Mobile phones are proving the saviour of the struggling music industry and could be the vital springboard needed to propel the business finally into digital sales, industry experts have said.

Smart sniffer robots able to detect chemical leaks, drugs or explosives are set to become a step closer to reality thanks to a new algorithm, scientists report.

US President George W. Bush said new technologies were ushering in a "post-Kyoto" era on how to feed energy-hungry economies on a climate-friendly diet of alternatives to oil.

The most dense computer memory circuit ever fabricated -- capable of storing around 2,000 words in a unit the size of a white blood cell -- was unveiled by scientists in California.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has defended legal action launched against two Malaysian bloggers, saying the Internet was not exempt from defamation laws, a report said.

Singapore has launched a contest to build a robot that can operate autonomously in urban warfare conditions, moving in and out of buildings to search and destroy targets like a human soldier.

Yahoo said its 2006 profits plunged by more than half from the prior year even as revenues rose from the Internet search giant's newly revamped advertising platform.

South Korea gave partial approval to an investment project by Hynix Semiconductor, to expand microchip production lines, officials said.

Shares in SAP, the world's leading maker of business software, have tumbled on the stock exchange here after the group warned that profitability could decline slightly this year.

Microsoft Corp will extend the free support period for its Windows XP Home Edition until after 2010 in response to consumer appeals.

STMicroelectronics, a leading maker of semiconductors, has reported a profit surge in 2006 but issued a warning for the first quarter of this year, and its shares fell sharply.

Live music and Internet-based social networking sites YouTube and MySpace are helping break new music acts -- but video games are the latest new cool music space.

China could overtake the United States to have the world's largest number of Internet users in two years, according to state media.

It's bad news for music enthusiasts! A world where music-lovers can buy from Apple's iTunes or any of the hundreds of online music stores and services, then listen to it the way they want, looks a long way off.