France

Google's Android App Market will begin selling applications early this year. Google had promised a way for developers to earn cash for their applications.

Apple's App Store lets developers keep 70 percent of the revenue generated from application sales. RIM's Blackberry Application Store promises to give developers 80 percent of the revenue when its store launches in March.

British retailer Tesco entered the U.S. market only last year but already it has managed to put Wal-Mart, the world's No. 1 retailer, on the defensive. Tesco fired the first salvo, in a battle that retailing analysts expect will intensify, by launching Fresh & Easy, a chain of 10,000-square-foot convenience stores, in cities across California, Nevada, and Arizona in November 2007. Eleven months later, Wal-Mart returned fire, taking on Tesco in Arizona with the debut of the similar-size Marketside, its first new store format in a decade.

For seven years, AirData, a small wireless operator in Stuttgart, did something the largest German mobile operators, including T-Mobile, were unwilling to do: It delivered broadband Internet to consumers in remote corners of the country.

But at the end of 2007, AirData's license to use the 2.6 gigahertz band expired after the country's regulator, Bundesnetzagentur, deemed AirData's service inappropriate for the frequency, which it wanted to reserve for mobile phone, not broadband, services.

It's been a grim month for Nuclear Power, always a contentious issue for greens, power from the atom has taken two steps back as South African utility Eskom announce plans to cancel their tendering process for new nuclear plant in South Africa.

Regulators in France have put a stop to France Telecom's Orange being the only carrier selling Apple's iPhone in France. The Counseil de la Concurrence, the French Council on Competitiveness, acted after another carrier, Bouyges Telecom, filed a complaint.

The council asked Apple to cease its exclusivity deal with Orange and allow other carriers to offer service for the iPhone while regulators further investigate. Orange offers the iPhone in several countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and had been exclusively selling the iPhone in France since July.

I’ve spent the weekend out in the cold, and as I sit here sipping a glass of hot wate

IBM plans to buy Transitive to help its customers cut costs. Big Blue announced Tuesday that it will acquire the Los Gatos, Calif.-based virtualization-software company for an undisclosed amount.

Since January, IBM has been using Transitive's technology in its IBM PowerVMTM software, which consolidates customers' Linux workloads onto IBM systems.

IBM plans to buy Transitive to help its customers cut costs. Big Blue announced Tuesday that it will acquire the Los Gatos, Calif.-based virtualization-software company for an undisclosed amount.

Since January, IBM has been using Transitive's technology in its IBM PowerVMTM software, which consolidates customers' Linux workloads onto IBM systems.

Most people in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West think of China and India largely as sources for inexpensive products and services. Few know that China, India, and other developing countries are taking center stage in the global war for innovation and talent.

When Google began hiring in Zurich for its new engineering center in 2004, local officials welcomed the U.S. company with open arms. Google's arrival is still bearing fruit for Zurich: 450 employees, about 300 of them engineers, work in Google's seven-story complex in a converted brewery on the outskirts of the placid mountain metropolis.