• Apple does it with style once again

  These are heady times indeed. A little over a year ago, Apple Computer was in serious trouble. For six years, shrinking market share, management infighting and mismanagement had taken their toll. Huge quarterly losses were a clear sign of the trauma at Apple. Ten years earlier the race for world domination was lost, as the company took short-term profit instead of concentrating on winning market share. Microsoft and Intel became world-wide standards: Apple was relegated to filling a niche - and even that was being steadily eroded. Ultimately it took five years, one returned visionary and one brightly coloured piece of plastic to turn it around, and the company has now posted its seventh consecutive quarterly profit since the return of co-founder and interim chief executive Steve Jobs. p
  

• Myth of online travel bargains

  The idea of buying air tickets online is pretty attractive: cut out the profit-hungry travel agency, get cheap deals, control your own journey. p
  

• Bank machines get new roles

  Take a good look at the automated teller machine (ATM) the next time you use one. They could look rather different in future, losing their fixation with cash and offering a range of other services, including Internet access. p
  

• Research takes giant leap for chip-kind

  Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories have created the first crude components of a computer which is based not on silicon, but on exotic molecules that could lead to microprocessors billions of times more powerful and compact than today's most advanced devices. p
  

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