Apple announced that the latest version of the iPhone will be released in South Korea on Friday and in more than 50 other countries including Russia, Brazil, and Taiwan later in the month.

The news indicated that the California-based company was on track to make the iPhone 5 available in 100 countries by the end of the year despite being hard pressed to meet demand where the handsets are being sold.

Adobe late Monday release a free tool kit to make it easier for developers to create Flash-based games to ride the growing wave of playing on smartphones, tablets, and in Internet browsers.

Game Developers Tools made available were the first tied to the Adobe's "Creative Cloud," providing computing muscle from Adobe's online datacenters.

Internet freedom will not be curbed or controlled, the head of the U.N. telecommunications body, Hamadoun Toure, said as a meeting to review the 24-year-old telecom regulations kicked off Monday.

Such claims are "completely (unfounded)," Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, told AFP.

The head of the U.N.'s telecommunication overseers sought Monday to quell worries about possible moves toward greater Internet controls during global talks in Dubai, but any attempts for increased Web regulations are likely to face stiff opposition from groups led by a major U.S. delegation.

The 11-day conference — seeking to update codes last reviewed when the Web was virtually unknown — highlights the fundamental shift from tightly managed telecommunications networks to the borderless sweep of the Internet.

It looks like a tough sell for the online daily deals sector.

After much excitement last year and a hyped public offering from Groupon, the main players are now focusing on saving money themselves as consumers show deal fatigue.

Samsung extended its lead as the top mobile phone maker in the U.S. market and Apple moved into second place, an industry tracker said Friday.

A survey by comScore showed that in the three-month period ending in October, South Korea's Samsung was the top manufacturer with 26.3 percent market share, up from 25.6 percent in the prior period.

Yahoo! said Friday it was ordered to pay $2.7 billion by a Mexican court in a lawsuit stemming from allegations of breach of contract and lost profits related to a yellow pages listing service.

The U.S. Internet giant said in a statement it "believes the plaintiffs' claims are without merit and will vigorously pursue all appeals."

Google has agreed to acquire Canadian start-up BufferBox, which manages self-service parcel lockers to help consumers avoid missed deliveries, the companies said Friday.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A Facebook page set up to monitor paedophiles has been removed after a judge in Northern Ireland ruled Friday that it risked infringing the human rights of a convicted sex offender.

The man, who cannot be identified, started legal proceedings against the social networking site after discovering his photograph and threatening comments had been posted on the page.

Google and Twitter announced Friday they have reactivated a voice-tweet program to allow Syrians affected by the shutdown of the Internet to get messages out.

The service allows people with a telephone connection to compose and send a tweet by speaking on their phones.