The week's worldwide technology news in pictures, courtesy of IDG News Service. This week: Bill Gates testifies, Oracle discusses the Sun acquisition, and a spectrum dust-up over bionic limbs.

Cities in the cloud

Hitachi plans to aggressively pursue large cloud computing projects and market software that will integrate data from infrastructure across entire cities, merging and analyzing data collected from diverse sources such as roads, shipping, energy grids and mass transport, Kaichiro Sakuma, head of the company's platform business, announced.

Spectrum clash builds around bionic implants

The battle over scarce radio spectrum has extended to medical micropower network systems, designed to transmit commands from a patient's spinal cord to implants that electrically stimulate nerves in paralyzed patients.

Gates to testify in Novell suit

Ex-Microsoft CEO and current Chairman Bill Gates testified in U.S. Federal Court in a seven-year-old, US$1 billion antitrust lawsuit by Novell, which claims Microsoft purposefully misled Novell prior to the launch of Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system and caused Novell to lose market share of its WordPerfect office suite.

How Oracle made the Sun deal work

Oracle chairman Jeff Henley gave CFOs at the MIT Sloan CFO Summit a close-up view of how Oracle not only transformed its own business but made its Sun Microsystems acquisition a success.

Ultrabooks still trying to find their niche

Despite backing from the top PC makers, high prices and a disorganized software and hardware ecosystem could slow adoption of ultrabooks like the Asus Zenbook over the next few years, analysts said this week.

This is not a flash drive

FXI's Cotton Candy USB device is a flash drive-sized Android device with a dual core processor running Gingerbread. It packs a dual-core 1.2GHz Samsung Exynos processor and its own ARM GPU for 1080p video playbackwith Wi-Fi, HDMI and Bluetooth connectivity and a MicroSD card slot to expand its 1GB of storage.

Social sentiment site tracks software vendors

Amplicate.com pulls in relevant Facebook and Twitter messages and also allows users to post their thoughts on the site directly. Of the big tech vendors, Apple is getting the love. Oracle and SAP? Not so much.