Oracle Corp. is selling computer hardware for the first time in its 31-year history, signaling an ambition to become more than a one-stop shop for business software.

The expansion announced Wednesday by Chief Executive Larry Ellison calls for Oracle’s sales team to peddle a “database machine” and a smaller storage product, both made by Hewlett-Packard Co. Both pieces of hardware are designed to help companies fetch information stored on Oracle’s database software more quickly while taking up less space in corporate data centers.

Ellison unveiled the products - in development for three years - at an Oracle customer conference attended by nearly 43,000 people.

The database machine will sell for $650,000 and store up to 168 terabytes - “1,400 times larger than Apple’s largest iPod,” Ellison boasted in reference to the 120-gigabyte media device made by the company run by his best friend, Steve Jobs.

As it wades into a new field, Oracle is aiming to undercut other hardware makers like Netezza Corp. that sell so-called “data warehouse appliances.” The Oracle-HP partnership conceivably could also siphon sales from storage providers like EMC Corp. and IBM Corp.

News Corp’s MySpace, the world’s largest social networking site, on Wednesday unveiled a long-expected joint venture with all four major music companies in a bid to compete with Apple Inc’s market-leading iTunes store.

MySpace Music is designed to win fans with a mix of unlimited free music, comprehensive music catalogs, concert tickets, merchandising and other entertainment features.

The launch of the new service had been dogged by speculation on the start date and the ongoing search for a chief executive.

But the biggest challenge for the new venture was signing a deal with the fourth-largest music company EMI Music, which had held out until just hours before the announcement of the service’s launch.

MySpace Music also signed late licensing deals with The Orchard, a large distributor of independent music from hundreds of small labels and music publisher Sony/ATV, a joint venture between Sony Corp and pop star Michael Jackson.

In April, MySpace confirmed it agreed to create a joint venture with Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group

Yahoo Inc. launched a much-anticipated upgrade to its online advertising system Wednesday as it tries to bring to graphical display ads some of the innovations that powered Google Inc.’s rapid rise in search marketing.

Playing to Yahoo’s strengths in display ads and technology targeting pitches to users’ interests, the new “Apt from Yahoo” platform will initially involve just the newspaper companies in a 2-year-old consortium led by Yahoo. Many of the papers joined that effort hoping for relief from the decline in their industry.

The platform, renamed from Amp because of a trademark conflict, is intended to make it easier for advertisers and publishers to buy and sell display ads, borrowing self-service techniques that have made text-based search ads lucrative for Internet companies, especially Google.

By tapping data Yahoo already collects on users’ locations, demographics and surfing habits, Apt aims to help advertisers narrow their pitches to specific groups of customers because sharper targeting will let Web sites charge more for ads.