Microsoft reportedly to cut price of Xbox 360 to $299

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp plans to cut the price of its best-selling Xbox 360 Pro model by $50, to $299 in the next few weeks, the Hollywood Reporter reported citing anonymous sources.

More: continued here

Tech majors to join hands against patent suits: report

(Reuters) - Information technology giants are teaming up in defense against potential patent-infringement lawsuits, the Wall Street Journal said on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.

More: continued here

LVMH wins compensation from eBay over counterfeits

PARIS (Reuters) - A French court ordered eBay Inc to pay 38.6 million euros ($61 million) to luxury goods group LVMH for allowing the sale of fake merchandise, in a ruling immediately appealed by the online auction website.

More: continued here

Samsung SDI to invest $529 million to up OLED output

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean display maker Samsung SDI Co said on Monday it would boost production of next-generation organic displays to six times the current level by mid-2009, spending $529 million.

More: continued here

Rhapsody to challenge iTunes by embracing the iPod

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Digital music seller Rhapsody is launching a $50 million marketing assault on Apple’s iTunes, offering songs online and via partners including Yahoo Inc and Verizon Wireless, Rhapsody said on Monday.

More: continued here

HP purchase of EDS gets government clearance

BOSTON (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co’s planned $12.6 billion purchase of Electronic Data Systems Corp cleared U.S. government antitrust review, the companies said on Monday.

More: continued here

California offers tax break to keep Tesla in state

SAN CARLOS, California (Reuters) - Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc said on Monday it will manufacture the lower-priced follow-up to its Roadster sports car in California after the state offered a tax break to keep the operations there.

More: continued here

Yahoo questions how serious Microsoft was on deals

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc on Monday sought to rally shareholder support in the face of a proxy battle with billionaire Carl Icahn, saying the activist investor had an “ill-defined plan” for the future of the Internet company.

More: continued here

Laptops banned in Bhutan assembly over gaming fears

THIMPU, Bhutan (Reuters) - The national assembly in newly democratic Bhutan has stopped lawmakers from bringing laptop computers into the house for fear they might spend their time playing computer games.

More: continued here

Ballmer becomes lone voice at Microsoft’s helm

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Steve Ballmer has been CEO at Microsoft Corp for eight years, but he will finally get to move into the corner office vacated by Bill Gates, the college friend who brought him to the company nearly three decades ago.

More: continued here

Apple’s Complete My Album emerges as marketing tool

DENVER (Billboard) - Releasing a single for digital download before an album’s debut is about as standard these days as making it available to radio.

More: continued here

Bill Gates bids a teary farewell to Microsoft

REDMOND, Washington (Reuters) - Bill Gates said a teary goodbye on Friday to Microsoft Corp, the software maker he built into the world’s most valuable technology company based on the ambitious goal of placing a computer on every desk and in every home.

More: continued here

Activision launches Aerosmith-only “Guitar Hero”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Aerosmith fans can finally get their chance to step into the shoes of Steven Tyler and Joe Perry as video game developer Activision Inc released its Guitar Hero: Aerosmith game on Friday.

More: continued here

Yahoo reorganizes businesses under Decker

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc unveiled on Thursday the third phase of an extended reorganization, bolstering the operational control of President Sue Decker, as the company hones its independent strategy after rebuffing Microsoft Corp.

More: continued here

Oracle damages in SAP case could top $1 bln: filing

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Damages sought by software maker Oracle Corp could top $1 billion in an intellectual property lawsuit it has brought against arch-rival SAP AG , according to a court filing.

More: continued here

Japanese students schooled with Nintendo

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nintendo is banned everywhere but the classroom at Tokyo Joshi Gakuen school in Japan as the ubiquitous DS consoles become the latest tool in English instruction.

More: continued here

U.S. court upholds new FCC video franchising rules

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday handed a victory to new competitors in the subscription television business like Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc , upholding new federal rules designed to ease their entry into local communities.

More: continued here

He said, she said: Which is it? Facebook asks

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Social network site Facebook will press members to declare whether they are male or female, seeking to end the grammatical device that leads the site to refer to individual users as “they” or “themself.”

More: continued here

Quarter of EU homes use mobile phones only: survey

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A quarter of European Union households surveyed by the bloc’s executive body have turned their backs on fixed lines in favor of mobile phones, with a fifth now making calls over the Internet.

More: continued here

Judge backs Facebook deal in suit over origins

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of cash and stock to settle a long- running legal battle over whether founder Mark Zuckerberg stole ideas for the site from fellow Harvard students, according to court documents released late on Wednesday.

More: continued here

Microsoft starts selling rival to VMware programs

BOSTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it started selling its new server virtualization software about six weeks ahead of schedule, putting pressure on market leader VMware Inc.

More: continued here

Napster faces proxy battle from three shareholders

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three shareholders of digital music service Napster Inc are seeking election to the board, saying current management had not been aggressive enough in battling rival Apple Inc and Internet piracy.

More: continued here

Gates leaves Microsoft to focus on philanthropy

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Sensing the start of a personal computer revolution, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard University in 1975 to start Microsoft Corp and pursue a vision of a computer on every desk and in every home.

More: continued here

Get ready for .smith, .sports or .love on the Web

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internet regulators on Thursday voted to relax rules on domain names like .com or .edu, which could pave the way for companies or individuals to create an array of new addresses for the Web.

More: continued here

Icahn calls on Microsoft to hold out on Yahoo deal

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dissident shareholder Carl Icahn renewed pressure on Yahoo Inc to strike a merger deal with Microsoft Corp and replace Chief Executive Jerry Yang in his latest proxy filing on Thursday.

More: continued here

MTV broadens use of Web with slate of new shows

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Seeking new ways to entertain audiences, music television network MTV has recently begun allowing fans of new and upcoming shows to discuss and post their own versions of music videos on the Web.

More: continued here

Intel pursues narrow Windows Vista rollout

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp , the world’s biggest chipmaker and decades-long business partner of Microsoft Corp, has no immediate plans to roll out the software giant’s Windows Vista operating system to all its employees.

More: continued here

Playing a video game? No, it’s health therapy

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Video games are known to improve hand-eye coordination but can they help someone quit smoking or lose weight?

More: continued here

California to drivers: Drop the cell phone, dude

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Next week California will try to wrest cell phones from the hands of drivers, telling everyone from movie starlets and dot-com millionaires to surfers and soccer moms that conversations behind the wheel must be on a headset.

More: continued here

Potential victims use devices to sidestep voyeurs

The market for tiny surveillance cameras and microphones — easilyavailable around Japan at electronics stores — is being fueled some surprising patrons.

More: continued here

China’s famed Shaolin temple kick starts online store

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of kung fu and the star of many martial arts films, has set up an online store to flog its wares.

More: continued here

Electronic health-record standards agreed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A major consumer group, insurers together with Google Inc and Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday they have agreed to standards intended to speed adoption of personal electronic health records.

More: continued here

Workplaces to see more spats over after-hours

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Should an employee get paid for reading a BlackBerry at the dinner table, sending an office e-mail or posting a job-related blog at home?

More: continued here

Ad-funded mobile firm to enter 3 European markets

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world’s first advertising-funded mobile telecoms operator, Blyk, will enter the German, Spanish and Belgian markets next year, the firm said on Wednesday.

More: continued here

T-Mobile launches wireless home phone service

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wireless provider T-Mobile USA on Wednesday unveiled a service aimed at customers who want to stop paying landline bills but are reluctant to entirely abandon their home phones and phone numbers.

More: continued here

Apple’s profit may be higher for new iPhone

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc’s latest iPhone will be more profitable than any other product in its popular iPod line of music players, despite a price tag that is half of the previous iPhone, according to a study.

More: continued here

Charter suspends ad program over privacy fears

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cable television operator Charter Communications is suspending a program that would offer advertisers ways to target pitches at people based on what they search for on the Internet.

More: continued here

Radio frequency identification in hospitals could pose risks

LONDON (Reuters) - Radio frequency identification chips (RFID) used to track and trace products could cause critical care medical devices such as pacemakers and ventilators to fail, Dutch researchers said on Tuesday.

More: continued here

Nokia plays catch up in Japan

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nokia Corp will add public wireless LAN access to its handsets in Japan in a bid to keep pace with smaller Japanese rivals that already provide such network connections.

More: continued here

Internet-based care aids blood pressure control

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Advice and medications delivered via the Internet, along with home blood pressure (BP) monitoring, lets people with high blood pressure get their condition under control, researchers have report in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

More: continued here

Adult Cashback shopping

With Microsoft’s live cashback shopping service generating all the buzz amongts online shoppers and bloggers, many other online and offline companies seem to be following suit offering deal after deal of cashback offers for new laptops to the latest workout equipments. Another cashback company is also raising some eyebrows with their cashback offers. Not only do they offer quite high cashback rates, they cater for a very select niche market. The new cashback service caters to the online adult community… yes that’s right, it’s an adult cashback website.

“Adult Cashback program Nookierewards.com recently opened it’s site to the public, offering high caskback offers on adult products like Adult DVDs, Adult Toys, Lingerie and Adult Entertainment sites. The cashback range from 10 to 35 percent.” sourced from viewlet4you.com

The company offers cashback percentages as high as 35% on adult entertainment websites and upto 10% to 15% on Adult products like DVDs, Toys and Lingerie. While the company is targeting a specific niche market it’s difficult to say whether it would be successful.  The key to success for any cashback or incentive website is it’s community, we’ll have to wait and see if the adult community embraces this service or is there just too much free content available for this idea to gain leverage in that industry.

Yahoo shares yo-yo with reports on Microsoft talks

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Shares of Yahoo Inc rose as much as 11 percent on Tuesday, reversing earlier declines, after contradictory reports on whether buyout talks with Microsoft Corp were heating up again.

More: continued here

Microsoft said slow to fix document glitches

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp was criticized on Tuesday for being slow to resolve problems in the technical documentation it was required to provide to rival software makers as part of its 2001 antitrust settlement.

More: continued here

Start-up sues Google over e-mail switching tool

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc was named on Monday in a trade secrets lawsuit alleging that the company’s business software unit copied a tiny start-up’s tool for moving customers off of Microsoft software onto Google’s.

More: continued here

Mobile phone battery dead? Try dancing

LONDON (Reuters) - What do you do if you are stuck in a field at a pop festival but there’s trouble ahead because your mobile phone’s battery is about to run out?

More: continued here

Matsushita seen sizing up OLED TV market

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s Matsushita Electric Industrial Co is finalizing plans to mass-produce 37-inch organic light-emitting diode TVs in three years, aiming to overtake rivals in the next-generation flat-TV race, the Sankei Shimbun daily reported on Tuesday.

More: continued here

European 3G subscriptions seen topping 100 million

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - European mobile carriers have crossed the 100 million mark with subscribers on their third-generation networks, market research firm Informa Telecoms and Media said.

More: continued here

Nokia to buy Symbian

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia will pay $410 million for the remaining shares in UK-based smartphone software maker Symbian and make its software royalty-free to boost phone sales and respond to new rivals such as Google .

More: continued here

Virgin Mobile offers $79.99 call plan; shares fall

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Virgin Mobile USA on Tuesday unveiled an unlimited calling plan for $79.99 a month that undercuts similar offerings from larger rivals like AT&T by $20.

More: continued here

AT&T to boost online content distribution

NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T said on Tuesday it wants to expand its business of delivering online media, moving into more direct competition with specialized content delivery companies like Akamai Technologies Inc and Limelight Networks Inc.

More: continued here

Google’s cell phone plans hit delays, Journal says

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Mobile phones under development by Google Inc and its partners face slipping delivery schedules, with the first phones not likely to arrive until late 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

More: continued here

$2 mln for my life? They were joking, says seller

CANBERRA (Reuters) - It seemed unbelievable when bids to buy a heartbroken man’s life in Australia reached A$2.2 million (US$2.1 million) — and it was, with the bemused seller aware his life was only worth a quarter of that amount.

More: continued here

McCain calls for $300 million prize for car battery

FRESNO, California (Reuters) - Republican John McCain said on Monday if elected he would propose awarding a $300 million prize to the auto company that develops a next-generation car battery that weans America off oil.

More: continued here

Nokia buys social networking site Plazes

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world’s top cellphone maker Nokia said on Monday it has agreed to buy social networking start-up Plazes as part of its major push into offering Internet services.

More: continued here

Hi-phone anyone? Fake mobiles threaten China brands

BEIJING (Reuters) - Steve Jobs may not lose sleep over knock-off iPhones, but legitimate Chinese brands such as Ningbo Bird are fretting about fakes in the cut-throat world of low-end handset makers.