It’s already clear that traditional retailers had disappointing (if expected) Black Friday sales. Now its emerged firms with real-world physical stores generally didn’t share in the success of online-only stores.

Just two weeks after a rogue hosting firm’s closure slashed spam levels by 70 percent, unsolicited e-mails are back on the rise. The world’s biggest spam network appears to have risen from the dead and laughed in the faces of feeble humans attempting to prevent its return.

The launch of the first BlackBerry with a touchscreen has apparently seen strong early sales. But most of the buzz has been about a particularly scathing review from a major mainstream source.

We’re coming up to the first Christmas since the high-definition DVD format wars ended, but tech and business analysts are divided about how well Blu-ray will perform in holiday sales. Some point to cash-strapped consumers being wary of splashing out, while other say Blu-ray players have hit the tipping point for mass adoption.

A Montreal resident has been fined $873 million by a San Jose court for sending spams through a popular social networking site. But Adam Guerbuez is probably going to feel more pain from the other element of his court punishment: a lifetime ban from Facebook.

Barack Obama has yet to take office, but he’s already seen the first job losses of his presidency. Fortunately it’s nothing to do with policy decisions: the newly unemployed are workers caught snooping through Obama’s cellphone records.

A 19-year-old man from Florida has committed suicide while appearing live on a webcam. Abraham Briggs, Jr. appears to have continued posting on a bodybuilding message board while dying from an overdose of prescription medicine.

IBM is teaming with five universities to develop a computer with similar reasoning to the human brain. The ambitious project is getting part of its funding from a $4.9 million government grant.

Microsoft says it is still interested in an advertising deal with struggling search rival Yahoo. However, its boss has firmly ruled out any possibility of a full-fledged takeover.

Details of the third version of the USB system are now available. It will run around 10 times as quickly as USB 2.0 – but comes too late for the launch of Windows 7.

The firm which produces the chips in most smartphones will use a Linux system when it enters the netbook market. ARM has announced a deal to use Ubuntu, one of the most popular versions of the open source operating system.

A British couple have divorced over a long-running saga involving their respective Second Life characters. It appears a woman scorned will forgive visits to a virtual prostitute but not genuine cyber-affection.

Spam levels have reportedly dropped by as much as 70 percent in the two days after a web hosting firm used by criminals was dropped by its internet service providers. McColo lost its access after an investigation by the Washington Post.

The Supreme Court has given the go-ahead for the US navy to use sonar for training off the California coast. The verdict rejects concerns from environmental groups, which argued sonar threatened the lives of mammals such as whales.

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has stopped sending signals back to Earth after five months. Scientists believe it has likely frozen to the robot equivalent of death.

Californian researchers have found spammers may get responses from as few as one in 12.5 million people. Yet the sheer scale of some spam operations means this could be enough to run a multi-million dollar business.

AT&T has revealed Tuesday’s election fever prompted the biggest spike in text messaging in the company’s history. It’s further evidence of how the momentous occasion highlighted modern communication technologies.