Videogame colossus Electronic Arts has said an online Scrabble game customized for Facebook will be released this month to challenge the popular unauthorized version Scrabulous.

A free Scrabulous software application is the top game on the hot social networking website and boasts more than 500,000 users daily. [...]Read more

Computer industry heavyweights are hustling to fix a flaw in the foundation of the Internet that would let hackers control traffic on the World Wide Web.

Major software and hardware makers worked in secret for months to create a software "patch" released on Tuesday to repair the problem, which is in the way computers are routed to web page addresses. [...]Read more

Japan's Matsushita Electric Works Ltd. said Tuesday it had developed a fluorescent lamp that does not use mercury or a gas-discharging process.

The environmentally friendly device, which uses processed silicon, could be 50 percent brighter than a conventional fluorescent lamp while consuming the same amount of electricity, the company said in a statement. [...]Read more

It's mind over machine: a US high-tech company has created a headset allowing computer game lovers to use their thoughts to move mountains and make objects disappear on screen.

Emotiv, a San Francisco-based startup that marries neuroscience and computer engineering, says its EPOC gaming headset offers only a glimpse of what the technology has to offer. [...]Read more

It's mind over machine: a US high-tech company has created a headset allowing computer game lovers to use their thoughts to move mountains and make objects disappear on screen.

Emotiv, a San Francisco-based startup that marries neuroscience and computer engineering, says its EPOC gaming headset offers only a glimpse of what the technology has to offer. [...]Read more

A bomb explodes in a busy shopping street, leaving injured shoppers requiring rapid assistance -- thankfully it is only on a computer screen, but it has a deadly serious purpose.

This 'virtual' crisis, used in training for emergency services workers, is part of a so-called "serious game", an emerging niche in the video game industry. [...]Read more

Corporate raider Carl Icahn said Monday that Microsoft indicated a willingness to reopen talks on a "major transaction" with Yahoo if the Internet giant replaces its board of directors.

Icahn made his comments in an open letter to Yahoo shareholders nearly a month after the California company said negotiations on a tie-up with Microsoft were apparently dead. [...]Read more

The iPhone 3G, which Apple is billing as twice as fast and half as expensive as the debut model, will roll out in cities from Tokyo to Sydney on Friday -- but it could face challenges in Asia it will not have elsewhere.

The company is betting the new phone's third generation (3G) capabilities, such as faster Internet access and file transfer, will make the phone a hit. Like the first version, the new model also has an iPod built in. [...]Read more

Google expressed disappointment Thursday at a judge's order to give entertainment giant Viacom details of video-watching habits of visitors to its popular video-sharing website YouTube.

On Tuesday US District Court Judge Louis Stanton backed Viacom's request for data on which YouTube users watch which videos on the website. [...]Read more

Japan, one of the most tremor-prone countries in the world, started work Thursday to beef up its undersea earthquake monitoring system.

The system will be placed 1,000 to 2,000 metres (3,280-6,562 feet) beneath the ocean surface to gather data on seismic activity that will be transmitted by fiber-optic submarine cable to an above-ground observation centre. [...]Read more

BlackBerry mobile devices do not pose a security threat and no permission is needed from the Indian government to make the service available, an official said Wednesday, according to media reports.

Indian security agencies have previously expressed worries that militants may use the popular devices to communicate and that intercepting and tracing emails from them was difficult. [...]Read more

Japanese mobile telephone content providers are setting up safeguards to protect young people amid shock after a disgruntled young man used his phone to document his plans for a stabbing rampage.

An association representing the mobile content industry announced this week a list of 22 criteria that would allow online sites to use a label showing that they are suitable for minors. [...]Read more

When Coroebus of Elis won the first Olympic sprint in 776 BC, the result was scratched on to parchment and read out in market places in the following days and weeks.

This year, the Olympic 100 metres champion will be announced immediately, to billions worldwide, via a click of the mouse or a curious buzzing in their pocket. [...]Read more

The world's longest cable-stayed bridge has officially opened in eastern China, linking the two banks of the Yangtze river, state media reported Tuesday.

The Sutong bridge, which spans 1,088 metres (3,570 feet) over China's longest waterway and links the cities of Suzhou and Nantong, officially opened with a ceremony Monday after a month-long trial, the Shanghai Daily reported. [...]Read more

Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia said Tuesday that the Warner Music Group had agreed to join its soon-to-be launched music service programme, giving its device users access to music published by Warner.

"Warner Music Group has been a pioneer in developing new digital music business models and we are pleased to have them" on board, the head of Nokia's entertainment unit Tero Ojanperae said in a statement. [...]Read more

Hydrogen-powered cars will not be commercially available on a large scale before 2020, a senior official from Japanese auto maker Mazda said Monday in Spain at an international oil conference.

"The earliest that customers will use these environmentally-friendly vehicles in a normal way will be 2020," the general manager of the firm's technical research centre, Tsutomu Matsuoka, said at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid, one of the oil industry's biggest events. [...]Read more

Israeli startup PopTok on Monday began inviting people to test a free service that weaves snippets from memorable films or hot music videos into instant messages and email.

Instead of relying on abbreviations such as "LOL" to indicate "laugh out loud," people using PopTok can let film characters, live or animated, do it for them in short clips dropped into conversations. [...]Read more

Lithuania is facing what appears to be a concerted cyber assault by pro-Russian hackers amid a slide in relations between the Baltic state and its Soviet-era master, a top regulator said Monday.

The national communication regulator's office said that some 300 websites, including those of public institutions such as the national ethics body and the securities and exchange commission, as well as a string of companies, had found themselves under attack. [...]Read more

Israeli startup PopTok on Monday began inviting people to test a free service that weaves snippets from memorable films or hot music videos into instant messages and email.

Instead of relying on abbreviations such as "LOL" to indicate "laugh out loud," people using PopTok can let movie characters, live or animated, do it for them in short clips dropped into conversations. [...]Read more

Russia will be able to create its first Internet addresses using the Cyrillic alphabet next year, communications ministry official Vladimir Vassiliev told Interfax news agency on Sunday.

The move follows a decision by the organisation that regulates the Internet to deliver a radical shake-up to the domain-name system. [...]Read more