Apple, Microsoft, and 18 other companies are being sued for patent infringement by Texas-based Tsera which claims to have invented the touchpad.

Federal agencies are facing a severe shortage of computer specialists, according to a private study.

Online auction giant eBay has reported a fall in profits between April and June of almost one-third, but analysts had expected a sharper fall. Net profit was US$327.3 million, down 29% compared with the US$460m made in the same period a year ago. Revenue also fell slightly, from US$2.2 billion to US$2.1 billion.

UK firm Spinvox's service aims to convert voice messages into text messages using advanced speech recognition software. But claims to the BBC suggest that the majority of messages have been heard and transcribed by call center staff in South Africa and the Philippines.

Sources again claim that Apple has a tablet ready to release "in time for the holidays," and will be partnering with Verizon to provide mobile data services and possible subsidies.

Disney Japan plans to sell DVDs that include copies of the film on microSD cards for use in mobile devices. The extra format will cost 1,000 yen more.

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have hit the RTM milestone. OEMs can get their hands on it July 24, while MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able to get it on August 6. Consumers will have to wait until October 22.

Apple said that it has made a US$500 million prepayment to Toshiba for flash memory chips and indicated the market is stabilizing. Intel, which makes flash chips jointly with Micron, is also seeing a recovery in pricing.

The power of technology - such as blogs - meant that the world could no longer be run by "elites", Mr Brown said.

An employee at a factory that makes iPhones in China killed himself after a prototype went missing. Apple Inc. offered its condolences Wednesday as the company waits for the results of an investigation.

Hard drive maker Seagate Technology raised its forecasts for margins and overall industry sales in the current quarter, citing a larger-than-expected increase in corporate demand for computers, and its shares rose 4%.

Users can now personalize Yahoo.com to check other sites, including Facebook and Gmail, as well as add Web widgets that link to more than 65 other sites.

Barnes & Noble, the largest bookstore chain by revenue, just became the latest company to launch its own eBook store to compete with Amazon and its increasingly popular Kindle family of electronic readers. It joins Sony and other companies that aim to capture a piece of this young, but fast-growing market.

In George Orwell's "1984," government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the "memory hole." On Friday, it was "1984”and another Orwell book, "Animal Farm," that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

Converge also reports that demand for DDR3 modules remains strong, with supplies limited, and that Xeons and AMD Opterons are the drivers for cost savings in the CPU space.

Exactly a year and five months after Toshiba brought an end to the high-definition disc format war, the Japanese consumer electronics company confirmed its plans to produce its own Blu-ray Disc player.

Cisco Systems has continued trimming its workforce at its San Jose, CA, headquarters. Sources close to the company say between 600 and 700 employees (about 1% of global workforce) at the networking giant received layoff notices.