Cell phones in Japan could soon provide a vital warning seconds ahead of a major earthquake.

Dell Inc. will officially launch its first three consumer PCs running the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux OS on Thursday, two desktops and an Inspiron E1505n notebook PC.

Under a licensing agreement in its final stages, consumers may get the right to make several legal copies of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies they've purchased, a concession by the movie industry that may quell criticism that DRM (digital rights management) technologies are too restrictive.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has tried and failed to develop spectrum auctions that allow startup companies to get into the mobile service provider industry but now Google thinks it has a better idea.

SAP AG confirmed Tuesday that Aliza Peleg, managing director of SAP Labs U.S., will leave the business applications company by the end of next month. Her departure follows that of Shai Agassi, president of SAP's product and technology group, who resigned from SAP on April 1.

A group of chip makers led by IBM Corp. has agreed to further their collaboration by jointly developing 32-nanometer semiconductor production technology, a sign the alliance will continue to move forward.

A signature update to Symantec Corp.'s antivirus software crippled thousands of Chinese PCs Friday when the security software mistook two critical Windows .dll files for malware.

Blizzard on Tuesday announced the release of World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.0, a 256 MB update that features an incredible laundry list of game tweaks, upgrades, and bug fixes.

Microsoft Corp. plans to acquire aQuantive Inc., a digital marketing services agency, for around US$6 billion in order to grow its Internet advertising business, it was announced Friday.

Dell Inc. is planning to sell its first convertible tablet PC later this year. The PC maker revealed that it is working on the machine and showed a prototype of it on a company blog.

Siemens AG Sunday named Merck & Co. Inc.'s Peter Löscher as its new president and CEO in an effort to break with recent scandals that have plagued the company.

After several years of development, Fujitsu Ltd. has improved its electronic paper technology to the point where it has begun exploring its commercial use in displays.

Strong sales of digital consumer electronic gadgets helped Sony Corp. achieve record sales and higher net profit in the financial year just-ended but shipments of PlayStation 3 consoles missed their target, the company said Wednesday.

Google Inc. will make a significant push toward integrating results from a variety of its search engines in an attempt to deliver as relevant and comprehensive a result set as possible to search queries.

Oracle Corp. plans to pay US$495 million to buy Agile Software Corp., a maker of product lifecycle management software.

Mozilla Corp. developers are experimenting with a service that lets users store online content on a remote server and access that information on cell phones.

Microsoft Corp. reportedly wants open-source software users to pay royalties on 235 alleged patent violations.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is putting the finishing touches on its DDR3 memory chips ahead of their commercial release later this year.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will make a quad-core chip for desktop PCs, replacing its venerable Athlon processor with the new "Phenom" design in an attempt to compete better with Intel Corp.

The retraction of features, divulged on general manager of virtualization strategy Mike Neil's blog, comes on the heels of recently announced delays for the first public beta of the hypervisor, code-named Viridian.