Microsoft is laying off another 800 people, adding to the 5,000 the company has already let go this year.

The Techflash blog first reported the news.

The affected people are based around the world and work in various groups and will be notified on Wednesday, Microsoft said.

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T-Mobile USA has restored voice and data services to users after an eight-hour outage that affected nearly 1.7 million subscribers. "T-Mobile confirms it has fully restored voice and text/picture messaging services for customers affected by intermittent service disruptions on Tuesday," the company said in a statement posted on Wednesday at 1:25 a.m., Eastern time.

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Back on October 19th, a company called Spring Design introduced an e-reader called Alex. It had two significant features in common with Barnes & Noble's Nook, which was introduced a day later: Both sport a large monochrome e-ink screen and a smaller touch-sensitive color display below, and both run Google's Android OS.

Spring Design is now saying that the similarity is too close for comfort, and that it's suing Barnes & Noble.

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Verizon Wireless will open many of its 2,000 retail stores early on Friday for first day sales of the Droid smartphone, adding to the marketing hype already begun for the Android 2.0 device from Motorola Inc.

Some stores will open at 7 a.m. and others at 8 a.m. A list of stores is available on Verizon's Web site although the site doesn't say which will open earlier and advises calling the store in advance to be sure. The QWERTY keyboard slider device sells for $200 after a rebate and a new two-year contract.

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