Thomson Reuters Group Ltd

With the stakes high in Microsoft's bid to add its search engine to the iPhone, a few words of praise by the software giant's CEO have drawn a considerable amount of attention.

"Apple's done a very nice job that allows people to monetize and commercialize their intellectual property" in the App Store, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a University of Washington audience last week.

Playing Bing-o

Coming soon to an iPhone near you -- a selection of new movies? Netflix, the pioneer of home DVD delivery that recently stated streaming movies online and onto game consoles, appears to be testing the waters for an iPhone app.

A single-question e-mail survey began reaching Netflix users this week trying to gauge interest in such an app.

App May Not Have 3G

Londres y Tel Aviv tensan de nuevo sus relaciones debido a un caso de espionaje de la inteligencia israelí. El Foreign Office ha llamado a consultas al embajador de Israel en Londres, Ron Prosor, para "compartir información" sobre el robo y falsificación de seis pasaportes británicos que terminaron en manos de los presuntos asesinos del líder de Hamás, Mahmud al Mabhuh, después de que en los ochenta otro caso de contraespionaje -esa vez en Alemania- provocase la misma reacción de Reino Unido.

El diario The New York Times investiga a uno de sus periodistas económicos sospechoso de haber plagiado palabras y pasajes publicados, entre otros, por el Wall Street Journal o la agencia Reuters.

Cisco Systems Inc. blew past its own forecast for the latest quarter, reporting its first sales increase in a year as it left the recession behind.

Improvement was dramatic "across the board," CEO John Chambers said Wednesday. "The recovery, from a capital spending perspective, is very strong."

The company also provided an outlook for the current quarter that was far above analyst expectations.

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday its earnings in the most recent quarter jumped 60 percent, as a rebound in the personal computer industry drove sales of the company's latest Windows operating system.

But results in Microsoft's other divisions show that while consumers have resumed spending on new PCs, big corporations have not.

Amazon.com Inc.'s fourth-quarter earnings skyrocketed 71 percent, as shoppers spent more than ever during a holiday season that improved over the previous year for retailers on and off the Web.

Despite the sluggish economy, Amazon did well throughout the year, drawing shoppers with its Kindle e-reader and deals on an immense selection of goods ranging from alarm clocks to stuffed zebras.

Netflix Inc.'s fourth-quarter profit surged 36 percent as its DVD-by-mail service surpassed 12 million subscribers, and the company announced an upbeat outlook for 2010 that sent its shares soaring Wednesday.

The results reflect the growing popularity of Netflix plans that bundle DVD rentals with unlimited video streaming over the Internet for as little as $9 per month.

Netflix added more than 1.1 million customers during the quarter -- the most in any three-month period during its 11-year history.

Maybe AT&T's new slogan should be "More books in more places." The phone company added a near-record 2.7 million wireless customers in the last quarter, defying expectations with the help of new e-reading devices.

AT&T said Thursday it added 1 million non-phone devices with built-in cellular service in the fourth quarter. AT&T has deals to support the latest version of Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle, Sony Corp.'s Reader and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook.

El presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, anunciará hoy (a partir de las 3 de la madrugada en España) durante su primer discurso del estado de la nación que el proyecto de reforma sanitaria que busca dar cobertura médica universal sigue en pie, y pedirá al Congreso que no renuncie a aprobar un proyecto único con el consenso bipartidista de demócratas y republicanos, según algunos extractos del discurso a los que ha tenido acceso la agencia Reuters.