The N.Y. Times and NBC News will share campaign coverage
NBC will feature political coverage from The Times on its MSNBC.com Web site, while The Times planned to use NBC video on nytimes.com.

The Ludlum conundrum: A dead novelist provides new thrills
Robert Ludlum died six years ago, but that has done nothing to slow the release of books published under the name of the actor-turned-novelist who specialized in thrillers built on a foundation of paranoia.

Spurred by bid for Dow Jones, Pearson seeks allies for The Financial Times
Pearson, the owner of The Financial Times, said it was talking to a number of potential partners about new ways to display the newspaper's journalism as it weighed the effects of Rupert Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones, owner of The Wall Street Journal.

Bancroft family divisions cloud $5 billion bid for Dow Jones
The outcome of the $5 billion bid for Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, appeared to go down to the wire Monday as members of the Bancroft family seemed sharply divided.
- Spurred by bid for Dow Jones, Pearson seeks allies for The Financial Times

Gates plans his leave from Microsoft amid great change
Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft, still intends to step away next year as planned. But so far, Gates, the company's chairman, is showing no sign of fading away.

Liberty considers bidding for Virgin Media
Liberty Global, a U.S. cable TV company, is the second potential bidder and the first cable company to express an interest in Virgin Media, one of the biggest pay-TV companies in Britain.

In a complex world, innovation happens from the top down
Many of the most popular innovative new products, like the iPod, are dominated by an elitist top-down model that leaves no room for customization.

Without U.S. rules, biotech food lacks investors
As U.S. officials get serious about drafting industry rules, big investors may finally be willing to put up money.

Mapmaking for the masses, online
With the help of simple tools from Internet companies, millions of people are reshaping mapmaking.

For better or worse, adults learn to say it with emoticons
Emoticons, the smiling, winking and frowning faces that inhabit the computer world, have not only hung around long past their youth faddishness of the 1990s, but they have grown up. Twenty- five years after their invention, they are now ubiquitous.

The Federal Communications Commission approved rules Tuesday intended to give consumers more choice in their cellphones and wireless devices after a new auction of airwaves is held next year. The vote cleared the way for the auction, which is expected to raise as much as $15 billion for the government.

The commission approved an "open access" provision that will allow customers to use whatever phones and software they want on about one-third of the networks to be sold.

A more ambitious provision, that would have required a licensee to sell access to its network on a wholesale basis, was rejected, making it unlikely that Google will bid. Google had been expected to challenge traditional wireless companies if the rules had been favorable.

The public will be able to buy copies of thousands of historic films and videotapes via the Internet under a deal between the National Archives, Amazon.com and one of its subsidiaries.

The arrangement allows Amazon and CustomFlix Labs to make and sell DVDs based on digitized copies of some Archive footage, starting with the collection of Universal Newsreels dating from 1920 to 1967.

The Arabic news channel Al Jazeera said it hoped for approval to broadcast in Singapore by the end of the year, following talks that began early this year.

Nigel Parsons, managing director of Al Jazeera's English channel, said Singapore was cautious about allowing it to broadcast because of U.S. criticism of the channel.

British Sky Broadcasting Group said it would buy the computer and electronic hardware manufacturer Amstrad for £125 million, or $253 million, in cash to expand its product development capacity and increase profit.

Carnival, the cruise operator, won exclusive rights to the "qe2.com" name after a firm that registered the Internet site was found to have no link to the famous ocean liner.