TECHNOLOGY

The European Commission joined forces with major technology firms including Apple, Facebook and Google on Thursday to improve the protection of children online.

Lexmark International Group, the No. 2 U.S. laser printer maker, recommended customers download the latest “firmware” for their devices.

Ireland and Iceland are seeking to fuel their hard-hit economies and exploit their position on the western edge of Europe with new data centers to be connected via a new, $300 million transatlantic telecoms cable by 2013.

In February, 19-year-old Iowa Student, Zach Wahls, made ab pro-gay parenting and gay marriage speech to the Iowa House of Representatives that went viral in minutes, and left millions of people stunned and moved. Now, 10-months later, the three-minute speech about growing up with two moms has re-surfaced and captured many hearts as it spreads across the blogosphere once again under the title Two Lesbians Raised a Baby and This is What They Got.

Three days after an Apple iPhone spontaneously combust on an airplane in Australia a man is now claiming that his friend's Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket did the same thing.

Steve Case, who guided AOL’s explosive growth, said his Revolution Growth Fund has raised $450 million to be invested in promising East Coast start-ups.

Many are hoping the new Android 4.0-sporting Samsung Galaxy Nexus will launch this year, but some are opting for new devices that will eventually get the software update in the new year. For Verizon customers, that means the Droid Razr or HTC Rezound. Because we still don't know when the Nexus will drop or even how much it will cost, buyers need to be aware that it could come out with the same price or less than the Razr or Rezound.

Google Chrome now only trails Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the most popular browser, surpassing Mozilla Firefox.

With over 500,000 apps in the App Store, it's good to have somebody objectively reviewing them so you don't have to spend too much time going through them. Shopping can be fun, though, so think of this list as more of a guide. There are some games of course, but also some great time killers, puzzles, and food guide apps.

The company notes the store will offer customers access to over 900,000 book titles in English and other languages, including 22,000 Spanish-language books.

The new iPhone 4S is beloved by owners, primarily due to its unique voice-activated personal assistant named Siri.

Recently, a top tech analyst predicted that Amazon is likely to release its own smartphone for under $200 next year. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney said in a research note that Amazon may sell the smartphone for as little as $170. Citing supply-chain channel checks in Asia, he said Amazon may release its first-ever smartphone by the fourth quarter of 2012.

The EU's antitrust chief said on Thursday he would meet Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt next week, adding he would not be discussing the regulator's investigation into the Internet search engine's business practices.

At Best Buy, the Fire is the most popular tablet, as noted on a list ranking the top 40 most popular tablets. Apple's Black iPad 2 with 16GB of memory is the second most popular and other models of the iPad 2 are rounding up the top 5 most popular tablets.

Shares of Hewlett-Packard, the world’s biggest computer company, rose slightly Thursday, a day after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the company’s credit two notches.

Apple's iPhone edged past major news events, celebrities and pop stars as the top searched term on the Web in 2011, according to Yahoo!

Angry Birds has teamed up once again with Wonderful Pistachios in a brand-new game built with the crackable nuts in mind.

U.S Galaxy Nexus LTE fans are growing extremely frustrated as rumors continue to raise and shatter their hopes over the phone's release date, but new photos and videos of the phone bearing Verizon's logo, suggests it could be here sooner than we think.

The Carrier IQ secret spyware app is embedded in millions of Android, Nokia and RIM phones around the globe and has been logging the keystrokes of its users.

A New White House anti-piracy campaign, which enlists the widely recognized McGruff the Crime Dog, has so far been met with ridicule.

Woodford, who blew the whistle on accounting tricks at Olympus after he was sacked in October, said he was putting together a team of candidates for a new board and talking to shareholders about replacing the current leadership, hopefully by February.

Wireless service provider Sprint Nextel plans to pay up to $1.6 billion to Clearwire Corp over the next four years, potentially easing concerns about a liquidity crisis at Clearwire.

AT&T Inc and T-Mobile USA's parent company Deutsche Telekom AG are still battling to save their $39 billion merger and are not in talks about a network-sharing alternative, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The tech world has witnessed a series of jailbreaks ever since the release of Apple's new operating system, iOS 5, in October. However, many people, who had been looking for an untethered jailbreak to avoid the frequent rebooting of their devices, found themselves duped by some fake versions which cost them between $9.99 and $24.99.

Yahoo Inc. will be closely watched in the U.S. stock market on Thursday after a report that Alibaba, Softbank Corp., Blackstone Group and Bain Capital are said to be in advanced discussions to make a bid for all of Yahoo.

Facebook has increased the upper limit on the number of characters allowed for status updates. The exact count, as of now, is 63,206.

Paulina Gretzky , the 22-year-old daughter of the Legendary hockey player Wayne Gretzky, hit the headlines after receiving criticism for her racy pictures posted on Twitter and consequently deleting her account following her father's advice. The Canadian aspiring actress had reportedly tweeted 'Having a nice sit down dinner with my dad about social media..haha' and later announced that she was taking a break from Twitter.

Apparently when iPhone users ask Siri: Where can I get an abortion? it guides them to nearby Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC). The problem is that while CPCs are similar to counseling centers, they tend to advise women to go through with their pregnancies and not abort

Hewlett-Packard wants to see a jump in revenues from its software business, the company's chief executive told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.