Doomsday predictions

As Hurricane Wilma storms toward the Gulf Coast following a string of devastating natural disasters, there's a resurgence of End Times speculation.

Napster's learning curve

Shawn Fanning created Napster in his dorm room at Northeastern. It was the fastest-growing application in the history of the Internet.
We changed the world but failed to achieve business success. Here is a glimpse into that story.

Splog 'emergency'

Google's Blogger blog-creation tool and BlogSpot hosting service fell victim this past weekend to the biggest 'splog' attack yet--an assault that led to clogged RSS readers and overflowing in-boxes, and may have manipulated search engine rankings. Tim Bray, Web technologies director at Sun Microsystems, wrote in his blog about what he called the 'splogsplosion.'
'Uh, ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, I think we have an emergency on our hands,' he said. Click here for full story.

Cheney cabal hijacked US foreign policy

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that left the US weaker, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed.

OpenOffice 2.0

Programmers released version 2 of OpenOffice.org on Thursday, a major overhaul to an open-source software suite that has recently become a more serious rival to Microsoft Office.

Gay Hoax Bombers

An unknown gay rights group claimed it planted a dozen fake bombs around Warsaw that paralysed the Polish capital on Thursday, three days before the second round of a presidential election. 'You paralyse our life, we'll paralyse yours,' a lengthy e-mail sent to media groups in Warsaw said, referring among other issues to a ban on a gay pride parade by Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczynski.

jewel-encrusted cellphone

Diamonds are forever, but cellphones are not designed to last quite so long. Unless you are a lucky recipient of a jewel-encrusted cellphone this Christmas, that is. Vertu, a subsidiary of Nokia, is producing 200 cellphones decorated with diamonds.

Michael Jackson in Court as a juror

MICHAEL Jackson is wanted back in court - this time as a juror.
The King of Pop received a jury summons at his Neverland Valley Ranch, four months after he was acquitted of child molestation charges.

'It's just one of those ironies of life that he'd be called as a juror,' said Loyola School of Law professor Laurie Levenson, who monitored Jackson's trial.

It's unlikely Jackson will show up for jury selection - his lawyers have filed paperwork for a deferrment based on the fact that he now lives in Bahrain.

From correspondents in Los Angeles