Technology

The flurry of initial public offerings this week is confirmation that this fall's rebound in the market wasn't a fluke and sets the stage for more companies to raise money through IPOs in 2010. But the response to two of the newly public companies shows that investors continue to be careful about where they place their bets.

Consumers who haven't yet ordered Barnes & Noble's electronic book reader, the Nook, won't see one before Christmas.

A lawsuit in Wisconsin is bringing a fresh challenge to the practice of paying for keywords on Google and other search engines to boost one company's link over a rival's.

Microsoft Corp. is giving away nearly 24,000 vouchers to North Carolina residents who want to improve their computer skills so they can improve their lot in the work force.

European Union regulators said Friday that they have extended until Jan. 27 a deadline to wrap up their antitrust review of Oracle Corp.'s planned $7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems Inc.

A deal for Comcast Corp. to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal and create one of the most powerful media companies in the world is taking longer than expected as the current owners tussle over price.

A group of major national research libraries says users now can search the full text of 1.6 billion pages from 4.6 million digitized volumes.

Sony's new online service connecting the whole range of its gadgets to downloadable content like movies and games should help build brand loyalty, a top executive said Friday.

President Barack Obama has answered questions submitted by a celebrated Cuban blogger, saying he isn't interested in "talking for the sake of talking" with Raul Castro and indicating he won't visit the island until the communist government changes its ways.

EBay has completed its sale of Skype for about $2 billion to an investor group that included the founders of the Internet phone service.

A key element of Dell Inc.'s turnaround strategy has been a vow not to cut prices as aggressively as rivals just to keep market share. The tactic has allowed competitors such as Acer Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. to steal business from Dell, and this fall Dell lost its ranking as the world's No. 2 PC maker.

Some of the computer industry's biggest players - such as IBM Corp., Intel Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. - have wowed Wall Street this fall with stronger-than-expected profits.

Consumers will have to wait until next year's holiday shopping season to find out if Google Inc.'s new operating system can deliver on its promise to make low-cost computers run faster.

Shareholders approved the formation of a new company out of DirecTV Group Inc. and some of Liberty Media Corp.'s entertainment businesses, as the chairman of both firms dampened speculation about a sale to a big phone company.

Think of it as closed captioning for the new media world.