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Lazy shoppers who see an ad for a music CD that they like can buy it instantly by snapping a photo with a camera phone, thanks to a new service now available in Japan.

The 'ER Search' service links a mobile phone with image recognition software via a 3G network to a server which hosts a database of CD covers.

Microsoft is now accepting Bitcoin. According to Microsoft's payments site, the digital currency can be used to purchase software, apps, games, movies, TV shows, music and other digital content from the Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox Games, Xbox Music, or Xbox Video stores. Microsoft is the world's largest software company.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson has denied any direct connection between HD DVD and Digg, but evidence discovered by Texyt.com appears to contradict this. The HD DVD Promotion Group's sponsorship of his company, Revision3, “is no way connected to anything that's on Digg”, Adelson claimed

While the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project has taken on the aura of a charity – if you believe what you read in the mainstream media – the hard numbers tell a different story. Analysts say the component suppliers that have taken a gamble on the project stand a fair chance of coming out winners.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has imposed penalties on a distributor that it alleges helped Grand Theft Auto publisher, Take-Two Interactive, inflate revenue reports. Despite this, investigations continue into the events, which took place between 2000 and 2003, the SEC announced yesterday.

The games distributor, Capitol Distributing, did not admit or deny the allegations, but accepted various, apparently minor, restrictions on its behavior. The company's founder was fined $50,000.

SEC documents released in the case describe how games and cash were exchanged in the complex accounting scheme that added more than $5 million to Take-Two's apparent revenue.

Vietnam faces near total disconnection from the Internet because thieves are stealing the country's international telecoms cables, says a telecoms executive.

After a gang carted off fiber optic lines earlier this month, the country now relies on a single link to Hong Kong for 90 percent of its international internet and telephone traffic, warned Nguyen Huu Khanh.

A folding oven woven out of soft cloth could be on sale as early as next year predict scientists who demonstrated a prototype today. Despite weighing only a few hundred grams, the lightweight electrical oven can be made hot enough to roast chicken, according to the researchers who developed it.

Thin and flexible conductive elements are woven into the oven's highly heat-resistant fabric, said the researchers, who demonstrated the folding kitchen appliance to reporters at a restaurant in Taiwan today.

Male infidelity is a fact of life and women are at increased risk of AIDS because governments refuse to accept this reality, a new Columbia University study says. The report's authors say society should get real about the 'monogamy myth' and work to make extramarital sex safer, instead of just trying to prevent it.

Studies around the world showed married women at heightened risk of infection with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, because of the public and official state of denial.