San Francisco  - Amazon released a new version Monday of its highly successful electronic book reader Kindle, just days after Google said it would make available large parts of its vast catalogue of scanned books to smartphone users.

The new 359-dollar Amazon device will hold up to 1,500 books, boasts 25 per cent better battery life than its predecessor and includes a "talk to me" feature that reads books aloud.

San Francisco  - More than 200,000 state workers were forced to take unpaid leave Friday, in a bid by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to preserve the state's rapidly dwindling cash reserves.

Schwarzenegger's order requires the state employees to take two Fridays off without pay every month, a move that is designed to save some 1.4 billion dollars through June 2010, the end of the next fiscal year.

San Francisco  - Google announced a new mapping feature Wednesday that allows people's locations to be featured on Google maps in 27 countries. While the new application could be helpful in locating friends, or for parents keeping track of their teenagers, it also raises serious privacy issues, experts say.

The new feature, called Latitude, allows people-tracking via the internet and smartphones such as Blackberry, Google Android, Windows Mobile and Nokia. It will soon be available via the iPhone.

San Francisco - The world's eighth largest economy started issuing IOU (I-owe-you) vouchers instead of checks Monday as an ongoing budget battle and a
42-billion-dollar deficit left the state without enough cash to meet its commitments.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was meeting with legislators in a bid to resolve the standoff that has prevented the state from passing a budget. State comptroller John Ching has warned that the state could completely run out of cash by the end of this month if a solution is not found.

Brussels/San Francisco  - Academics and armchair explorers were as of Monday offered a unique insight into the world's seas through a new release of Google Earth, which now also features satellite imagery, photos and videos of the planet's oceans.

The 5.0 version of the popular downloadable software was launched in San Francisco. The project was also presented in a number of European cities, including Brussels, where the European Commission is contributing by providing its own marine data.

San Francisco  - California is facing its "worst drought ever" after an extremely dry January left the crucial Sierra Nevada snowpack well below normal levels for the third year running, state officials said Friday.

"We may be at the start of the worst California drought in modern history," Lester Snow, director of the state Department of Water Resources, said in a statement. "It's imperative for Californians to conserve water immediately at home and in their businesses."