5. Sprint, Clearwire form $14.5B WiMax venture: Sprint and Clearwire are combining WiMax businesses to form a $14.5 billion mobile broadband company with the goal of deploying a U.S. WiMax network with 4G coverage. The new company, to be called Clearwire, also will offer wireless broadband to homes, businesses and government public safety services. The new company is expected to be up and running in the fourth quarter. Sprint will have a 51 percent stake, with Clearwire owning about 27 percent and give major investors -- Google, Intel, Comcast, Time-Warner Cable and Bright House Networks -- the remaining 22 percent.

6. XP SP3 cripples some PCs with endless reboots: Windows XP Service Pack 3 causes some PCs to get stuck in endless reboots, according to messages posted at a Microsoft support forum, where users are expressing their endless frustration.

7. Google grilled on human rights: Google's human rights record dominated discussion at the annual shareholder's meeting, where two proposals that called for the company to change its policies were nevertheless voted down. Google has been criticized for the way it conducts business in China, where it complies with government censorship. The company insists that is what it must do to have a presence in China and contends that it's better to do that and be able provide at least some information to Internet users in China than to be forbidden to do business there at all.

8. Intel, OLPC affordable laptop bout only hurts users: A little food for thought in the week, on the heels of the May 2 news that Charles Kane was named president and chief operating officer of the One Laptop Per Child Project, which has been beset with some level or other of turmoil and change for sometime now, including the acrimonious split of the Intel-OLPC partnership a few months back. As the project seeks to right itself and stay on track, columnist Ken Banks reminds us of the bigger picture -- a child in a developing country "doesn't particularly care where their laptop comes from, what principles were applied in its design or development or who's right or wrong in the 'battle of the paradigms.' All they want is an education, ideally aided by the occasional brush with computer technology in some shape or form. Sometimes, we just need to remind ourselves of the bigger picture." Can we get an "Amen" on that?

9. Microsoft grows DAISY for blind computer users, while Adobe wilts: Good news for the 1.5 million blind or visually impaired Americans who use computers -- Microsoft has released a plug in for Word 2007, 2003 and XP to save documents in the Digital Accessible Information System, or DAISY, XML format, which is the latest iteration of an old standard developed by a nonprofit group. Meanwhile, Adobe isn't yet doing anything to support the standard, but remains under pressure to do a better job when it comes to accessibility.