Microsoft  made a new pitch Wednesday to app makers, promising an audience of more than a billion people if they develop services for the upcoming Windows 10 operating system.

The U.S. technology titan opened its annual Build developers conference with a three-hour keynote presentation highlighting how Windows 10 will let software savants serve up creations on the full spectrum of smart devices, including HoloLens augmented reality headgear.

Secret, a smartphone app that gained notoriety for allowing users to make anonymous comments to friends and nearby people, said Wednesday it was shutting down after just 16 months.

Co-founder David Byttow said in a blog post he made the decision in consultation with the board, and that the "significant amount of invested capital" would be returned to investors.

The clicking of keyboards fills the hall at a former London dockyard hosting a 24-hour "hackathon" to design applications ranging from the whimsical to the practical and even the potentially life-saving.

The mood inside is studious and intense: over 200 competitors stare at screens, desks covered in cables, flash drives, soft drinks and sweets.

The news industry is struggling with a shift to mobile, getting scant revenues as more readers turn to smartphones and tablets for information, a research report showed Wednesday.

Those are among the findings of the latest Pew Research Center's "State of the News Media" report released Wednesday, highlighting an ongoing shift in the U.S. media industry landscape.

A new report on the state of the media has some simple terms for how we learn about the world: mobile and social media.

More visitors to Yahoo, NBC and other top Internet sites are getting their news from mobile devices than from desktop computers, according to "State of the News Media 2015," published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center's Journalism Project. Pew also found that nearly half of Web users learn about politics and government from Facebook, roughly the same percentage as those who seek the news through local television and double those who visit Yahoo or Google News.

U.S. tech giant Google unveiled a 150 million euro ($163 million) project Tuesday with eight European publishers to support online journalism after being accused of anti-competitive behavior by EU regulators.

The online firm's Digital News Initiative is intended to "promote high quality journalism through technology and innovation," a top Google executive announced in London.

Facebook on Monday began rolling out video calling on its Messenger mobile application, enabling face-to-face conversations among users of the app around the world.

With the new feature, users can add video to calls to another person with the same application.

Apple on Monday reported a sharp rise in its quarterly profit, lifted by robust sales of its iPhones and a jump in revenue from China.

The California tech giant said profit rose 33 percent from a year ago to $13.6 billion, lifted by sales of 61 million iPhones in the first three months of the year.

U.S. Internet giant Yahoo said Monday it was expanding its online offerings, unveiling 18 new video series with which it hopes to attract a larger audience and advertisers.

Of these, 14 will be featured in Yahoo's digital magazines, which focus on beauty, show business and finance.

"Call of Duty: Black Ops 3" is enlisting a few new recruits.

The third installment in Treyarch's popular military shooter saga is adding the option to play cooperatively with other gamers in the plot-driven campaign. The developer is also ditching traditional avatar customization in its multiplayer mode, instead opting for players to pick among nine distinct characters, each with their own unique weapon and ability.