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At Polish Call Center, Blindness is No Barrier to Employment

The steady hum of chatter and the clickety-clack of computer keyboards makes it sound like any other call center but at this Warsaw market research firm, blindness is no barrier to employment.

The operation runs so smoothly that people on the other end of the phone line have no idea that they're dealing with the visually impaired.

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Apple Girding Gadgets Against Hackers

Apple on Friday said it was working to patch a vulnerability that hackers could use to break into the company's popular iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch gadgets.

Engineers at the California firm are fixing a weakness pointed out by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

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Game Downloads, Big Fun at a Small Price

Video-game publishers seem to believe their audience would rather risk sunburn than have fun in air-conditioned comfort, so you won't find many major new games in stores during the summer. But that doesn't mean there's nothing new out there — and you don't need to search any further than the online services Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Store.

One studio that's made a big impression in the download-only market is Double Fine Productions, led by industry legend Tim Schafer. Its new release is called "Trenched" (Microsoft, for Xbox 360, $15), and it's a witty mash-up of the third-person shooter and tower defense genres.

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Washington Post Website Jobs Section Hacked

The Washington Post said Thursday that a hacker had gained access to nearly 1.3 million email addresses and user IDs on its online jobs section.

The Post said no passwords or other personal data were compromised in the attack on the jobs section of WashingtonPost.com which occurred last week.

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Rio Unveils Cable Car in Notorious Favela

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff inaugurated Thursday the first cable car of the notoriously crime-ridden Complexo do Alemao, as Rio prepares to revamp the slums ahead of world sport meets.

Since 2008, Brazil's second-largest city has been racing against the clock to improve security and infrastructure in its shantytowns before hosting the 2014 World Cup and the Olympic Games in 2016.

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ISPs, Movie, Music, TV Groups in Copyright Deal

Major U.S. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and music, movie and television industry associations unveiled a long-awaited agreement on Thursday aimed at curbing online copyright infringement.

The Copyright Alert System calls for ISPs to send a series of email notices to Internet subscribers whose accounts have been identified by content owners as illegally downloading music, movies or television shows.

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Obama Kicks off Twitter Town Hall Meeting

President Barack Obama answered questions from Twitter users across the U.S. in a town hall meeting Wednesday that used the popular social media service and focused on jobs and the economy.

White House officials say Obama sees social media as a way to reach beyond the mainstream media and interact with Americans directly, particularly the younger and more tech-savy part of the electorate as his campaign for re-election in 2012 ramps up.

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SKorea's LG Touts Optimus 3D Smartphone for Gaming

LG Electronics is touting 3D smartphones as an alternative to dedicated handheld game devices.

The company launched its LG Optimus 3D phone Thursday in South Korea after beginning a global release last month covering more than 60 markets including Spain and Britain.

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Facebook Launches Video Calls, Group Chat Features

Quick on the heels of Google's launch of its latest social-networking venture, Facebook said Wednesday that its 750 million users will now be able to make video calls on the site.

The feature will be powered by the Internet phone service Skype. Facebook also redesigned its chat feature, so that the people a user messages the most often show up first.

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Nokia Abandons Japan Market

Nokia Corp., battered by the popularity of smartphones, is abandoning the Japanese market, after a brief foray with luxury cell phones costing as much as 20 million yen ($250,000).

The Finnish handset maker is closing by the end of July its last store selling high-end Vertu cell phones in Ginza. Previously, it had three such stores in Japan, although when the decision to leave Japan was made or how many Vertu phones Nokia had sold in Japan have not been disclosed.

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