California,United States

Facebook Connect and OS 3.0 are coming to Apple's iPhone, and there are rumors of more additions.

Late last week, Apple issued invitations for a special event Tuesday in Cupertino, Calif., to discuss its new operating system and a new software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone. A variety of rumors have been populating the Web in anticipation of the OS 3.0 release.

Background Processing, Search, Copy and Paste

With few exceptions, tech companies that get tagged with the dinosaur label have a hard time shaking it. Executives at eBay are making a concerted effort to keep their company off the list.

From the head offices for Mozilla in Mountain View, Calif., executives can see Google in several directions. The search giant's sprawling Googleplex buildings dominate the landscape. "We are physically surrounded by Google," says Mitchell Baker, who became chair of the Mozilla Foundation after stepping down from its chief executive post last year.

Trendy California isn't a trendsetter when it comes to relying on cell phones. And while the 1987 movie "Wall Street" helped introduce the then-brick-sized mobile phone to popular culture, New York and other Northeast states lag in dropping landlines. Surprisingly, Oklahoma and Utah lead in going wireless, according to federal estimates released Wednesday.

They're busy dusting off the chairs and sweeping the stage in the big auditorium on Apple's corporate campus. Around the country, iPhone-geek journalists are getting ready to descend on Cupertino, Calif., lured by Thursday's e-mail announcement of an "Apple event" on Tuesday, March 17. Details are scant, but the company is promising "an advance preview of what we're building" for an upcoming iPhone 3.0 software release.

The event is scheduled to get under way at 10 a.m. Pacific time in Building 4, Town Hall, and a number of tech Web sites have promised live blogging and Twittering.

I'm typically cynical when it comes to the promises of government reform packages, but it seems like almost everyday there's another great project that is at least indirectly benefitting from the stimulus bill. Here's today's example.

For users of computers and mobile phones in big U.S. cities, Yelp has become a popular Web site for ranting, raving or just reading about local businesses, from the auto mechanic to the neighborhood bar.

Built almost entirely on five million reviews by zealous volunteers, the five-year-old San Francisco company shows how the Internet can amplify the voices of individuals to provide useful information to the community.

An IT professional employed by Internet company Mahalo.com has been sentenced to four years in jail and is the first person in the nation to plead guilty to wiretapping charges in connection with the use of botnets.

John Schiefer, 26, of Los Angeles will begin his sentence June 1 after an investigation by the FBI called Operation Bot Roast II found Schiefer was involved in several scams.

The spin-off formed by California chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices and Advanced Technology Investment Company, a development fund owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, has officially launched as Globalfoundries, the company announced Wednesday.

Globalfoundries, a semiconductor company formed between the two companies after more than a year of planning, will be led by Chief Executive Doug Grose, AMD's former senior vice president of technology and manufacturing, and Chairman Hector Ruiz, formerly chairman of AMD.

Tech-savvy road warriors are enjoying a new era of hand-held computing as more sophisticated smartphone software floods the market.

The iPhone, in particular, has amassed more than 900 applications targeting business or leisure travelers. Many applications are free, and others range from 99 cents to $19.99.