Google to sell ads in newspapers

Online search and advertising giant Google will start selling advertisements that will appear in the print editions of 50 major newspapers, according to News.Com.

Many of the largest newspaper companies, including Gannett, the Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Hearst, have agreed to try the system in a three-month test set to start later this month.

For Google, the move represents an important step to the company's audacious long-term goal to build a single system through which advertisers can promote their products in any medium, notes the article.

Microsoft has restated its position on China, following comments by its senior counsel Fred Tipson, who recently said repression in the far-eastern country might make the software titan reconsider its presence there, reports BBCNews.Com.

Tipson had reportedly told an Athens conference: "We have to decide if the persecuting of bloggers reaches a point that it's unacceptable to do business there."

Microsoft has now said it is "committed" to staying in the country. Following Tipson's comments, the company issued a statement that said: "Microsoft is not considering the suspension of the company's Internet services in China."

A British company claims it has developed software enabling users to at least double their reading speed by making use of the way the brain interprets text. It says reading speeds as high as 1 200 words per minute are possible, compared with a typical speed off the page of 150.

Tech site The Register reports that the company, BookMuncher, uses a technique called Rapid Serial Visualisation Presentation, which displays a document word by word mid-screen.

"The idea is that as the words flash by, your brain recognises their shape or outline, rather than trying to decode their sound or spelling," explains the article.

The FBI has made 17 arrests of hackers and carders in the US and Poland, as part of Operation Cardkeeper, writes Wired.Com.

"An alleged credit card thief, who has been identified as using the online handle 'John Dillinger', has emerged as a suspect in an aggressive FBI law enforcement action," notes the article.

It appears Dillinger and other Americans indicted in the case received stolen credit card numbers from Romanian phishers and others, then used the numbers to purchase items they later resold.