With surprisingly little fanfare, iMacs and Mac minis have received an Nvidia 9400M makeover, while Mac Pros now take advantage of the latest high-performance Intel processors.

Over 90% energy savings achieved with solid-state street lights developed by Japanese company

Strategies Unlimited forecasts the LED lighting market to have a CAGR of 28% from 2008-2012, but many challenges remain.

Approximately US$2 million per year is expected to be available to labs for new awards under this call, funded over multiple government fiscal years.

Ailing telecom equipment maker Nortel Networks, now operating in bankruptcy protection, said Monday its quarterly loss more than doubled as it booked over $2 billion in noncash writedowns and saw its sales plunge.

Microsoft may create up to 3,000 jobs as it raises investment in research and development by $1 billion this year amid a financial crisis that has also taken its toll on the software giant.

US pending home sales plummeted 7.7% in January 2009 from the prior month to their lowest level in at least eight years as a deepening recession bites, according to a real estate trade group. The National Association of Realtors said its pending home sales index fell to 80.4 in January, a level that was 6.4% below the January 2008 reading.

Stupid, wasteful and ineffective — and a shameless attempt to woo voters, many Japanese say. Prime Minister Taro Aso is touting a one-time cash handout of 12,000 yen, or about $120 per person, as the centerpiece of a stimulus package to revive the world's second-largest economy, mired in one of its worst slumps since World War II. Elsewhere in Asia, Taiwan has given out about $100 per person in spending vouchers.

Deutsche Messe plans to shave a day off the CeBIT trade show next year, reducing it to a five-day event, show officials said Monday. The cut is part of the continuing evolution of CeBIT, which at its peak ran for more than a week. In recent years consumer electronics companies have left the show for the IFA show in Berlin, a once biennial event that went annual and is solely focused on consumer electronics.

Warren Buffett, long revered for his investment prowess, has admitted that even he made some "dumb" mistakes during the past year. Berkshire's profits fell 62% in 2008--the worst performance in its 44 years.

Hangzhou Motorola Cellular Equipment, a joint venture between Motorola and Hangzhou Eastern Communications, will cease cell phone production by the first quarter of 2009, underlining the extended woes of the US communications giant's troubled mobile phone business. The mobile phone production line will switch to producing TV set-top boxes in the future, said Chen Lei, a spokersperson of Motorola China.

First Solar has agreed to acquire the solar-project pipeline of US peer OptiSolar for US$400 million in stock, a deal that will give the solar-panel maker a bigger foothold in the US utility segment.

Programmable chipmaker Altera said on Monday first-quarter sales would decline by a more moderate percentage than it previously expected thanks to demand for next-generation wireless equipment in China.

The company that was at one time the world's principal provider of NOR flash memory -- the more non-volatile variety -- had its own plans to go "asset light," to use a now familiar phrase, and to concentrate on licensing its intellectual property to companies with the muscle to do the heavy lifting. It sounds like a plan AMD just executed last month. As it turns out, Spansion had also been planning to license others to produce its designs.

Philips has unveiled its 2009 LCD TV range with an emphasis on high-end models boasting internet access, new EPG and menu systems, and power-saving LED technology.

LG Electronics plans to keep spending to develop new products despite a "tough" 2009, unveiling a partnership with YouTube and a dozen new TVs in the midst of the severe economic downturn.