As the holiday vacation arrives, it's good to remember that there once was a time when people didn't get e-mail at all hours of the day or night. Now, Volkswagen has agreed to give German workers a taste of that world.

Following a union agreement, the largest European carmaker will limit work-related e-mails on the BlackBerry smartphones of about 1,200 workers to a half-hour before and a half-hour after the workday for its staff. Mobile devices will still be available for calls by those workers, at any time.

No Longer 'Switch Off'

According to news reports, the agreement only relates to those workers covered by collective bargaining, thus apparently leaving executives to the same always-on schedule. The Trades Union Congress has issued a statement cautioning that Volkswagen's solution may not work in other organizations.

Another German company, Deutsche Telekom, created a Smart Device Policy in 2010 that allows workers to have a communication-free time when they're not at work. At the time, the company said that mobile communication devices have advantages, but they also create conditions where employees can no longer "switch off" their worktime.

Communication overload is also being addressed by other European companies. For example, international IT services company Atos Origin proclaimed an ambition in February to become a "zero e-mail company" within three years. CEO and Chairman Thierry Breton said in a statement that "we are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and encroaching into our personal lives."

'Unsustainable for Business'

Thierry said the volume of work-related e-mail was "unsustainable for business," with managers spending five to 20 hours weekly on e-mails, using 25 percent of their time searching for information, and finding that only about 15 percent of the e-mails received in a day were useful.

He added that his company was "taking action...

As if Research In Motion needed another lump of coal in its Christmas stocking, the BlackBerry maker has received more bad news -- this time on the legal front. RIM may have to spend more money trying to ward off yet another trademark dispute.

Indeed, even as RIM is reeling from the forced name change of its next-generation operating system from BBX to BlackBerry 10, a Canadian company has taken issue with the name of its long-popular instant-messaging platform.

BlackBerry Messenger has been a RIM favorite, allowing BlackBerry users to send each other text messages and pictures through the RIM network and get delivery and read confirmation. Many users just call the service BBM for short, but BBM Canada is looking to Canadian federal court for a remedy.

BBM Canada Willing to Deal

According to a Reuters report, BBM Canada, a company somewhat like Nielsen in that it measures radio and television audiences, plans to argue its case against RIM in February. Jim MacLeod, BBM's CEO, told Reuters he wants RIM to stop advertising the BBM name. But MacLeod also suggested he would be willing to change BBM Canada name -- for a price.

"We have to be practical, they operate worldwide, we don't. But we're not prepared to just walk from our name," MacLeod told Reuters. "I'm sure to a really big company this looks like relatively small numbers, but to us it's a big deal. It's a trademark they don't even own, it's ours."

The timing is noteworthy. BlackBerry has been offering BBM for many years, but recently made a big splash in the RIM world when it rolled out BBM Music. BBM Music is a cloud-based music service for BlackBerry users. RIM was not immediately available for comment.

Should RIM Go Android?

Some are calling for RIM to sell itself, with Microsoft, Nokia and...

A laptop powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, going for weeks without refueling. That vision of the future is described in a pair of patent applications filed by Apple and made public Thursday.

One of the patent applications, entitled Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device, describes a fuel cell system with a fuel cell stack that generates electricity, as well as a system controller and a bidirectional communication link between the controller and the device.

'Days or Even Weeks'

The other application, Fuel Cell System Coupled to a Portable Computing Device, describes a fuel cell system that "is capable of both providing power to and receiving power from a rechargeable battery in a portable computing device." The application notes that this would eliminate "the need for a bulky and heavy battery within the fuel cell system," thus significantly reducing the size, weight, and cost of the fuel cell.

Fuel cells, such as hydrogen fuel cells, can pack a lot of electricity-generating power into a small package. As one of the applications noted, "Fuel cells and associated fuels can potentially achieve high volumetric and gravimetric energy densities," which could potentially mean that portable devices could operate for "days or even weeks without refueling." Similarly, the other application's description of linking the fuel cell to the rechargeable battery helps to keep size and weight down, and time between refueling up.

Apple's applications discuss using sodium borohydride powder mixed with water as a fuel, and the hydrogen would be obtained from the sodium borohydride. The hydrogen then mixes with oxygen via a membrane, producing electricity and water vapor.

'Future Proofing'

The integration of the fuel cell system into the device would assumedly be one of the key features for which patent protection is sought. Another patent application by Apple, published in October, described a design for fuel...

Once upon a time, Santa could visit homes on Christmas Eve without being seen or heard. But Santa is a celebrity with a very loyal fan club, and these days his every move is newsworthy.

So, as it has done every year for the past 55 years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, takes a bit of effort away from those other things it does, like, for instance, watching for incoming missiles, in order to keep tabs on the old man's flight across the continent.

Jet Escorts

Of course, this being the second decade of the 21st century, these days the effort is documented and continually updated on the NoradSanta.org site, as well as on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Google maps for mobile. Users enter @noradsanta into the various search engines to get started. NORAD also offers a Santa mobile app for counting down the days until his takeoff, as well as an Elf Toss game in case you need some virtual exercise.

On midnight ET on Christmas Eve, the Web site will carry a feed of Santa doing his pre-flight prep. Starting at 6 a.m. ET, a live phone operator will give out the old guy's whereabouts via a toll-free number, (877) Hi-NORAD, that's (877) 446-6723, or via e-mail at noradtrackssanta@gmail.com.

In 2010, the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center in Colorado Springs handled more than 80,000 calls. There will also be various Santa cams that will stream video as the gifting tour begins.

The Canadian NORAD Region has selected four CF-18 fighter pilots who will act as escorts to the bearded one as he travels across Canadian airspace. No word yet on whether he will be escorted by jets over the U.S. Of course, his progress will also be reported live on Christmas Eve by a number of local television weathercasters.

Several...

Google will pay about three times as much as it once did to be the default search engine on Mozilla's Firefox browser. Although Google and Mozilla are keeping the word mum, news reports are leaking details of the deal.

"Under the multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world," said Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla. What Kovacs did not say -- and AllThingsD blogger Kara Swizer is saying -- is this: The Google deal is valued at just shy of $1 billion.

AllThingsD reports that Google will pay just under $300 million a year for the strategic positioning on Firefox. Microsoft was vying for the placement for its Bing decision engine on Firefox. Microsoft also has a deal in place with Facebook.

What About Bing?

"Mozilla was able to involve Microsoft in the discussion and so created some competition for its Firefox 'default' search business. While Google's market share would probably not have been significantly affected by a switch to Bing, it was enough of a threat to generate this deal," said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence.

Microsoft had been cozying up to Mozilla in recent months. In October, Mozilla and Bing rolled out Firefox for Bing, a customized version of Firefox that sets Bing as the default search engine in the search box and AwesomeBar and makes Bing.com the default home page. But Bing doesn't have a lock down on the custom Firefox experience. Mozilla is also working with United Internet, Twitter, Yahoo and Yandex on that front.

But Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice president of search, cemented the relationship between the browser rivals, at least in the media. "Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great...

People will spend less coin on digital cameras this holiday season as they increasingly rely on smartphone cameras to capture both spontaneous moments and vacation shots, a survey from the research firm NPD Group suggests.

While the results should not surprise, given the higher quality cameras increasingly built into popular phones -- the iPhone 4S packs an 8-megapixel model, up from 5 on the iPhone 4 -- the survey offers a quantified look at how much the smartphone market is eating into the low-end camera market.

Who Needs A Camcorder?

The percentage of photos taken with a smartphone by a sample group answering online questions rose from 17 last year to 27, while the share of photos taken by camera dropped from 52 percent to 44 percent.

In separate findings, NPD's Retail Tracking Service found that so-called "point-and-shoot" camera sales fell 17 percent in units and 18 percent in dollars for the first 11 months of 2011. The drop in pocket camcorder sales was slightly lower, 13 percent in units, but steeper in dollars, 27 percent, while flash camcorders declined 8 percent in units and 10 percent in dollars.

Just over 30 percent of respondents said they now use phones for taking photos while on vacation, and just over 50 percent said they use phones for casual photos. The numbers were similar for video, with a higher number, about 55 percent, using their handy smartphones to capture spontaneous moments for posterity (or YouTube).

"Thanks to mobile phones, more pictures are being taken than ever before," said Liz Cutting, executive director and senior imaging analyst at NPD, in releasing the results. "Consumers who use their mobile phones to take pictures and video were more likely to do so instead of their camera when capturing spontaneous moments, but for important events, single purpose cameras or camcorders...

Seeking to expand mobile broadband deployments throughout the United States, the FCC has given AT&T the green light to begin using the 700MHz spectrum licenses the carrier purchased from Qualcomm for $1.925 billion in December 2010.

AT&T and Qualcomm expect to close their transaction shortly, and with AT&T bent on deploying this spectrum as soon as compatible handsets and network equipment are developed. AT&T's new spectrum blocks collectively cover more than 300 million people nationwide, including 70 million U.S. residents living in five major metropolitan areas: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

To promote competition, consumer advocacy groups had asked the Federal Communications Commission to include a provision that would require any AT&T device operating on paired spectrum in the lower 700 MHz band to also operate on all paired spectrum in that part of the band. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has agreed to expeditiously conduct a separate interoperability proceeding next year.

"As spectrum is the lifeblood of the U.S. wireless industry, we are pleased that the FCC did not reduce the spectrum screen," said AT&T Senior Vice President Bob Quinn. "However, we continue to believe any changes to the process by which it is allocated should be subject to open and transparent public discussion."

Dissenting Opinion

In its ruling on AT&T's spectrum acquisition, the FCC said competitive concerns can be mitigated by ensuring that AT&T's new 700MHz spectrum use does not impede the operations of competitors using neighboring spectrum. AT&T cannot use its new spectrum in ways that deprive other providers from attaining any of the potential benefits accruing from the FCC's roaming rules.

Still, Commissioner Michael Copps expressed concern that the deal's approval means that AT&T and Verizon Wireless will collectively control 73 percent of the spectrum below 1 gigahertz available for broadband wireless services....

As fans of Google's Android mobile software well know, each new version is named after a sugary treat, such as Gingerbread or Honeycomb. Android is about to get even sweeter with Ice Cream Sandwich -- a smooth, feature-rich operating system that will run first on the delectable Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

The combination of Google's software and Samsung's hardware makes the Galaxy Nexus one of the best candidates to compete with Apple's latest iPhone, though its price is steep. It [became available] in the U.S. for $300 with a two-year Verizon Wireless contract.

Like the previous phone in the Nexus line, the Nexus S, the Galaxy Nexus was jointly developed by Google Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. It features a slim frame with a large, curved glass screen that's comfortable for chatting with friends and excellent for watching videos. There are 32 gigabytes of built-in storage space on the Verizon version of the phone, but no external slot for a microSD memory card.

The screen, a pocket-busting 4.65 inches at the diagonal, makes the iPhone's 3.5-inches look diminutive. And despite the size, the Galaxy Nexus manages to weigh just 4.8 ounces, slightly less than Apple's offering.

On it, videos and Web pages looked crisp and bright, with rich colors. I started watching a video during testing -- an HD copy of "The Help" that I rented from Google's Android Market -- and had to force myself to break away to test other features of the device.

With the latest version of Android under the hood, the Galaxy Nexus is packed with new and improved features. Many of them are great; others are simply great in theory.

Overall, the software looks fresher and less cluttered. The virtual "buttons" that usually sit at the bottom of the screen have been redesigned. There's still a "home" and a "back"...

When iPods hit the scene 10 years ago, the small, white ear buds that came with the devices became the symbol for listening to music on the go.

Today, that's changing.

More and more people are expressing themselves with pricey headphones, with some fashion-forward music lovers rocking updated versions of the oversized headsets popular in earlier eras.

Bose has been known for its larger headphones in recent years, and now celebrities have taken note and aided in the resurgence of the ear amplifiers. In 2008, Monster launched Beats by Dre with Dr. Dre, and it is the most recognizable of celebrity-branded headphones. Monster later released headphones with Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Diddy, Daft Punk, Nick Cannon and LeBron James.

This year, 50 Cent, Quincy Jones and Ludacris released their own line of headphones.

Dre, the Grammy-winning rap legend who has produced hits for Eminem, 2Pac, 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige, says he is offended when he sees people using generic headphones.

"It's almost like a knife in the heart," he said while promoting the headphones last year. "We're in the studio, at least me, for years at a time trying to work on music, tweaking it, trying to get the sound right, and for people to walk around and listen to the music on those cheap white headphones is ridiculous."

But some people may have a reason for not buying Beats by Dre. The cheapest set costs $100, and the most expensive pair is $500. 50 Cent's Sync by 50 ranges from $130 to $400, and the lowest price for Soul by Ludacris is $70; the highest is $300. (Partial sales from 50 Cent and Cannon's headphones go to charity.)

"You go out and spend three, four hundred dollars on an iPod, and then you go put your earphones in and your iPod sounds like crap," said...

If you're still searching for low-cost gifts but dread the last-minute crowds in the stores, consider buying tickets online.

Using sites like reseller StubHub, you can take a kid to see the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks play for as little as $12 a ticket. Or surprise someone heading to New York for a vacation with discounted theater tickets from sites like TheaterMania.com or BroadwayBox.com.

And you don't have to wait for shipping. You can print tickets and wrap them up in time to get them under the tree.

StubHub might seem like an unusual place to look for a discount. The ticket reseller is often cited as a measure of how much fans are willing to pay for popular events like the World Series or the hottest concert in town. For the sold-out Phish concert on New Year's Eve at Madison Square Garden in New York, for example, seats near the stage on the floor are being offered for thousands of dollars.

But StubHub president Chris Tsakalakis said discounted prices are more common. "In 90 percent of the cases, the price goes down," he said. "It reflects the market, and it reflects the economy." Since 2007, he said, the average price of a ticket sold on StubHub is 22 percent lower than face value.

Regular season sports tickets offer the best opportunity for discounts, as season-ticket holders try to unload games they plan to skip. If you can avoid the weekends and look for a mid-week game, it is even easier to find lower prices.

Big rivalries or high-stakes games like Saturday's NFL faceoff between the New York Giants and New York Jets aren't the best place to look for discounts. Tickets for that game were listed at $45 a week ago, but with both teams' playoff hopes on the line after losses last weekend, the...

The economy is ending 2011 on a roll. The job market is healthier. Americans are spending lustily on holiday gifts. A long-awaited turnaround for the depressed housing industry may be under way. Gas is cheaper. Factories are busier. Stocks are higher.

Not bad for an economy faced with a debt crisis in Europe and, as recently as last summer, scattered predictions of a second recession at home. Instead, the economy has grown faster each quarter this year, and the last three months should be the best.

"Things are looking up," says Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

When The Associated Press surveyed 43 economists in August, they pegged the likelihood of another recession at roughly one in four. The Dow Jones industrial average was lurching up or down by 400 points or more some days.

There was plenty of reason for gloom. A political standoff over the federal borrowing limit brought the United States to the brink of default and cost the nation its top-drawer credit rating.

Most analysts now rule out another recession. They think the economy will grow at an annual rate of more than 3 percent from October through December, the fastest pace since a 3.8 percent performance in the spring of last year.

Many economists still worry that the year-end surge isn't sustainable, in part because the average worker's pay is barely rising. And Europe may already be sliding into a recession that will infect the United States.

The outlook could darken further if Congress can't break the impasse blocking an extension of a Social Security tax cut for 160 million Americans and emergency unemployment benefits.

Yet for now, the economy is on an upswing that few had predicted:

- JOBS: The number of people applying for unemployment benefits came in at 366,000 last week, down from a peak of...

Emily Vanek is not buying up a bunch of LeapPad Explorers herself, but she may be at least partly to blame for some stores selling out of the $99 children's tablet this holiday season.

"The LeapPad is incredible," the Denver mother of three boys wrote to the 6,000 readers of her ColoradoMoms.com blog. "Not only do kids get to have a toy resembling their parents' tablet, it's durable and my favorite part?! It's not just mindless games they are playing."

These days, mommy bloggers don't just gab about spilled milk and poopy diapers. In fact, they've become so influential in the $22 billion toy market that toy makers go to great lengths to get their seal of approval. Their thumbs-up is particularly important during the holiday shopping season when toy makers hope to create the next hit toy.

It's a major shift for toy companies, which have always given out samples of new dolls, games and other playthings to drive sales. Five years ago, they handed out 98 percent of those products to TV stations, newspapers and magazines. But today, as much as 70 percent go to bloggers.

Mattel Inc., the world's largest toy company, has a database of about 400 mommy bloggers and their location, interests and the children's ages. Canadian toy maker Spin Master, which makes the trading card game Redakai, hired a dedicated staffer whose only job is to reach out to mommy bloggers. And small toy maker Cepia Inc., which makes robotic Zhu Zhu pets, gets feedback from mommy bloggers before its toys hit shelves.

It's hard for toy makers to ignore the monstrous number of mommy bloggers. Nationwide, there are about 4 million or so mommy bloggers who influence millions of other parents around the world.

"Mommy bloggers started because they wanted to share things about a new baby, but the...

"What part of 'please turn your cellphone off' do you feel does not apply to you?" Peter Juhren asked a fellow passenger as their New York-bound Delta Air Lines flight taxied for takeoff Dec. 7 at Tampa's airport.

Juhren, a frequent business traveler from Salem, Ore., says the woman on the phone gave "a disgruntled look" but stopped talking and turned it off -- after three times ignoring a flight attendant's request to do so.

Passengers have blamed airlines and the government for safety problems for decades, but now they might have to share some blame.

A USA TODAY investigation shows that passengers are frequently disregarding flight attendants' instructions to turn off portable electronic devices during takeoff and landing -- two critical flight phases when a mistake by a pilot could lead to an accident.

Many passengers question the rationale behind shutting off electronic devices in-flight, but the investigation's review of thousands of pages of technical documents shows the gadgets emit radio signals that can interfere with cockpit instruments and electronic equipment and systems on an aircraft.

"Any device with a battery -- including cellphones, e-readers, laptops, PDAs (personal digital assistants) and Game Boys -- has some level of emission that has the potential to interfere with cockpit instruments or navigational equipment," says Boeing engineer Dave Carson.

Technical committees have evaluated many portable electronic devices and found the margin of safety is not sufficient to allow passengers to use them during takeoff and landing, says Carson, co-chairman of an RTCA committee that studied portable electronic devices on aircraft.

RTCA is a non-profit corporation that develops communications and navigation recommendations for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Carson says most devices used "in aggregate or independently" by passengers would not meet the RTCA's DO-160 standard, which sets emission standards for airborne equipment.

Electronics experts say they do not have such electromagnetic interference...

Companies wanting to move from a public to a private cloud have the option of a new service. This week, Mountain View, Calif.-based Nimbula announced its Cloud Migration Service.

Nimbula said its Migration Service is designed for those companies that start out in a public cloud infrastructure, such as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), because they want to avoid initial capital investment or they need to address rapid growth, or both. After the initial growth phase, and once they have a handle on the workload required, an internal cloud is often planned in order to control expenses and to complement the public workload.

'A Seamless Migration'

Nimbula Director of Professional Services Nishan Sathyanarayan said in a statement that customers often look to a hybrid deployment model, with both their own private cloud as well as public infrastructure. Through the technical design and migration plan offered by Nimbula, he said, "our customers can confidently execute a seamless migration into a robust and cost-effective private or hybrid cloud solution and balance their investment in public clouds."

Nimbula's key strategic focus is for enterprises to use public clouds when fast growth of applications is required. Once the workload and needs have become stable, Nimbula sees it making more sense to migrate to an internal cloud. If the app still has unpredictable bursts of activity, appropriately called cloudbursts, that component might be left in the public cloud.

The Nimbula service provides consultants to help customers design and build a commodity cloud in-house, without the normal investment required, by using existing resources wherever possible. Typically, this would incorporate x86 servers and Nimbula's cloud system software, and the customer does the actual implementation.

One of those offerings is the Nimbula Director Jumpstart package. The Jumpstart package includes deployment of a customized showcase or proof-of-concept environment for demonstration purposes, to...

AMD just launched its Radeon HD 7970 graphics card for desktop PCs. That gives AMD bragging rights with the only GPU based on 28nm production technology.

The 7970 is built on AMD's new Graphics Core Next Architecture, which is focused on the gaming market. The company reports a 150 percent-plus improvement in performance over its last generation.

Matt Skynner, head of AMD's graphics processor division, probably got Nvidia's attention with his braggadocios words that AMD is "aggressively advancing the state of the graphics industry" and creating "a revolution in the graphics industry," and "HD 7970 changes everything." But how much of an advance is the new graphics card?

Less Heat

There is no disputing that AMD has a large footprint in the graphics card market. In fact, AMD has been swapping the lead with Nvidia as far as overall performance goes for years.

Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, points to reviews that show the Radeon HD 7970 is a significant step up in performance, with 30 percent or better performance than previous generation systems.

"The new card is also comparatively modest in its power requirements, bringing a long-time AMD strategy for low power consumption to the gaming side. Of course, I'm not sure that gamers are really watching their electric bills all that closely," King said. "But one of the side lines of lower energy consumption is that the new card is supposed to run considerably cooler than older cards, and definitely cooler than that Nvidia dual-processor card. Overall it looks like AMD has a real winner here."

True High Definition

The Radeon HD 7970 does have some impressive gear under the hood, so to speak. It relies on AMD App Acceleration to drive high-definition video images and performance improvements for everyday applications.

AMD also reports advancements with its AMD Eyefinity technology that pave the...

Struggling manufacturer Research In Motion is standing by its initial statement about the delayed release of BlackBerry 10, following a published report that the operating system is too flawed to release.

"RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual-core chip set architecture," the company said in an e-mail Thursday. "As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices. The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed."

RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in an earnings call earlier this month that the release of BlackBerry 10 won't be ready in the first half of 2012 because dual-core, long-term evolution chipsets to give the devices 4G data speeds would not be available in time.

Trashed, Anonymously

However, Boy Genius Report, citing an unnamed source described as a high-level RIM employee, reported Thursday that the delay is because "RIM is simply pushing this out as long as they can for one reason, they don't have a working product yet."

BGR's source also said that looking at the current operating system used in RIM PlayBook tablets offers some insight into problems with e-mail and BlackBerry messaging that may affect phones using the upgrade, and that "there's no room for a fourth ecosystem" of independently developed apps after Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.

But RIM said it "will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready, and we believe this new chip set architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false. "

In other BlackBerry news, Comwave, which makes an application allowing free voice over Internet protocol long-distance calls to dozens of...

Struggling manufacturer Research In Motion is standing by its initial statement about the delayed release of BlackBerry 10, following a published report that the operating system is too flawed to release.

"RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual-core chip set architecture," the company said in an e-mail Thursday. "As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices. The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed."

RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in an earnings call earlier this month that the release of BlackBerry 10 won't be ready in the first half of 2012 because dual-core, long-term evolution chipsets to give the devices 4G data speeds would not be available in time.

Trashed, Anonymously

However, Boy Genius Report, citing an unnamed source described as a high-level RIM employee, reported Thursday that the delay is because "RIM is simply pushing this out as long as they can for one reason, they don't have a working product yet."

BGR's source also said that looking at the current operating system used in RIM PlayBook tablets offers some insight into problems with e-mail and BlackBerry messaging that may affect phones using the upgrade, and that "there's no room for a fourth ecosystem" of independently developed apps after Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.

But RIM said it "will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready, and we believe this new chip set architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false. "

In other BlackBerry news, Comwave, which makes an application allowing free voice over Internet protocol long-distance calls to dozens of...

With its bid for T-Mobile officially over, AT&T faces a spectrum crunch exacerbated by the slowness of regulators to approve its earlier spectrum deal with Qualcomm, even as the wireless carrier is forced to part with advanced wireless solutions spectrum.

AT&T's loss of AWS spectrum is a break-up provision in the merger contract it signed with T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, last March. T-Mobile's AWS spectrum windfall, courtesy of AT&T, will provide coverage in 128 U.S. cellular markets, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Rival Verizon Wireless has already made several moves to take advantage of AT&T's AWS spectrum loss. Cox Communications said last Friday that it has agreed to sell Verizon its 20 megahertz AWS spectrum licenses covering 28 million points of presence (PoP) in exchange for $315 million.

"These agreements provide Cox customers with key enablers to mobility, such as access to Verizon Wireless' 4G LTE network and iconic wireless devices," said Cox Communications President Pat Esser.

Though AT&T is facing a spectrum crunch, "it doesn't strike me that ATT will capitulate to Verizon Wireless," said Lisa Pierce, Gartner's managing vice president of unified communications and network services.

"The loss of T-Mobile will spur ATT's LTE-related capital expenditure spending -- to rapidly implement LTE, LTE-Advanced and VoLTE -- especially on the 700 megahertz band," Pierce said in an e-mail Thursday. "This likely shift is welcome news to ATT's key network suppliers."

A Full LTE Blitz

AT&T's cash reserves will take a hit when AT&T posts a pretax accounting charge of $4 billion at the end of the fourth quarter to reflect the T-Mobile deal's break-up considerations. Still, AT&T had over $10 billion cash on hand at the end of the third quarter of 2011.

"Our strong cash flow gives us the flexibility to invest in our...

Even as Yahoo looks for a successor to fired CEO Carol Bartz, the ailing search prince may be looking to shed more corporate assets: Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan.

According to several news reports, Yahoo's board of directors is considering selling off most of the company's holdings in the Alibaba Group of China and its Japanese affiliate. Yahoo would sell the assets back to their majority owners. Softbank is the controlling owner of Yahoo Japan. Yahoo's board is reportedly reviewing the transaction.

According to Forbes, the deal is a complicated transaction with high stakes: Yahoo could reap $17 billion from the sale of the Asia assets. Yahoo paid $1 billion to buy into Alibaba in 2005. On the news, Yahoo's stock price reached $15.99 on a 5.82 percent rise.

Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, noted that the so-called Asian assets are the most valuable ones that Yahoo has at the moment, according to the market. "Yahoo has had a troubled relationship with Jack Ma [the founder and chairman of Alibaba] and Alibaba so I wouldn't be surprised to see it go," Sterling said. "Ma also either wants out of Yahoo entirely or wants to control the entire company."

Alibaba Breaks Through

If Yahoo sheds its Asia assets, it would help focus the company and make shareholders happy. Many of Yahoo's stakeholders have cried for the sale of Alibaba, in which Yahoo owns a 40 percent stake. Yahoo owns a 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal.

But where Yahoo has struggled, Alibaba.com has performed. Alibaba's revenue was up 11 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2011 despite a depressed global economy and the decline in manufacturing. Revenue from Alibaba.com's international marketplace also increased by 11.8 percent. And revenue from its China marketplace increased 13.9...

Following a generally warm reception when it launched, Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet quickly became the target of complaints about bugs and various functions -- or lack thereof. On Tuesday night, Amazon released an update for the tablet that the giant retailer said addresses a number of the complaints.

The company said in a statement that the update, version 6.2.1, "enhances fluidity and performance, improves touch navigation responsiveness, gives you the option to choose which items display on the carousel, and adds the ability to add a password lock on Wi-Fi access." The free update is delivered automatically, or can be manually downloaded and installed.

Owner Complaints

The owner complaints, appearing on Amazon's sites as well as in other places, have reportedly led some owners to return their purchase. Issues include the lack of an external volume control, loading time for Web pages, lack of privacy between users, a touch screen that is slow to respond, and difficulties in getting online.

In fact, usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote on his Useit Web site earlier this month that the Fire's user experience is "disappointingly poor." One issue, according to his testing of a small group of users, was that everything on the screen "is much too small," leading to frequent selection errors.

The too-small issue, Nielsen said, is because Web sites that work well on a 10-inch tablet, such as Apple's iPad, are squeezed into the 7-inch Fire. Sites that have been optimized for the smaller mobile devices, he noted, should work better on the tablet, and a user should set configurations to look for mobile sites. For that and other reasons, Nielsen told The New York Times, he "can't recommend buying" the Kindle Fire, and said he felt that it "is going to be a failure."

'Never About the UI'

But, although some experts like Nielsen are...

Oracle stumbled in its latest quarter as the business software maker struggled to close deals, a signal of possible trouble ahead for the technology sector.

The performance announced Tuesday covered a period of economic turbulence which has raised concerns that major companies and government agencies may curtail technology spending.

Oracle's results for the three months ending in November suggested the cutbacks have already started. Management reinforced that perception with a forecast calling for meager growth in the current quarter, which ends in February. The developments alarmed investors, causing Oracle Corp. shares to slide 10 percent.

In a telling sign of weakening demand, Oracle's sales of new software licenses edged up just 2 percent from the same time last year. Analysts had expected a double-digit gain in new software licenses. The company had predicted an increase of at least 6 percent and as much as 16 percent.

Wall Street focuses on this part of the business because selling new software products generates a stream of future revenue from maintenance and upgrades.

Oracle's software is a staple in companies and government agencies throughout the world. Its database products help companies store and manage information. Its line of applications automates a wide range of administrative tasks.

Part of the problem was that technology decision makers delayed signing contracts during the final few days of the quarter, according to Safra Catz, Oracle's chief financial officer. That could be an indication that companies and financially strapped government agencies are treading more carefully as Europe's debt problems threaten to hobble a still-fragile global economy.

"Clearly, this quarter was not what we thought it would be," Catz told analysts during a Tuesday conference call. She said the company is hoping some of the deals that were postponed in the last quarter will be completed within the next two months.

Oracle's weakest markets were in the...

Yahoo is deepening its connections with Facebook's online social network. The latest bond announced late Tuesday will enable Facebook users to share more of their activities on Yahoo's Web sites, including which stories they are reading.

Yahoo Inc. introduced the Facebook-sharing option in its main new section three months ago. The same feature will now be available in 26 other parts of Yahoo's site, including its "omg" service for entertainment news and sections devoted to television, movies and games.

By tying more of its services to Facebook's popularity, Yahoo is hoping to give people more reasons to visit and stick around its website. Yahoo ultimately wants to sell more online advertising. That's an area where Facebook has been gaining ground as its website has emerged as a top Internet hangout.

As Facebook has become more influential, Yahoo has been struggling to remain relevant among Web surfers and online advertisers.

It's been a daunting challenge so far. Yahoo has gone through three different CEOs in the past four years while its revenue and stock price have drooped. The difficulties have prompted a board review that will culminate in a sale of all or part of the company.

Yahoo has been pleased with the results of Facebook-sharing so far. Traffic to Yahoo's news section from Facebook has tripled since that sharing feature was introduced, according to the company, which is based in Sunnyvale, California.

Apparently, a relatively small percentage of Yahoo's 700 million users want their online social circles to know what they're reading on the Web. Yahoo says about 12 million people have opted to share their tastes in news stories so far. The feature is particularly popular among young adults ranging from 18 to 24 years old, according to Yahoo.

Facebook sharing still isn't available on two of Yahoo's most...

Yahoo is deepening its connections with Facebook's online social network. The latest bond announced late Tuesday will enable Facebook users to share more of their activities on Yahoo's Web sites, including which stories they are reading.

Yahoo Inc. introduced the Facebook-sharing option in its main new section three months ago. The same feature will now be available in 26 other parts of Yahoo's site, including its "omg" service for entertainment news and sections devoted to television, movies and games.

By tying more of its services to Facebook's popularity, Yahoo is hoping to give people more reasons to visit and stick around its website. Yahoo ultimately wants to sell more online advertising. That's an area where Facebook has been gaining ground as its website has emerged as a top Internet hangout.

As Facebook has become more influential, Yahoo has been struggling to remain relevant among Web surfers and online advertisers.

It's been a daunting challenge so far. Yahoo has gone through three different CEOs in the past four years while its revenue and stock price have drooped. The difficulties have prompted a board review that will culminate in a sale of all or part of the company.

Yahoo has been pleased with the results of Facebook-sharing so far. Traffic to Yahoo's news section from Facebook has tripled since that sharing feature was introduced, according to the company, which is based in Sunnyvale, California.

Apparently, a relatively small percentage of Yahoo's 700 million users want their online social circles to know what they're reading on the Web. Yahoo says about 12 million people have opted to share their tastes in news stories so far. The feature is particularly popular among young adults ranging from 18 to 24 years old, according to Yahoo.

Facebook sharing still isn't available on two of Yahoo's most...

`Tis the season of the tablet. Despite the gloomy economy, shoppers are expected to shell out for tablet computers this December, making them about as popular as candy canes and twinkling lights.

The glossy-screened gadgets are the most-desired electronic devices this holiday season. And, of all the gifts people are craving, tablets are second only to clothing, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. The industry group expects U.S. consumers to spend an average of $246 on electronic gifts, including tablets.

With help from his three siblings, Bob Cardina, 26, plans to purchase an iPad for his parents for Christmas. Cardina and his sister live in Washington. His parents live in Tampa, Florida. So he's excited to be able to video chat with his parents -- them on the new iPad, him on his iPhone. He thinks his mother will be especially happy with the gift. One of her friends has an iPad and she's "definitely taken a liking to it," he said.

To be sure, tablets were on some wish lists last year, but they were mostly prized by gadget geeks. In the past year, they have become more mainstream. Consumers have become comfortable using touch screens, especially as smartphones continue to proliferate. Tablets are popping up in unexpected places, too. Apple Inc.'s iPad in particular is being used as a learning tool in schools, a digital cash register in shops and a menu at restaurants.

In 2010, people were "trying to figure out what the whole tablet thing was about," says Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi. "Now, people know what to do with a tablet."

For some people, the device has become indispensable for playing and working. While you can surf the Web, send emails and watch movies on a laptop or smartphone, consumers are gravitating to tablets because they can be more convenient.

The iPad...

Online search and advertising giant Google is teaming with investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. to develop four solar energy farms serving the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California.

Google, Inc. said Tuesday on its Green Blog that it will spend $94 million on the projects and work with KKR and solar developer Recurrent Energy, a division of Sharp Corp., on the projects.

Construction on three of the projects will be complete early next year, and the fourth will come on line later in the year.

The projects are expected to provide electricity to power more than 13,000 average U.S. homes. Electricity produced by three of the projects is contracted for 20 years with the utility district, Google said.

It's the latest in a series of renewable energy investments for Google, which has said it is disappointed that it can't buy renewable electricity for its power-hungry data centers and wants to invest to help renewable power expand in scale.

Google earns what it describes as attractive returns on its investments by capturing local and federal renewable energy tax credits and charging interest on the money it supplies for the projects.

Google said it has invested more than $915 million in clean energy projects, including $800 million this year. Google has invested in wind farms in North Dakota, California and Oregon, solar projects in California and Germany, and a project off the East coast of the U.S. meant to help make offshore wind farms possible.

In September, Google announced it would set up a $75 million fund to help local installers offer special financing deals to homeowners who want to put solar panels on their roofs. In June, the company announced a $280 million deal with installer SolarCity to help it offer similar deals.

Google's Sacramento solar deal represents its first U.S. investment in a large-scale solar project...