EBay will open a tool used by 700,000 of its merchants to external developers, the next step in an ongoing effort to promote the creation of applications for its online marketplace.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn will proceed with his plan to replace Yahoo's entire board in an effort to force the company to reopen merger negotiations with Microsoft, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The One Laptop Per Child Project appointed a new president and chief operating officer on Friday to run daily operations at the nonprofit effort, sending a signal that it could be recovering from the loss of top personnel over the past few months.

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday said it plans to lay off 10 percent of its work force by the third quarter of 2008 in an effort to cut costs.

Jeff Raikes, the president of Microsoft's Business Division, plans to retire in September, the company said on Thursday.

Intel's resignation from the One Laptop Per Child Project's board of directors will have "no impact" on the group's operations, since the chip maker contributed little to the project since joining last year, OLPC President Walter Bender said in an interview.

The One Laptop Per Child project suffered a blow this week, with Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepsen quitting the nonprofit to start a for-profit company to commercialize technology she invented with OLPC.

New rules will go into effect on Jan. 1 that prohibit air passengers in the U.S. from carrying spare lithium batteries in their checked baggage.

Google Inc. will make the data it stores about end users anonymous in its server logs after 18 months, part of an effort to deflate concerns about privacy raised last month by a European Union working group.

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.

Microsoft Corp. entered into a broad patent licensing agreement with South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. aimed at speeding product development efforts for both companies, they said Thursday.

IBM Corp. announced plans on Thursday to build smaller, more efficient chips by stacking a processor on top of its memory or power components, then drilling holes through the chips to connect them.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Google Inc. Tuesday jointly unveiled a new online mapping initiative aimed at educating users about genocide.

The effort to control what's called e-waste could lead to a national "e-fee," a recycling charge that would be paid just like a sales tax on laptop PCs, computer monitors, televisions and some other electronic devices.

Still reeling from the effects of a corporate reorganization that included heavy layoffs, Intel Corp. reported a profit of US$1.5 billion for the fourth quarter, down 39 percent compared to that period last year.

Dell Inc. added Blu-ray disc capability to its notebook PC line on Monday, making an effort to compete with Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. in the growing market for mobile high-definition video platforms.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) began selling its top chip for desktop PCs made with a 65-nanometer design on Tuesday, continuing its efforts to keep up with Intel Corp. as the industry migrates from 90-nm design to a faster, more efficient generation of processors.

Computer maker Dell Inc.'s solution to the data center energy crisis is to market more energy-efficient versions of its PowerEdge line of servers.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) launched a motherboard with four cores on Thursday, targeting gaming enthusiasts in an effort to keep pace with the release of quad-core chips by rival Intel Corp.

In continuing efforts to expand its online advertising business, Google Inc. will distribute ad-supported video content from Viacom International Inc.'s MTV Networks to Web sites in its extensive advertising network.