Reuters - Mobile phone calls distract drivers far more than even the chattiest passenger, causing drivers to follow too closely and miss exits, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

AP - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest chip contractor, lowered its fourth quarter sales forecast by 8.6 percent, as the global economic slowdown continued to cut demand for wafers.

Reuters - MySpace users with mobile phones are about to find out if they can walk and watch TV at the same time.

Reuters - Nokia (NOK1V.HE) said on Thursday it would receive an up-front payment and royalties from Blackberry-maker Research In Motion for use of its wireless technology patents.

PC World - Cyber Monday, the day after the Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S., lived up to its reputation for big online retail sales, triggering disproportionately high spending during this so far modest holiday shopping season.

PC World - Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer again voiced support for purchasing Yahoo or its search business, hinting in a published report that a deal between the two companies may be reached before the end of the year.

Reuters - Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii has emerged as one of the few hot products this holiday season, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc will offer 'tens of thousands' of the hard-to-get video game consoles on its website starting on Monday.

CNET - IEEE, the world's largest professional organization for the advancement of technology, is announcing a collaboration Monday with Via Licensing, a company that administers licensing programs for intellectual property owners, to foster the development of patent pools based on IEEE standards.

AP - The worsening economy appears to be helping computer crooks with one of their toughest tasks: tricking people into opening their homes and bank accounts and becoming 'mules' for laundering money or stolen goods.

AP - Hynix Semiconductor Inc.'s creditor banks have reached a provisional agreement to pump cash into the money-losing memory chip maker, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

CNET - Truphone, which has an App Store application that enables iPhone and iPod Touch users to make cheap international phone calls via a Wi-Fi connection, now can be used by iPhone users to make cheap calls from anywhere.

CNET - While you may think that the economic news is totally bleak, the video game industry seems like it may well be one very bright exception to the worldwide gloom.

CNET - With so many czars running around trying to solve the nation's problems in tech, auto and drugs, perhaps Sony should consider hiring a common-sense czar.

AP - Egypt's Orascom Telecom will launch 3G mobile telephone service in North Korea on Monday, the company said, taking to the next step an ambitious multimillion dollar project in the communist nation.

CNET - Delta Air Lines is expected to begin offering Wi-Fi service to its passengers on Tuesday, according to a report in The Washington Post.

Reuters - Cable operator Virgin Media became the first Internet provider to roll out a mass-market super-fast broadband service in Britain on Monday, launching a 50 megabits per second offering.

Macworld.com - Let’s say for a moment you’re on your way to a holiday party or similar social get-together, and you’ve been tasked with bringing the wine to the evening’s festivities. Trouble is, you wouldn’t know a bottle of the good stuff from an unremarkable glass of plonk. What ever are you to do?

AFP - South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second largest memory chipmaker, said Thursday it would cut production by up to 30 percent from late this month due to weak demand and falling prices.

CNET - In some great news from Mac Mojo, the Office for Mac team blog, it looks like Windows Live Messenger for Mac will receive a major update sometime early next year. The biggest new feature update will be AV support for the personal client, which means users will be able to participate in cross-platform audio and video chat using the personal version of Microsoft Messenger for Mac.

CNET - A Mac fan with way too much time on his hands may have discovered evidence of new iMacs and Mac Minis coming soon.

Reuters - A Chinese woman who became an online sensation after posting a homemade pornographic film of herself on the internet has been detained in Shanghai, according to state media.

PC World - Shanghai police have detained a woman for allegedly filming herself having sex and then posting the video on the Internet, where it became a sensation among Chinese Internet users.

Reuters - Foreign telecom firms who win third-generation radio waves in an auction due next month will also be kept in the queue for second-generation spectrum, a senior government official said on Tuesday.

CNET - Social network Facebook has disabled widgets from music-sharing site Project Playlist at the behest of the music industry, several days after rival site MySpace did the same. The reason? The user-uploaded music on Project Playlist that doesn't have industry sanction.

CNET - Here I am using my two unread newspapers as a thick place mat for my Christmas Eve Chinese lunch, and what should cross my desk: a new Pew study showing that the Internet has surpassed newspapers as Americans' main source for national and international news. How appropriate. (Albeit a little sad for this ol' school journalist who still romanticizes about the days when you could truly stop the presses.)

Reuters - Despite the sluggish global economy, video game sales remained recession-proof in 2008 as game sequels were snapped up by fans and music games struck the right note.

CNET - A Michigan-based networking company on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Google, Microsoft, and Apple alleging that all three tech giants violated a patent it owns on the use of document-preview icons--or thumbnails--in operating systems.

CNET - The first beta of Microsoft's next operating system has apparently been spotted in the wild.

Macworld.com - It’s New Year’s Eve. The clock is about to strike midnight, the big ball in Times Square is perilously close to touching down, and the opening strains of Auld Lang Syne are about to fill the air. And you’ve got no way to properly welcome in the new year.

Reuters - Are photographs of a mother breast-feeding her child indecent? The social networking site Facebook has sparked a massive online debate -- and protests -- and after removing photos that expose too much of a mother's breast.

CNET - Online holiday spending declined 3 percent compared with last year's online shopping season, the first negative growth rate in the past eight years, according to a ComScore report released Tuesday.