Honey, they shrunk the technology

The wall between televisions and computers is crumbling and Internet pioneer Yahoo! is swinging a virtual hammer.

On Wednesday, in rapid-fire succession, Sony, LG Electronics, Toshiba, Samsung and Vizio showed off attention-grabbing new flat-panel television models embedded with Yahoo! "TV Widget" software, which offers links to popular websites.

By day's end, MySpace revealed that some new Toshiba televisions are being built with Yahoo! widgets, mini-applications, letting viewers access the popular online social networking Web site by clicking on remote controls.