iPhone 4S suffers Siri outage

Siri, Apple's new voice assistant feature for the iPhone 4S, is apparently suffering from an outage, which has rendered it useless for many iPhone owners, reports Venture Beat.

The outage began at around 11am PST yesterday. Siri isn't just a simple piece of voice control software. To function properly, Siri must communicate with one of Apple's servers for additional information.

For example, when a user asks Siri what the weather is, it plays an elaborate game of telephone with a main database that has the information, and then updates the user with the answer.

LinkedIn suffered its first quarterly loss since its initial public offering roused Wall Street a few months ago, writes the Associated Press.

The setback, announced yesterday, wasn't as severe as analysts anticipated. The online professional networking service invested in an expansion aimed at changing the way people find jobs and advance their careers.

LinkedIn absorbed a loss of $1.6 million, or 2c per share, in the July-September period as it invested more money to expand. That contrasted with earnings of $4 million, or 2c per share, at the same time last year.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) plans to cut 10% of its workforce, or about 1 400 jobs, as the chip maker grapples with issues that include manufacturing glitches and a failure to penetrate the hot mobile-device market, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Sunnyvale, California, company said the moves will trigger about $105 million in restructuring charges, and save more than $200 million in operating costs in 2012.

AMD said it will plough some of the savings into newer business areas, including chips for devices such as tablet-style computers, in emerging markets and Internet-related opportunities known as cloud computing.

A business owner accused in a Google review of being a paedophile and a thief has said he is delighted that the search giant has removed the entry, reveals the BBC.

The message was placed on Google's Places review service 18 months ago. Toni Bennett said he had planned legal action to force Google to delete the false posting after the firm said it did not qualify for removal.

The move comes amid calls on the Internet giant to address the rapidly growing problem of fake online reviews.