A social networking giant Facebook has purchase a digital book publisher Push Pop for an undisclosed amount of money. The ebook publisher was co-founded by an ex-Apple employee Mike Matas, who designed UIs and artwork for the company's Mac OS X, iPhone and iPad products. "Now we're taking our publishing technology and everything we've learned and are setting off to help design the world's largest book, Facebook," said the company in a statement on its website.

More than $250,000 is offered by Microsoft to programmers who can develop new security defense for Windows OS family to protect users against attacks that exploit the software bugs. Microsoft's Blue Hat Prize announced on Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference will pay $200,000 for the best “novel runtime mitigation technology designed to prevent the exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities.” The two runners up will receive $50,000 and a MSDN Universal subscription valued at $10,000, respectively.

Some speculations in the media say that Nokia and Microsoft may announce their new smartphone on August 17. The rumors are based on a joint invitation sent by the two companies Monday for a “party” scheduled for this date. The party will be held in Cologne, Germany. The invitation does not specify what the event will be all about. It only mentions that there will be a live act, great djs, and free grub. Still, this fact gave some feed for the speculations that the event will be crowned with the announcement of Nokia's first Windows Phone 7-based smartphone.

Google acquired The Dealmap in a move to further gain the share of a daily deals market. No terms of the deal were disclosed. Google said it was "impressed with what The Dealmap team has accomplished." "Google provides the ideal platform to help us accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission," The Dealmap said on its blog. "Joining Google will help us innovate in new and unexplored areas of commerce." The Dealmap said on Monday that its main products and services will continue "for the time being."

Adobe announced a preview version of a new application dubbed Adobe Edge meant for creating dynamic Web content using HTML5 and related open Web standards. "This is a motion and interactive tool for designers who want to build interactive Web content using Web standards," said Adobe Group Product Manager Devin Fernandez. "More workloads that were previously reserved for Flash are now being done with Web standards," Fernandez admitted. "We see that as a huge opportunity for the company, to help people take advantage of HTML5."

Verizon Wireless will pay a $10 billion dividend early next year to its stakeholders Vodafone Group Plc and Verizon Communications. According to the statement Vodafone will be paid $4.5 billion, or $1 billion less than the amount the British company's chief financial officer, Andy Halford, had said he expected as recently as June 30. The payouts will be made on the basis of the stake owned by each parent company. 45% share belongs to Vodafone while the rest is owned by Verizon Communications.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Books and Kobo have removed their links to web-based stores from the applications for the iPhones and iPads. In fact, Google Books has removed the whole application itself. The booksellers removed their links in line with an edict issued earlier this year by Apple that demands all apps offering content for sale or subscription to do so through the App Store, and not through external links to the seller's web store. Moreover, following its usual money making policy Apple require a 30% commission from all such sales.

Jeff Levick, AOL’s president of global advertising and strategy one-time Google executive is leaving the company in line with the firm’s revamp aimed to boost its advertising sales. After a six-week transition period Levick will leave AOL, as reported in the memo obtained by Reuters. Ned Brody, who is in charge of the company's advertising network, was promoted to chief revenue officer. "We won't be hitting the pause button this week, we'll be on fast-forward," AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong said in the memo.

Zynga is launching first game in mainland China in association with Tencent Holdings Ltd in a move to grab a share in the $5.8 billion Chinese games market. An early version of a game called Zynga City will be released by Zynga on Tencents' open platform, Zynga said in a statement on Monday. It will be a Chinese version of CityVille, Zynga’s most popular game, featuring Chinese architecture, references to Chinese pop culture, as well as events and contests in the game that will be linked to Chinese holidays and news.

iHS iSuppli predicts that Microsoft’s ARM-enabled Windows 8 operating system will bring a new series of low-cost laptops stealing possible a significant share from Intel. At the moment ARM enabled laptops are almost nonexistent. However, the market analyst believes that in 4 years ARM based laptops will account for 22.9% of global laptop shipments from 3% forecast for next year. The laptops will be priced well under $700 - many in the sub-$500 segment, according to CNET and iHS-iSuppli analyst Matthew Wilkins.  

InstaForex international broker has announced a mobile version of InstaTrader terminal for such software as BlackBerry, Android.  

Samsung decided not just to tease but to irritate Apple with the launch of a precise clone of the Cupertino’s Smart Cover for iPads. For its Galaxy Tab 10.1 the South Korean firm started selling absolutely similar covers with even similar name “Smart Case.”

A group of hackers Anonymous decided to launch their own social networking website called AnonPlus. The move comes after Google shut down Anonymous’ Google+ account for community standard violations, reports Mashable. At the moment there is only a welcome page where AnonPlus explains the main idea of the website. "This lil info dump of a site is here simply to dispence (sic) info, soon the actual site will go up and you can begin to interact with it," a message on the site notes.

Baidu signed an agreement with One-Stop China, a joint venture owned by Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music to distribute songs through its mp3 search service. It will put an end to years of criticism for sponsoring illegal mp3 downloads from its servers. Baidu entered into a deal with One-Stop China for its music catalogues and new releases that can be streamed or downloaded from Baidu's servers.

Baidu, Chinese search engine giant, has started offering its new beta web browser that features a collection of 30,000" apps" that can quickly connect users to online games, videos and other tools. Monday a beta version of Baidu Browser was launched. The browser is marketed as "simple and reliable", sporting secure navigation protected against malware infiltration. The browser is equipped with a "treasure house" feature, which functions like an app store.