how does it differ from IE8 and worthy competitors such as Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox, Opera Software's Opera, and Apple's Safari? Here's a quick primer.