After months of resistance, retailer Circuit City opened up its books for Blockbuster to complete the process of due diligence to acquire the consumer electronics retailer.

Blockbuster made a public offer in April of up to US$1.33 billion to buy Circuit City, in a deal that would allow the movie rental company to put media content on electronic devices. Blockbuster offered $6 to $8 per share in cash for Circuit City, depending on the results of a check of Circuit City's books.

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Japan's Cultural Affairs Agency has proposed adding a fee to the price of Apple iPods and other digital music and video devices to partially compensate rights holders for revenues lost to piracy.

The proposal represents an extension of an existing program that adds the fee to the price of blank recordable media and products such as MiniDisc recorders. Consumers end up paying an additional few tens of yens (tens of U.S. cents) for media under the scheme that started in 1992.

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A U.S. judge has ruled on a nearly US$111 million copyright-infringement decision against TorrentSpy.com, the BitTorrent peer-to-peer search site.

Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles awarded the judgment to the Motion Picture Association of America, the MPAA announced late Wednesday. Cooper entered a default judgment against the operators of TorrentSpy in December, saying they had destroyed evidence related to an MPAA lawsuit against them.

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Many discarded electronic devices in the U.S. wind up being dismantled overseas using crude and unsafe methods, partly because of a lack of markets for some electronic materials, e-waste experts told a congressional committee on Wednesday.

Despite major recycling efforts by several electronics manufacturers, some recycling programs send electronics waste to developing nations in Asia and Africa, where devices are dismantled using hammers and plastics are burned to separate out the metal components, said Ted Smith, chairman of the Electronics Take-Back Coalition, a group that pushes for responsible recycling.

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Rather than just let tourists wander aimlessly on a sightseeing excursion, hoping to stumble upon the next landmark, one city has a better idea. Spearheaded by the Cambridge, Massachusetts, Office for Tourism, the city's new Web site features downloadable audio tours.

"Almost the minute we finished with the Web site, we were approached by Michael Epstein and his group at Untravel Media to do a mobile walking tour that would be downloadable," said Robyn Bell, executive director of the Cambridge Office for Tourism. Untravel Media, in Boston, produced the tour, which can be downloaded to a Window's Mobile 5.0 enabled phone, video iPod or other MP3 devices.

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Dell on Friday said it has stopped shipment of two Vostro laptop models in Europe after discovering a faulty keyboard design with a few keys out of place.

A Dell customer in the U.K., who ordered the Vostro 1310, noticed that the bottom row of letters on the keyboard was shifted to the right. That's because the left Shift key is oversized and a new key, \, is placed between the Shift and Z keys, moving the entire row so that it doesn't comply with a traditional keyboard layout.

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Ironically, Lee Loree loses sleep over his invention, the Sleeptracker.

Loree, 35, gave up a career as a stockbroker in Atlanta about eight years ago to work on the device -- a wristwatch and software system designed to record a person's sleep pattern.

The idea came from someone else's dream. Loree remembers staying up late one night with a penlight reading an analyst's report for his job when his wife started a lucid, friendly chat. When Loree later woke her just a few minutes later, her tone had changed.

"The other time I woke her up, she was miserable," Loree said. "It just flashed in my brain that if I can figure out a way to get people up when they naturally want to get up, getting up in the morning can be much easier."

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The deadline Microsoft gave Yahoo for making a deal or facing a proxy fight came and went this weekend without a word from either party. But even if Microsoft doesn't succeed now in its bid for Yahoo, the company made clear last week, both in private meetings with reporters and in public comments, that it's determined -- come hell or high water -- to move forward with its services strategy.

In the thick of its battle for Yahoo, some Microsoft executives made time to host reporters at the Redmond, Washington, campus, and provided a snapshot of the company's strategy. A common thread woven through many of the meetings, which included discussions about Microsoft's evolving development platform, Windows Server, virtualization and security, was Microsoft's "software plus services" strategy.

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Xerox's research arm Monday showcased its latest innovations, including erasable paper and tools that make documents "smart" by adding a deeper meaning to words and images.

Since its establishment in 1970, the Palo Alto Research Center, funded by Xerox, has created numerous technologies available on PCs today, including Ethernet, the graphical user interface (GUI) and the computer mouse. The laboratory, with other Xerox research facilities, is now trying to help its parent company and other start-ups by focusing on printing and other innvoations to access, use and secure electronic documents.

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Want to save power, paper, printer ink, and--oh, yeah--the earth, too? These simple hints will make your computing life more eco-friendly--and cheaper.

With Earth Day being celebrated in April, you're probably thinking about the different ways you can do your bit for the environment. Well, if you're reading this, it's a pretty safe bet you're using a computer, and computers generate waste in all kinds of ways. But by changing just a few habits, you can keep more stuff out of landfills, save energy, and even tuck a few extra dollars in your wallet. Here are five ideas to get you started.