HELSINKI (Reuters) – Operators pushed market share of cellphones running Google's software a little higher in September quarter in Western Europe, but consumers showed little interest toward them, research firm IDC said on Saturday.

Android has won attention in the mobile industry lately, with Motorola and Sony Ericsson choosing it for their new top models.

Market share of smartphones running Google's Android operating system (OS) rose to 5.4 percent from 4.2 percent in July-September in Western Europe, a key area for the smartphone market.

Apple has struck a deal to buy the streaming and downloading music Web site LaLa.com, according to reports from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It would add to Apple's music empire, but how might this acquision change Apple's tune?

Lala (click to enlarge the screen shot) gives users the option of downloading MP3s for 89 cents each or (this is where things get interesting) buy a stream-only version of the song for ten cents or an entire album for a dollar or so.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Apple Inc. has purchased online music company Lala Media Inc., The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, in a move it said may signal an expansion of its music strategy.

The newspaper said financial terms of the deal could not be learned.

Lala, which boasts a playlist of more than eight million tunes, hosts users' digital music collections on the Web, allowing access from varied locations in what it describes as "music in the clouds."

TEHRAN (AFP) – Most of the Iranian capital's Internet links with the outside world were down on Saturday, two days ahead of planned demonstrations by opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Sources close to Iran's technical services told AFP the cut was the result of "a decision by the authorities" rather than a technical breakdown, but telecommunications ministry officials were unavailable for comment.

Internet lines, texting and at times even mobile phone connections have often been cut or scrambled since Ahmadinejad's contested re-election in June, but this was the first such occurrence a full two days before planned protests.

My GQ pose would be more convincing if I was wearing a watch.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

I've been told more than once that skills learned from video games don't really translate to the real world. To those who have told me this, I can only say: neener-neener-neener.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Online collaboration startup AppJet said that Google is buying the San Francisco firm and merging its technology with an innovation Wave communication platform the Internet giant is creating.

"We are happy to announce that AppJet Inc. has been acquired by Google," AppJet said in a message at its website.

"The EtherPad team will continue its work on real-time collaboration by joining the Google Wave team."

EtherPad enables people at various computers to simultaneously edit documents shared online, with changes instantly reflected on all users' screens.

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc has acquired digital music service Lala, as the dominant online music retailer explores new models for selling songs.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed by Apple, which confirmed the purchase on Friday.

ITunes is the leading music service in the United States with more than 70 percent of all digital music sales and it is the leading music retailer overall.

But newer music streaming services from the likes of News Corp's MySpace Music and Spotify have begun to win over music fans in the last year.

When you load a website, or use any other fully qualified domain name (ie, www.macfixit.com), the name needs to be resolved to something that your computer can use, such as an IP address. The service that does this is DNS, or 'Domain Name System', which is essentially the index or address book for the internet. The DNS network consists of servers and resolvers that work to cache and propagate a distributed hierarchical database of internet names, domains, and subdomains. The resolved IP addresses are sent to the client system (your computer) when you make a DNS request.

Security Considerations

An early engineering sample of Intel's upcoming Core i9 chip has been spotted on eBay, way ahead of the processors' scheduled 2010 release date.

The Gulftown chip, which recently impressed in early benchmark tests, is expected to launch in the first quarter of next year, so it came as a surprise when one recently showed up on auction site eBay. The auction listing (since removed) detailed the processor as the "Intel 6-Core Xeon Westmere Gulftown 2.4GHz LGA1366 ES", and promised that the chip was tested and in working order.

The latest charger from iGo aims to make it easy to be green. The $100 iGo Green Charger uses only the precise amount of energy your laptop requires, and can automatically shut off if need be when not in use.

The advantage to iGo's Green Technology, as it calls its secret sauce, is that it automatically shuts off--so laptops can be plugged in, but won't draw unnecessary energy once the laptop finishes charging or isn't on. According to iGo, the charger uses 80 percent less energy in stand-by mode. The charger comes with eight laptop tips for use with a variety of laptops from Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Sony, and others. These charger tips represent a new design for iGo; they're specially designed to measure out the energy allowed by the device that the tip is designed for.