Google Maps’ new Street View feature might be getting all the buzz these days but that’s not the only thing that’s new with the popular online map application. On Monday, Google announced that Google Maps now has improved information about public transportation in many cities worldwide.

Subway stops, in addition to building outlines and car traffic data, first appeared on Google Maps in February. Now, the subway and train stops provide additional information: which lines are serviced by a particular station, a link to the Web site for the corresponding transportation company, as well as upcoming departure data.

Microsoft, together with Namco Bandai Games America, on Tuesday announced a new version of the classic arcade Pac-Man at the Pac-Man World Championships in New York’s Times Square. Pac-Man Championship Edition will have the first new mazes in 26 years. The new title is set to be available Wednesday morning on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 800 Microsoft points.

A virtual land dispute in Second Life will be resolved in federal court after a judge’s ruling. A lawsuit filed in May of 2006 by Pennsylvania attorney Marc Bragg accused Linden Lab and its CEO Philip Rosedale of wrongfully seizing his virtual land and unilaterally shutting down his Second Life account—intellectual property that Bragg says is worth thousands of (real-life) dollars. Linden Lab filed two motions to dismiss the suit, arguing that Bragg came into possession of his land wrongfully, but the Pennsylvania judge denied those motions.

Online auction giant eBay is set to ban ivory trade from its websites, as pressure mounts to eradicate illegal traffic in endangered species from the Internet, participants at the world forum regulating wildlife commerce said Tuesday.

“eBay has informed us that they intend to announce, probably later today, that they will stop the international trade of ivory,” said one participant at the 171-nation Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), meeting in
The Hague.

A popular brand of calculators is being infected by a new virus that causes screens to read, “t89.GARRA.”

The virus, which attacks Texas Instruments TI89 and compatible calculators, doesn’t do any permanent harm, but Texas Instruments engineers haven’t found a way to disable it either. And while the author of the virus has been charitable enough to include code for disabling it, researchers have not been able to validate that fix.

TIOS.Tiagra, as it has been dubbed by researchers at Symantec, cannot spread without use of a USB cable.

The virus works by appending its code to any suitable file, and searches for a particular instruction sequence to replace and point towards the virus code. If the sequence is not found, the virus will remain but will not gain control, according to Symantec security researchers.

The virus only runs on files with ASM extensions, so, in order to propagate itself, it has to run a check on the calculator for ASM-type files; moreover, it cannot infect previously infected files, Symantec officials said in an advisory.

Apple Inc.’s recent rollout of songs without copy protection software at its iTunes Store has given consumers new flexibility, but questions have emerged over the company’s inclusion of personal data in purchased music tracks.

Are the songs that are being billed as free of so-called digital rights management technology really “DRM-free” or are there still strings attached?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a consumer watchdog group, said the embedded user information in the purchased track raises privacy issues.

Nintendo’s Wii video game console outsold rival Sony’s PlayStation 3 by more than five to one in Japan in May, a research company said Tuesday.

Nintendo sold 251,794 Wii consoles last month, while Sony sold just 45,321 PS3s, according to Enterbrain, a Japanese publisher that tracks video game console sales.

The figures indicate that Nintendo is extending its lead over Sony on the Japanese electronics giant’s home turf. In April the Wii outsold the PS3 by about four to one in Japan, according to the research firm.

Ask.com is set to give greater prominence in Web search results to photos, video and related searches, responding to growing consumer demand for more than text links, the company said on Monday.

Ask, the search business of Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, calls its new service Ask3D, a reference to the way Ask.com seeks to improve how users compose queries, review search results, then find what they want.