Most Emailed Technology News

LOS ANGELES - A Missouri woman was indicted Thursday for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide.

Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis and skis when time allows. But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he presses 200 pounds — that is, until he steps into an "exoskeleton" of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his strength and endurance as many as 20 times.

BOSTON - The One Laptop Per Child project is about to find out whether Microsoft Corp., a rival the nonprofit group once derided, is the solution to its problems in spreading inexpensive portable computers to schoolchildren.

PARIS - French wireless operator Orange said Friday it has signed a deal with Apple Inc. to sell its iPhone in the Middle East, Africa and several European countries.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. sales of video game hardware and software rose 47 percent from a year earlier, as Take-Two Interactive Software Inc's "Grand Theft Auto 4" and Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii console stole the show.

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Maps showing noise levels in towns across England were published on Friday in an attempt to reduce the disruption caused by factories, planes, trains and cars, the British government said.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Two weeks after Microsoft Corp abandoned its pursuit of Yahoo Inc, a proxy fight launched by activist investor Carl Icahn has put Microsoft in the driver's seat.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Embattled Yahoo Inc has struck an advertising partnership deal with WPP Group that will let WPP buy ads on Yahoo's online ad exchange, the companies said late on Thursday.

NEW YORK - Comcast Corp.'s interference with Internet traffic has prompted a federal investigation and is at the center of calls for "Net Neutrality" laws, but another U.S. cable company appears to be doing the same thing without drawing scrutiny.

San Francisco - In the four months since InfoWorld asked businesses and individuals to sign a petition at SaveXP.com asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP for sale beyond the planned June 30 general end-of-sales date, more than 200,000 have signed up to add their voices. As of May 15, the count was 200,805 signatures, excluding duplicates and fake signups.

A major problem has been revealed in Debian Linux and derivative packages, such as Ubuntu. Debian revealed the other day that a fix they made back in September 2006 had the unintended consequence of crippling the strength of their OpenSSL distribution.

InformationWeek - Local exterminators say the insects get into electrical outlets and boxes and are known to short out computer systems.

Timeline of events in the Megan Meier Internet suicide case:

With all the time spent on the road, most drivers consider their cars to be their second homes. Reaching their primary home...

WASHINGTON - NASA has spent decades perfecting a system to transform urine into water that can be used in space for drinking, food preparation and washing. Agency officials say the water from the system will be cleaner than U.S. tap water.

NEW YORK - CBS Corp. is acquiring a big online reach with its acquisition of CNet Networks Inc. but also a company that's faced heavy criticism from investors. Those concerns as well as the hefty $1.8 billion price tag helped send CBS's shares down after the deal was announced Thursday.

Verizon Wireless' decision to join Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile as members of a Linux-based mobile initiative appears to have dealt a setback to Google's ambitions for its Android mobile platform. A Verizon spokesperson told the Chicago Tribune that the company joined the rival LiMo Foundation because "of LiMo's approach to providing a truly open OS that isn't simply an extension of a for-profit company's business model."

InformationWeek - The conversion to Linux followed the acquisition of the Euronext exchange in 2007, and the open source operating system is now powering the NYSE's mission-critical trading systems.

San Francisco - VersionOne launched an agile project management platform for small teams of developers this week and is sprucing up its enterprise-level product next week.

InformationWeek - A district judge may order a new trial in a music file-sharing suit that won record companies $222,000 for copyright infringement.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Verizon Business, a unit of No. 2 U.S. telephone service provider Verizon Communications Inc , said on Wednesday it has won a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security worth around $678.5 million over 10 years.

Samsung Electronics will unveil this weekend the first prototype of a new LCD (liquid crystal display) technology that won't...

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang spent months fending off Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited takeover bid. Now he may only have a few weeks to persuade the software maker to revive its last offer of $47.5 billion, or risk being fired in a shareholder mutiny led by activist investor Carl Icahn.

Internet users in China have begun expressing solidarity with the victims of Monday's earthquake via their instant messaging...

InformationWeek - The Max Planck Institute released a study showing that Comcast has engaged in routine blocking or throttling of BitTorrent files at all hours of the day.