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AP Technology NewsBrief at 7:10 a.m. EDT
(AP Online Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Skype to sell unlimited international calls for $9.95/monthNEW YORK (AP) _ Skype, the Internet calling subsidiary of eBay Inc., is introducing its first plan for unlimited calls to overseas phones on Monday. The plan will allow unlimited calls to land-line phones in 34 countries for $9.95 per month, said Don Albert, vice president and general manager for Skype North America.
HD enthusiasts crying foul over cable TV's crunched signalsMINNEAPOLIS (AP) _ In Brent Swanson's basement home theater, there should be nothing drab about "Battlestar Galactica." He's got a high-end projector that beams the picture onto a wall painted like a silver screen, and speakers loom in the corners, flanking two big subwoofers. Yet when he tuned in Sci Fi HD for a recent episode filmed in high definition, the image was soft and the darkest parts broke up into large blocks with no definition. Explosions, he said, were just dull.
Facebook asks users to translate new versions for freeTOKYO (AP) _ The three-year-old social networking phenomenon Facebook, worth more than $15 billion by many estimates, got a good deal on going global. Its users around the world are translating Facebook's visible framework into nearly two dozen languages _ for free _ aiding the company's aggressive expansion to better serve the 60 percent of its 69 million users who live outside the United States.
Back in the USSR: Soviet Internet domain name resists deathMOSCOW (AP) _ The Soviet Union may be in the dustbin of history, but there's one place the socialist utopia lives on: cyberspace. Sixteen years after the superpower's collapse, Web sites ending in the Soviet ".su" domain name have been rising _ registrations increased 45 percent this year alone. Bloggers, entrepreneurs and die-hard communists are all part of a small but growing online community resisting repeated efforts to extinguish the online Soviet outpost.
Amazon.com CEO promotes Kindle reader in shareholder letterSEATTLE (AP) _ Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle has arrived. Again. Amazon's $399 electronic book reader debuted in November but sold out almost immediately. Since then, Amazon has been bullish about customer demand but has declined to reveal how many back orders it has taken for the device.
Google shares soar 20 percent to record 1-day gainSAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Google Inc.'s stock soared 20 percent Friday, restoring $28 billion in shareholder wealth as Wall Street renewed its love affair with the Internet search leader after weeks of worry about an online advertising slowdown. Driven by stellar first-quarter results that surprised industry analysts, Google shares surged $89.87 to finish at $539.41. It marked the biggest one-day gain since Google's initial public stock offering in August 2004, leaving the shares at their highest closing price since January.
Google's strong showing renews debate over Web trackerNEW YORK (AP) _ Google's strong first-quarter results threw into question the weight many investors place on data from a leading Web measurement company that had shown slowing growth in Google's U.S. paid clicks. That data can be misread or simply wrong. Before Google Inc. released its earnings late Thursday, the company's market value had plunged 35 percent since December as Wall Street analysts worried that the faltering U.S. economy could bog down Google. Many analysts had cited the monthly paid-click reports from the Internet measurement company comScore Inc. as confirmation of their fears.
Despite guidelines, assigning Net domain names is trickyArgentina's Web sites end in ".ar," while Germany gets ".de" _ for Deutschland, as the country is known in German. Then there's ".aq" for Antarctica, a land with more penguins than computers.
EA extends deadline for $2 billion Take-Two tender offerNEW YORK (AP) _ Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., publisher of the popular "Grand Theft Auto" video game series, wanted more time to consider a $2 billion buyout by larger rival Electronic Arts Inc., and it wanted more money. On Friday, half its wish came true. EA extended by nearly a month its tender offer for Take-Two but lowered the price it's offering for each share of the company to reflect restricted shares granted to its management a day earlier.
Video game sales soar 57 percent in March, led by NintendoNEW YORK (AP) _ Led by stellar sales of Nintendo's games and systems, U.S. retail sales of video games jumped 57 percent to $1.7 billion in March, market researcher NPD Group reported Thursday. "You'd never know that the U.S. economy was under distress by looking at the video games industry sales figures," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier in an e-mail.
Copyright ? 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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