Italy

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.

Free video to mobile phones became reality on Wednesday in cell phone-crazy Italy, where Vodafone users with certain late-generation smart phones can now watch video content from Internet TV operator Babelgum, free of data charges.

The twinning of Babelgum's content with Vodafone's service is a next step toward realizing the full promise of smart phones, which integrate the Internet with the mobile phone.

The Italian launch will be followed by the rollout in Britain on Thursday, with other countries, including the United States, to follow, Babelgum said.

Microsoft launched its New Xbox Experience on Wednesday, expanding the existing service to compete with Sony in turning the video-game console into an entertainment hub.

Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, said the New Xbox Experience is the future for home entertainment. "It's on-demand, it's high-definition, it's always social, it's all in one place," he said.

A 'Personal Game Room'

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.