By SETH SCHIESEL Designing a successful massively multiplayer online game may be one of the supreme challenges in all entertainment.

By DON CLARK Apple Inc. became the latest computer maker to disclose that some of its laptop computers may be affected by a flaw associated with Nvidia Corp.

Onset Technology, which specializes in developing wireless enterprise products, has released a new software tool that gives IT departments the ability to scan, block or archive all wireless email communications sent over their enterprise networks.

Yesterday afternoon, Apple managed to surprise and not surprise observers at the same time. It shocked just about nobody by announcing that, yes, it would have the new product announcement that the rumor mill had expected in the middle of this month.

Oslo will be available as an add-on to Microsoft's Visual Studio development suite. It includes a new programming language, a visual modeling tool, and a repository for storing models in a database.

Shedding more light on its Oslo vision for model-based software development, Microsoft this week elaborated on plans to preview Oslo technologies, offering code names and citing the company's DSL (Domain Specific Languages) concept as a lynchpin of the platform.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Online video leader YouTube has opened up its version of a home shopping network in its latest effort to wring more revenue from its massive audience and justify the $1.76 billion that Google Inc. paid for the site two years ago.

At the Tokyo Game Show this week, one of the primary goals of entertainment companies is to show off the latest alternate realities for game players to lose themselves in. Such escapism is understandable, given the sickly state of the real world's financial institutions. But lurking in the shadows like a Ninja is the question of whether gamers will be able to afford new hardware and software during the upcoming holiday season.

Microsoft Corp. will be releasing games developed by top Japanese designers for its Xbox 360 console, a senior executive said Thursday, the latest effort by the U.S. software maker to make inroads in a market where it has long struggled.

Microsoft Office Labs released Tuesday its Touchless SDK for developers to experiment with multi-touch technology.

The battle over e-readers is heating up rapidly, thanks to new hardware entries from the world's two leading e-book manufacturers and the surprising popularity of e-book software on Apple's iPhone and iPod touch. Although the total number of e-books is still well short of a single Steven King press run, the next-generation devices point to a steadily maturing market for digital literature.

A jury on Friday acquitted the former top lawyer at computer-security software maker McAfee Inc. of illegally tampering with his stock option grants to boost his pay package.