San Francisco - Apple launched what it said was the world's first talking music player on Wednesday and said that the new device was the smallest iPod ever.

Apple said that the new iPod shuffle was smaller than an AA battery and that its voice feature would allow it to announce song and device information to the user.

The new 4 gigabyte gizmo holds up to 1,000 songs and is easier to use than previous versions with all of the controls located on the earphone cord, Apple said.

Nokia is making discussions with top music content providers plus music companies with the intention to launch virtual music stores in the Indian market.  

Mr. Chandan Dang, Nokia India Regional General Manager (North), said that Finnish giant is joining hands with around 150 music companies, which includes Universal Music, Warner Bros, Sony BMG and other national music leaders.

Paris  - Intel, the giant US chip manufacturer, plans to pursue research efforts for future technology for high performance computers in France, in cooperation with the French Commission for Atomic Energy (CEA,) the French government said late Friday.

The University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin near Paris is to be involved in the project, the presidential offices said after a meeting between President Nicolas Sarkozy and Intel board chairman Craig Barrett.

To strengthen its presence in the Indian market, Airtel along with Research In Motion (RIM) rolled out a new service plan for Airtel customers.

The new service plan, named BlackBerry® Personal Mail allows Airtel customers to enjoy unlimited email and instant messaging (IM) on BlackBerry® smartphone at a monthly charge of just Rs 499.

It is the first service plan, which is priced below Rs 500 to offer unlimited email and IM to Indian BlackBerry smartphone customers.

Hanover, Germany  - Amid forecasts of a sharp slump in worldwide sales of personal computers, executives gathered Monday in the German city of Hanover for CeBIT, one of the top annual fairs in the tech industry.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of the US state of California were to attend inauguration ceremonies Monday evening before business at the six-day fair begins on Tuesday.

The development and production versions of IBM Information Management database servers, IBM Lotus content management, and IBM WebSphere portal and middleware products would now be getting pay-as-you-go access by IBM and Amazon.