San Francisco - Amazon.com posted an 18-per-cent boost in sales and a 24 per cent rise in profits as the online retail giant shrugged off the effects of the economic downturn.

The Seattle-based retailer said that it earned 177 million dollars in the first quarter, compared to 143 million dollars a year ago. Sales were up to 4.89 billion dollars compared to 4.13 billion dollars a year ago.

According to a security advisory posted by Mozilla on Tuesday, the recently-released third update of Firefox 3 - Firefox 3.0.9 - patches as many as 12 security vulnerabilities, four of which can be termed 'critical'.

So far as general bugs are concerned, Firefox 3.0.9 - weighing 17.2 MB, and available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux - fixes problems such as long time taken to submit big forms; non-display of inline image attachments in webmail services, and the loss of cookies.

San Francisco  - Internet portal Yahoo said Tuesday that it planned to cut 5 per cent of its workforce as the company struggles with the economic downturn and the dominance of Google in internet search.

Yahoo announced the job cuts as it reported quarterly income of 118 million dollars, down 78 per cent from a year ago but still above analysts' expectations. Sales for the Silicon Valley company fell 13 per cent to 1.6 billion dollars.

The company said the job cuts will affect between 600 and 700 workers, about the same number that were axed last year in an earlier bid to shore up profits.

MindTree Limited, a Rs 800-crore software and R&D services company, has entered into a global strategic alliance with Skytap Inc, a leading provider of cloud-based virtual lab solutions.

According to company officials, the partnership enables MindTree's customers to scale test labs on-demand through Skytap's virtual lab solution, resulting in reduced IT costs, accelerated lab provisioning, and effective collaboration among global teams.

Skytap provides testing teams with a complete virtual lab solution over the Web.

London, Apr 20: Recession has certainly changed how we surfed web, for instead of buying something, people are searching ways to save money.

Three years ago it was Armani, oysters and buy-to-let mortgages and today its Primark, grow-your-own veg and flat shares among the most searched topics on Internet.

The ongoing credit crisis has reduced people''s interest in organic food and they are now looking for ways to save money by using cheaper cuts of meat.

According to the Google Chrome Program Manager, Anthony Laforge, in the Thursday-released Chrome 2.0.174.0 update, the open source browser now includes a new feature that enables the users the "ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab Page." Earlier, the option was accessible in default mode.