Apple has decided against investing some $3.8 billion in Samsung, citing the increasing "anti-Samsung sentiment [that] has recently deepened among some political and civic groups," according to an anonymous Samsung official. Details of the fallout were reported Saturday in the financial paper Korea Economic Daily.

Apple reportedly buys about 40 percent of Samsung's flash memory for its popular Nano and Shuffle iPods. This has caused several Korean competitors to publicly complain in the media of a "favorable arrangement" and accuse the two companies of collusion, with the Korean Fair Trade Commission looking into the allegations.

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The country of Nigeria said on Friday it would begin working with Microsoft to combat Internet crime originating in its country. The agreement marks the first time the Redmond company is working with an African country on such issues.

Nigerian moneymaking e-mail scams are probably the oldest and most well known spam on the Internet, which the government for a long time let occur without much intervention.

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REVIEW Ask many an audiophile what their number one complaint about digital music is, and you'd likely get the same answer from just about everyone: quality.

The door has been left wide open for a high-fidelity music download service, and with the further ubiquity of broadband and larger capacity digital music players, file size is no longer an issue.

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Add Yahoo to the list of possible suitors for America Online. Two financial outlets, TheStreet.com and the Wall Street Journal, reported on Friday that the company has shown interest in buying a stake in AOL from Time Warner.

Like MSN, Yahoo is eyeing AOL as another avenue to expand the reach of its search engine. However, unlike its smaller rival, antitrust regulators would likely review such a deal more carefully, as it would combine the two largest properties on the Web today.

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It's back to the courtroom for Microsoft and Google, as the two companies are scheduled for a hearing Friday in California. Earlier in the day, a judge tentatively stayed Google's lawsuit against Microsoft over the hiring of Kai-Fu Lee, striking a blow to the search giant's case.

Originally, Google had filed suit against Microsoft in a California state court to ask that Lee's former Microsoft contract be voided. The case was moved to Federal court in August. Separately, the companies have already met in a Washington state court, which ruled that Lee's hiring may stand, but placed restrictions on his activities within Google.

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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates joined fellow industry leaders Friday including Dell, Intel and Cisco in asking Congress to speed up the transition to digital television and open up the radio spectrum currently used by TV for wireless broadband services.

In a letter to United States lawmakers, the High Tech DTV Coalition said that freeing the spectrum would give more opportunity for technology companies to roll out services in rural and poor areas. Certain parts of the spectrum would be provided to first-responders, while the rest is auctioned off.

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Toyota plans to notify buyers of its Prius hybrid that the car could potentially stall out while driving due to a software bug in the Electronic Control Module (ECM). The problem affects approximately 75,000 cars, although only 33 official complaints have been lodged thus far.

Due to the bug, the Prius' gasoline engine could stall out while driving between 35 and 65 miles per hour. However, the car's electric engine would take over, enabling a driver to safely reach the side of the road. Upon stopping, the gasoline engine would properly restart, Toyota says.

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Sony has once again issued a major software update to its PlayStation Portable handheld entertainment console, which adds support for downloading and playing copy-protected content on the PSP. Version 2.5 also builds upon the Web browser feature that debuted in 2.0 with support for saving text size and online forms.

PSP software version 2.5 can be downloaded using the console's built-in update feature, or using a PC with Sony's MemoryStick Duo. The update is only for customers who own PSP system model number PSP-1001 sold in North America. It's not clear when a European update will ship.

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Following 16 reports of battery packs for its laptops overheating and melting, Hewlett-Packard on Friday announced a recall of 135,000 batteries used by certain HP and Compaq branded notebooks. The affected packs were sold from March 2004 through May 2005 at retail stores and online.

The recall includes batteries that contain a barcode label starting with GC, IA, L0 or L1. Customers may contact HP customer support directly to request a free replacement, or visit the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Web site for more information.

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Viacom subsidiary MTV Networks has agreed to purchase iFilm, a site that hosts video content from users, amateur filmmakers and some larger movie studios. The deal, valued at $49 million, will keep iFilm CEO Blair Harrison in place and the company will remain in Hollywood.

iFilm joins the growing number of online efforts by MTV. The company recently purchased youth community Neopets and launched MTV Uber, a 24-hour Web based music channel. "This move is at the heart of MTV Networks multi-platform strategy and meshes with our tradition of cultivating independent and creative brands," said Judy McGrath, MTV Networks CEO.

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As reported earlier in the week, Microsoft released the second major update to Windows XP Media Center Edition, and Xbox 360 is playing a central role. With the console and a Media Center PC, users will have the ability to stream multimedia from the computer to anywhere in the home.

The feature is made possible through the inclusion of Media Center Extender in every Xbox 360. Microsoft hopes that the new functionality will drive not only Xbox sales, but PC sales as well.

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Samsung has plead guilty to charges of price fixing computer memory and will pay a $300 million fine to settle the case, the U.S. Department of Justice said late Thursday.

The decision revolves around the company's actions from 1999 to 2002 where it colluded with other memory chipmakers to keep prices artificially high. Memory remained expensive even while the tech industry crumbled, raising eyebrows at the Justice Department and spurring an investigation in 2002.

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Digital photo buffs that find themselves shelling out a lot of money to have actual prints of their images may be in luck. Australia-based Faces.com officially launched in the United States on Thursday, giving these prolific digital photographers a low-cost option to store and print their photos.

Storing photos will be free on the service, which offers users 500MB of space for each account. Users will be able to download a program, called PhotoSync, that would sync their My Pictures folder with their account.

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Mozilla's Firefox developers aren't the only open source programmers migrating to the

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With the advent of social networking sites, becoming more popular is as easy as crafting a few lines of JavaScript code, it seems.

One clever MySpace user looking to expand his buddy list recently figured out how to force others to become his friend, and ended up creating the first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. In less than 24 hours, "Samy" had amassed over 1 million friends on the popular online community.

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