Apple threatens legal action

Apple has written to two US companies asking them to stop using the word "pod", reports The Register.

Apple claims that Mach5 Products, which makes a wireless data collection device Profit Pod, is "confusingly similar" to its own trademarked music player.

Profit Pod wirelessly collects information from arcade games or other vending machines and keeps track of how many coins are put into a machine, allowing that information to be put straight into a spreadsheet.

Google is rolling out a local wireless Internet service in its hometown, Mountain View, California, but has no plans to become a national provider of such services, reports the New York Times.

The free service will become generally available today after nine months of testing. The company was chosen by the city of San Francisco to install and operate a similar service there in partnership with EarthLink.

Google says it will not compete nationally, but that the Mountain View and San Francisco roll-outs aim to demonstrate the value of competition in providing Internet access, and to build systems that would allow the company to experiment with new business ideas.

Officials at the US`s space entity, NASA, are searching for missing footage of man`s first walk on the moon in 1969, reports CTV.

The video, including footage of Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon, is believed to be stored somewhere at NASA`s Goddard Space Flight Centre. However, officials have so far been unable to locate the tapes.

NASA wants to find the original footage to see if modern technology can produce sharper images of the event, as the images were substantially degraded and appear grainy due to broadcasting requirements at the time.