Technology - AFP

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Michelle Wie's glee at her first LPGA triumph and Lance Armstrong's ride-along calls show how Twitter brings fans closer to their sports heroes, but athlete tweeting is proving to have its pitfalls.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Hot social networking site Facebook said Tuesday it has introduced a dual-class stock structure but has no plans to go public for the moment.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Google is running advertisements to explain the appearance of racist and anti-Semitic material in search results, including a picture which depicts US First Lady Michelle Obama as a monkey.

STRASBOURG (AFP) - The European parliament approved Tuesday a major overhaul of EU telecoms law aimed at boosting the rights of European mobile phone and Internet users and protection against access restrictions.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canadian Internet service providers will be required to report online child pornography to police under proposed legislation the government unveiled Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Adconion Media Group announced Tuesday it has acquired the assets of Joost, an online video portal from the founders of Skype that failed to live up to its pre-launch buzz.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US software giant Microsoft announced on Tuesday that chief financial officer Chris Liddell will leave the company at the end of the year.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A bipartisan group of US senators urged the European Commission on Tuesday to expedite its investigation into the proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems by US business software giant Oracle.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Australian and Canadian competition authorities have approved the Internet search and advertising partnership between Yahoo! and Microsoft, the companies said Tuesday.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - EU competition regulators ended antitrust action against Qualcomm on Tuesday after rivals withdrew complaints that the US microchip company had abused its dominant power in 3G markets.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Google is acquiring Web display advertising startup Teracent, the Internet giant announced on Monday.

SINGAPORE (AFP) - Multimedia services will surpass text messaging this year as the main source of mobile operators' non-voice revenue in the Asia-Pacific region, industry analyst IDC said Monday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A survey published Monday of information technology managers at over 500 US-based companies has found that only about one in four has enabled more than half their workforce to work remotely.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Swedish streaming software Spotify announced on Monday the launch of a music application for the Symbian platform, used by the world's biggest mobile phone maker Nokia and other smartphones.

NEW YORK (AFP) - US computer giant Hewlett-Packard posted a 14 percent rise in quarterly net profit Monday as slumping personal computer sales were offset by a solid performance in its services division.

LONDON (AFP) - Microsoft has held talks with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp over a possible plan for the software giant to pay the media company to remove its news websites from Google, a report said Monday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Worldwide sales of personal computers, which had been forecast to decline this year, will instead post modest gains, Gartner research group said Monday.

LAS PIEDRAS, Uruguay (AFP) - A laptop is now finding its place alongside a notebook and pen in schoolbags in Uruguay, the first and only country to offer an Internet-connected computers to all public primary school students.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - French videogame powerhouse Ubisoft will have a virtual fitness coach whipping Wii users into shape starting Tuesday.

NEW YORK (AFP) - Online auction giant eBay apologized Sunday for a technical glitch that caused a one-day crash of its website search functions it attributed to a surge in holiday shoppers.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - With its deal to buy Revolution Money, American Express is taking aim at the growing market for online and alternative payments, in a challenge to recognized leader PayPal, analysts say.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Hong Kong resident and three other men, including the self-proclaimed "Godfather of Spam," were sentenced to prison on Monday for their roles in an email stock fraud scheme, the Justice Department said.

VIENNA (AFP) - Austrian cattle farmers no longer have to travel long distances to sell or buy cattle: it can all be done at the click of a mouse, on a new auction website.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US bookstore giant Barnes & Noble said Friday it had sold out of its new electronic book reader, the "Nook," and the next shipments would not be available until after the holidays.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US newspaper advertising revenue fell by nearly 28 percent in the third quarter, continuing a slide which has led to layoffs, bankruptcies and the closure of several dailies.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US judge set February 18 for a hearing on the revised legal settlement between Google and US authors and publishers that would allow the Internet giant to scan and sell millions of books online.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Cisco on Friday announced the release of a free iPhone application for anyone who wants to stay on top of the latest trojans, worms, or other threats marauding on the Internet.

TOKYO (AFP) - Sony Corp. aims to launch next year a new online service that will allow people to download content such as music and movies to their televisions and other electronic gadgets, a top executive said Friday.