This was a big IT news week, with the massive earthquake in China on Monday showing once again the role that the Internet plays in connecting us all, in good times and bad, and the importance of telecommunication, particularly for rural areas. HP opened the week with word that it is buying EDS. And the Microsoft-Yahoo saga was back in headlines, thanks to investor Carl Icahn, who hasn't enjoyed a good proxy fight lately and so decided to try to shake up Yahoo's board.

Former One Laptop Per Child President of software and content Walter Bender has launched Sugar Labs, an organization that will promote the development of the open-source user interface originally developed for the XO laptop.

Are your virtual machines under-utilized? New white paper from virtualization tools vendor Embotics estimates that on average, an environment of 150 VMs has anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 locked up in redundant VMs.

Less than a year after the Kenya ICT board started operating, it is facing a second round of allegations of conflict of interest.

Telecommunication equipment provider Ericsson and African mobile service provider Zain are working together to stimulate demand for mobile-phone services and connect thousands of people in rural areas in Africa.

The Communications Authority of Zambia (CAZ) lost a bid in the Lusaka High Court to give a license to an unnamed international mobile-phone company to become the country's fourth mobile-service provider.

Qualcomm on Friday announced it has acquired 40 MHz of U.K. spectrum in the 1.4 GHz band. It will initially be used for the development of as-yet-unannounced wireless broadband technologies.

Faced with the challenge of prosecuting people who use mobile phones to send hate messages, the Kenyan Parliament has made a bold step to make sure all subscribers register their numbers.

The former chairman and CEO of PurchasePro.com, a business-to-business software broker that died during the dot-com bust, has been found guilty of securities fraud, witness tampering and other crimes, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

Vodafone is acquiring ZYB, a Danish company that has developed a social networking and online management tool for backing-up and sharing contact and calendar information online. Vodafone announced the ¬31.5 million (US$48.7 million) deal Friday.

Now's a smart time to revisit your enterprise disaster recovery plans. Thanks to techniques including virtualization, WAN optimization and email backup appliances, CIOs have better disaster recovery options and more negotiating power with vendors.

The One Laptop Per Child Project and Microsoft plan to make both Windows and Linux available on a version of the project's XO laptop, the companies said Thursday.

Yahoo has responded to investor Carl Icahn's threat to take control of Yahoo's board and force it back to the negotiating table with Microsoft. The search company said Icahn's proposal shows "a significant misunderstanding" of how it handled Microsoft's offer, and argued that Yahoo's current board remains "the best and most qualified group" to handle its affairs.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn's proxy fight for Yahoo is aimed at reigniting merger talks between the Internet company and Microsoft, but he may have to prepare a backup plan in case Microsoft is unwilling to return to the bargaining table.

Merger and acquisition news this week from Hewlett-Packard, EDS, Comcast, Plaxo, CBS and CNET -- along with Carl Icahn's battle to get a Yahoo-Microsoft deal back on track -- stoked IT investor excitement and vendor share values.

The industry momentum for data portability brotherhood hit a bump on Thursday when Facebook blocked Google's Friend Connect service from accessing Facebook members' data.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has voted to investigate complaints by two U.S. companies that 18 other companies are violating their patent for semiconductor chips containing tungsten metal.

How can even small-scale virtual server efforts reduce your enterprise's power consumption? Two IT leaders share their results on energy and cost savings.

On Europe's roomy, comfortable long-distance trains, I feel so at home that the low, rhythmic rumbling along the track often makes me want to fall asleep.

Awa Sawadogo, who works for the Songtaaba Yalgré Association shea-butter trade group in Burkina Faso, never went to school. But she is a key member of the group, learning and using technology to produce a newsletter on association activities and the production of "bio" shea butter, which, thanks to the Internet, is becoming an important, money-generating export for women in rural villages in the country.