San Francisco  - Owners of Apple's popular iPhones have downloaded over 1 billion applications for the must-have smartphones, Apple said Friday.

The landmark download was reached just nine months after Apple launched the App Store which allows users of the iPhone to download new programs for their devices. The program has proved so popular that thousands of companies and individuals are believed to be writing applications for the phone, which Apple then distributes via the online marketplace.

San Francisco - Microsoft reported a drop in quarterly revenues Thursday for the first time in the 23 years since it went public.

But investors still gave the world largest software company their approval, sending Microsoft shares higher in after-market trading as its aggressive cost cutting measures preserved profitability.

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.

San Francisco  - A medical student who allegedly targeted women advertising erotic services on Craigslist was ordered held without bail Tuesday on charges of murder and kidnapping in a case that has captivated America.

San Francisco  - Actor Ashton Kutcher has won the great Twitter popularity contest, becoming the first contributor to the cult microblogging site to amass one million followers.

Kutcher passed the milestone early Friday morning, just half an hour before CNN reached the same mark. The two leading Twitter contributors had been in a race to pass the 1-million mark, with the winner donating 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day later this month.

Kutcher celebrated the victory in an online video feed with his actress wife Demi Moore.

San Francisco  - Internet search powerhouse Google bucked the economic downturn in the first quarter, posting an 8.9-per-cent rise in profits as revenues climbed 6.2 per cent.

The Silicon Valley-based online advertising giant earned 1.42 billion dollars in the quarter, up from 1.31 billion in the same quarter a year ago.

Revenue rose 6.2 per cent to 5.51 billion dollars but marked a 3- per-cent drop from the fourth quarter - the first time that the internet search company saw a decline in revenue between two consecutive quarters.