AP - Keith Maydak's jail cells are roomier than most. Must be all that cyberspace. State and federal prisons don't let inmates use Internet computers behind bars — and the Allegheny County Jail doesn't either. Yet Maydak has answered a reporter's e-mails from the Pittsburgh jail, and later an Ohio lockup, while he awaits sentencing for violating probation on a 900-number phone scam that cost AT&T $550,000 dollars.

AP - Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. is latching onto the 'podcasting' phenomenon, launching a show later this month that will feature a daily selection of the increasingly popular do-it-yourself audio programs.

AP - Microsoft Corp.'s next-generation Xbox gaming console will be more of a digital entertainment hub than its predecessor, making it even more of a PC hybrid than ever, Bill Gates told a meeting of business journalists on Monday.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Data storage equipment maker EMC Corp. EMC.N and rival Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N said on Monday that they agreed to settle a long-running patent dispute.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Europe's biggest consumer electronics group, Philips PHG.AS, said on Thursday it stood to make a book gain of up to 750 million euros ($965 million) from the sale of its stake in digital mapping firm NAVTEQ NVT.N.

AP - It's weird how things can come back to bite you. Microsoft Corp. killed off the competition for office software suites and became a de facto monopoly in the area, with what result? The competition is back and, this time, it's free!

LONDON (Reuters) - Four Britons were jailed on Friday for being part of a global gang described as 'Robin Hoods' who stole expensive software from rich companies and gave it away for free over the Internet.

Reuters - Internet telephone company Vonage Holdings Corp. on Monday said it had reached 650,000 lines and had seen no pressure so far from cable companies launching their own telephone services.

AP - Two Sandia National Laboratories engineers working on a way to make natural gas drilling equipment better say it also can help make lighter weight airplanes, better electric cars and earthquake monitoring systems.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Everyone remembers watching Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle face himself in a mirror and demand, 'You talkin' to me?'

AP - A state judge ordered the shutdown on Wednesday of what Massachusetts authorities called one of the world's largest spam rings, generating millions of unsolicited e-mails monthly.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O unveiled the Xbox 360 on Thursday, taking aim at Sony Corp. 6758.T in the video game console market with a machine sporting high-definition graphics and features that make it an entertainment hub for the living room.

Investor's Business Daily - Experts from IBM and a big Pennsylvania hospital teamed up in late April to develop a new type of health care system.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nintendo Co. 7974.OS will launch its new video game console sometime next year, missing the key 2005 holiday shopping season and putting it a step behind Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O in the battle for the next-generation game machine, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on Saturday.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nintendo Co. said on Monday it planned to launch its new videogame console sometime next year, missing the key 2005 holiday shopping season and putting it a step behind Microsoft Corp. in the race to market a next-generation game machine.

TOKYO (Reuters) - The presidents of Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Toshiba Corp. will meet as early as this week to try and hammer out an agreement on a unified format for next-generation DVD technology, a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.

AP - The New York Times Co.'s decision to charge for online access to Op-Ed and news columnists should not be seen as a first step toward placing even more articles behind a subscription wall, a Times executive said Tuesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Online auctioneer eBay Inc. EBAY.O has struck a deal with Time Warner Cable to let cable customers make Internet bids through their televisions.

AP - At his annual shindig for CEOs, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates told executives that businesses need to do more to help their employees sort through an ever-growing flood of information that threatens to become a drain on productivity.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Microsoft now has only weeks left until the European Commission decides whether to take steps toward fining it up to $5 million a day, a Commission spokesman said on Friday.

Reuters - Cisco Systems and Palestinian telecommunications firm PalTel said on Saturday that the U.S. internet networking company will help build telecoms infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza.

LONDON (Reuters) - News and information provider Reuters Group Plc RTR.L launched a service on Monday that allows banks and their customers to trade currencies over their Reuters desktops.

AP - The maker of the first popular robotic vacuum cleaner is now developing a new robot to take on the time-tested mop and bucket.

AP - About 400,000 credit-card holders in Georgia will be the first in the country to use a new technology that allows them to pay for items by waving their card near a terminal instead of swiping it through a machine.

AP - Friendster Inc., one of the biggest startups in the 'social networking' niche, appointed a new chief executive Wednesday, hoping to make the company profitable and revive its status as a trendsetting Internet destination.

AP - Intel Corp. unveiled its first mainstream home PC microprocessor with two computing engines on a single chip Thursday and vowed to sell millions of them by the end of the year.

TechWeb - The Mozilla Foundation plans to release in alpha early next week the next upgrade of the Firefox browser.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Will technological advances, fuel costs and environmental concerns bring back commercial sailing for cargo ships?

AP - Eighteen people have been arrested in one of Israel's largest industrial espionage schemes, police said Sunday, charging that business executives and private investigators used sophisticated software to infiltrate competitors' computers.

AP - Cingular Wireless is adding Good Technologies Inc.'s mobile e-mail service to its product lineup for business customers and offering a sizable discount, a big boost for Good as it wrestles for market share with the dominant BlackBerry service.