The software giant, Microsoft and Wolfram Alpha have reportedly penned a deal that will allow Microsoft's search engine, Bing to present some of the Wolfram Alpha's specialized computational content in its result pages.

Wolfram Alpha, which prefers to call itself as a computational knowledge engine, was unveiled earlier in 2009 and was considered to have the ability to knock Google out.

A London cash machine operator has introduced Cockney rhyming slang to a number of its cash machines.

People using the bank machine ATMs will be able to opt to have their prompts and options given to them in a more authentic dialect.

As a result of the introduction of Cockney rhyming slang, users will be asked to enter their "Huckleberry Finn", rather than their pin. The machine will further ask its users to select how much "Sausage and Mash" they want.

Britain's largest utility group, Centrica has emerged as the winner in its £1.3 billion hostile battle for North Sea gas producer Venture Production.

Centrica declared that it controlled over 50% of the Aberdeen-based company's shares, putting the takeover battle to an end.

Centrica launched the bid in order to boost its gas production and trim down its dependence on the volatile wholesale market.

Bovis Homes, one of Britain's smaller house-builders, has reported a pre-tax loss of £8.6 million for the first half of 2009. Group's revenues plunged to 123 million pounds, down by 18 per cent.

Bovis Homes constructed 754 homes during the first half of the current year, down from 851 in the same period previous year.

However, Longfield, Kent-based Bovis Homes is "cautiously optimistic" as it has started witnessing signs of stabilization in the housing market. It has plans to buy more land.

The software giant, Microsoft Corp. has decided to lift prices for non-upgrade editions of Windows 7 sold in European markets starting September 1.

Microsoft will end its offer that allows those purchasing Windows 7 in Europe to get the full version of the operating system for the price usually charged for the upgrade version.

But, only a small portion of the users will bear the heat as a major portion of users will upgrade copies of Windows XP or Vista, for which the prices will remain the same.

The comments last week by Ben Bernanke, United States Federal Reserve chairman regarding good prospects for a return to global economic growth in the near future has showed its impact on the FTSE 100 index of leading shares that soared to 4896.23, up 45.34 points, highest in the last 10 months.

Actually Ben Bernanke had said that America was on the brink of escaping world’s worst recession since Second World War. It was the biggest summer equity rally in London market since 1984, the year in which the FTSE 100 was opened.