Amazon.com introduced two new versions of the device today, including a US$139 model that works with Wi-Fi. A second version, with 3G mobile technology as well as Wi-Fi to download books, costs US$189.

The new e-book reader has a 15.24 cm display panel and a 10 cm square solar panel; impressively, the solar cell measures just 0.7mm in thickness, thus obtaining the relatively light weight of 20 grams.

The chat service is tapping Cisco and ShoreTel to help it sell telecom to big business.

The US ITC has found Nvidia and several of its customers liable for infringing three Rambus patents in a hotly contested dispute over technology for memory controllers.

"With closer access to the Arm technology we will be able to enhance our R&D activities for ARM-based products," said KD Hallman, general manager, Microsoft.

Half a billion people around the world are now using Facebook on a monthly basis. That means Facebook has a slightly smaller population than the continent of North America. The social network also has enough users to put 75 people on every one of the over 6.6 million square miles of Russia, the largest country in the world by landmass.

Now, many or all the famous (Nvidia, Qualcomm, Marvel...) TSMC customers already use ARM designs with TSMC, but this deal might make things easier for smaller ones. In short: expect to see ARM continue to proliferate on the mobile computing market.

But publishers said it is still too early to gauge for the entire industry whether the growth of e-books is cannibalizing sales of paperback books, a huge and crucial market. Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, also countered the perception that sales of the company's Kindle e-reading device had suffered due to competition from other devices, such as Apple's iPad.