Bucking a trend, Netflix adopts personal touch in U.S. call center
The DVD-mailing service set up shop in Oregon eliminates e-mail based customer service inquiries.

Hollywood agent wins right to leave firm
An arbitrator decided that Ed Limato, a longtime agent for stars like Steve Martin and Mel Gibson, could leave International Creative Management to join a rival.

Celebrity magazines grow, but overall industry doesn't
Sales at most large-circulation magazines changed little from the first half of 2006 to the first six months of 2007, according to new numbers.

In surprise move, Premiere chief quits
The biggest pay television provider in Germany said Monday that Georg Kofler, who led the company's recovery, had resigned to pursue a new career as an entrepreneur outside the media industry.

Dr. Google and Dr. Microsoft
The two leading candidates for Web supremacy are working up their plans to improve health care in the United States.

Google, in an experiment, gives names in the news a way to respond
The search giant, whose Google News is among the largest news aggregators, is asking the people or companies mentioned in news articles to comment on those reports.

EU clears way for Intel and STMicro to combine flash memory units
The chip makers and the private equity firm Francisco Partners will form a new company that will acquire the assets of Intel's and STMicro's NOR flash businesses.

NBC Universal moves to turn iVillage around
The company struggled with guiding more traffic to the site after paying $600 million for the women's portal last year.

VMware hopes to raise as much as $1.1 billion in an IPO
It may be the largest technology offering since Google in 2004, signaling that demand remains robust for computer-related companies.

Manufacturers find ways to navigate Web retailing
For manufacturers, the Web can be a hazardous place. Consumers expect these companies to sell their products directly online, but retailers have other thoughts.

Advertisers find new headaches in lawless world of social Web sites
For traditional advertisers rushing headlong into this new territory to reach tantalizing, young users, the ultimate nightmare is the surprise of sharing virtual real estate with risqué material or racist rants.

Xbox 360 out of order? For Halo loyalists, no worries
Owners of the Microsoft Xbox 360 have watched their machines break down. But the game Halo 3 could redeem the company going into the holiday selling season.

Yahoo may be struggling to convince Wall Street of its future prospects, but for the first time its users gave its services a better overall rating than Google received, according to a study released Tuesday.

Data from the University of Michigan American Consumer Satisfaction Index showed Yahoo had seen its customer satisfaction score rise 3.9 percent to 79 out of 100 points from a year earlier, while Google's rating fell about 3.7 percent to 78 points.

While Apple retained the top ranking among computer manufacturers, its rating dropped 4.8 percent.

The company scored 79, compared with 83 last year. Over all, the computer industry rated 75, 2.6 percent lower than a year earlier.

The survey uses data from interviews of nearly 70,000 customers to measure satisfaction with more than 200 U.S. companies in 45 industries.

Don Imus has reached a settlement with CBS over his multimillion-dollar contract and is negotiating to resume his broadcasting career.

Imus and CBS Radio "have mutually agreed to settle claims that each had against the other regarding the Imus radio program on CBS," the network and Imus' attorney said. The terms were not be disclosed.

Imus is talking to WABC-AM and other stations about making a possible comeback, said a person familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the news had not been announced.

The news comes more than four months after Imus created an uproar by disparaging members of the Rutgers women's basketball team.

YouTube, the online video-sharing site, wants to question two Comedy Central comedians, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, as part of its defense against claims that it illegally shows snippets of sports and entertainment videos.

The request came as part of lawsuits brought against YouTube by Viacom, which owns MTV, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. The lawsuits claim, in essence, that YouTube, which is owned by Google, profits from massive copyright infringement.

Telefónica, the leading Spanish phone company that started a mobile phone service in Slovakia in February, said it wanted to build its own network in there to cut reliance on a roaming partner.

Unibrain, a computer software maker controlled by Intracom Holdings of Greece, will acquire Intracom's Hellas Online and Teledome units in a €230 million, or $312 million, all-share transaction to create a newly listed telecommunications provider, the companies said.

Sanjay Kumar, the former chief executive of CA, began serving a 12-year prison term Tuesday for his role in a $2.2 billion accounting fraud at the software company.