Apple turns in a record quarter, but its stock slides on a relatively lackluster forecast
Sales of iPod music players helped drive profit to $1 billion, a 78 percent increase from a year earlier.

Briefing: Families of abused teens sue MySpace
Also: LG's touch-screen Prada phone to hit stores next month; VNU changes name to Nielsen; Harpercollins closes Regan imprint; EMI promotes 2 music executives; Meebo gets high-profile VC funding

Some bling for your blog
Widgets offer peripheral information and fun at the side of sites.

Time Inc. cuts more than 250 magazine staff
Time Inc. began laying off more than 250 people Thursday at its top magazines, including its most profitable title, People, which said it was shutting down its Washington, Miami and Chicago bureaus entirely.

China approves Intel manufacturing plant
Intel also needs to receive U.S. government approval to export its manufacturing technology to China.

Internet pushes the concept of 'free' content, supported by advertising
After spending millions of dollars over the past decade fighting the free exchange of their products over the Internet, some media companies are now yielding.
- Digital music sales soar 80 percent in 2006

Distracting Web ads pay off for loan-referral company
Some say the undulating characters in the ads are highly distracting and have so little to do with low-interest loans that they border on the surreal.

The End User: Batteries that travel
Moixa Energy's latest innovation is one of those slap-your-forehead ideas that both makes sense and makes us feel good to use: a traditional AA battery that recharges itself from a personal computer's USB port.

Microsoft Office sheds features for simplicity's sake
The chief sales point of Office 2007 (for Windows XP or Vista), which makes its debut on Jan. 30, is that it is simpler, more streamlined and creates much smaller documents.

Deutsche Telekom to expand Internet TV to rural areas
Deutsche Telekom, which began selling pay-per-view TV over a new, high-speed urban network last summer, said Wednesday that it might upgrade its existing phone networks to sell the same TV service to viewers in rural parts of Germany.

Gadgets of the week: Pixels on call in a camera that catches it all
Also: Cockpit sound, in comfort; Taking the Web for a walk

Computer hackers poke another hole in HD DVD's armor
A loosely knit coalition of intruders from around the world has defeated the antipiracy software protecting several high-resolution movies in the HD DVD format.

Collaborations by universities, start-up firms and financiers produce gains for public
The long-term trend dates to the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which mandated universities to aid with commercial concerns to promote the use of the inventions arising from U.S. government financing.

Time Inc. began laying off more than 250 people at its top magazines Thursday, including its most profitable title, People, which said it would close its Washington, Miami and Chicago bureaus.

Employees in those bureaus said they were "shell-shocked," as the news was delivered by speakerphone from New York by Larry Hackett, the People managing editor. The news "was not sugar-coated," one employee said. A total of about 15 people work in the three bureaus; the cuts take effect Feb. 1.

Other layoffs were being announced at each of Time's magazines, and were likely to amount to about 2 percent of the company's worldwide staff of 11,000. Time, the flagship magazine, was poised to lose about 70 people, and Sports Illustrated was expecting several layoffs as well.

Families sue MySpace

NEW YORK: Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said.

The law firms, Barry & Loewy of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin of Houston, said families from New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina filed separate suits Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation by the companies.

"MySpace serves as an industry leader on Internet safety and we take proactive measures to protect our members," Hemanshu Nigam, the chief security officer for MySpace, which is based in Los Angeles, said in a statement.

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Vivendi has won an appeal at Poland's Supreme Court in a dispute over the ownership of a 48 percent stake in the cellphone company Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa, the French company said. Vivendi and Deutsche Telekom have been at loggerheads over a deal between the German company and Elektrim of Poland to own part of PTC. Poland's Supreme Court overturned a March ruling by the Warsaw Court of Appeal and "in accordance with recognized norms of international law Deutsche Telekom and Elektrim should now recognize" Vivendi's rights to the PTC Shares, Vivendi said. The case is to be reheard by the European Court of First Instance. $@ (Reuters)

LG ELECTRONICS of South Korea introduced a mobile phone that incorporates a buttonless touch- screen interface that resembles the much-hyped Apple iPhone. LG's Prada Phone is being produced in partnership with the Italian fashion brand. It is to go on sale for €600, or $777, at mobile phone dealers and Prada stores in Britain, France, Germany and Italy in late February, and in Asia in March. $@(AP)

HARPERCOLLINS plans to close ReganBooks, the imprint created by Judith Regan, an editor fired last month after a public outcry over a book and television deal with O.J. Simpson, the former football player who was accused of murdering his former wife and her friend.