Oil giant Chevron was struck by the Stuxnet virus, a sophisticated cyber attack that tore through Iran's nuclear facilities and is believed to have been launched by the United States and Israel.

A Chevron spokesman told Agence France Presse Thursday that the virus had struck the oil giant in 2010 without causing any damage, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The amount of data sent online in North America has more than doubled over the past year, with Netflix shows accounting for a big chunk of Internet traffic, a report found Wednesday.

Online data use in North America was up 120 percent this year, with video streaming service Netflix accounting for 33 percent of the traffic streamed on "fixed networks," according to Sandvine's Global Internet Phenomena Report.

The world's first flight powered entirely by bio jet fuel has raised hopes for cleaner air travel and upped the prospects of a boon for farmers whose oilseed crops could supplant kerosene.

A Dassault Falcon 20 twin engine jet took off from the Canadian capital Ottawa last month to test the new jet fuel, made from 100 percent oilseed, for engine performance and emissions, aiming to make sky journeys less polluting.

Sony said Thursday that music by its Japanese artists was now available on Apple's iTunes store, in an apparent strategy shift by the Japanese firm to cash in on soaring demand for online music.

Sony, which competes with Apple's iPod and iPhone in the portable music player market, said its copyrighted Japanese-language songs had been made available for sale on iTunes from this week.

Google began Tuesday serving up revamped search pages that give results more room by shifting the tools menu to the top of the screen.

The California-based Internet titan said the change was intended to streamline search pages and make the layout on desktop computers consistent with those on smartphones and tablets.

Election day in the United States became the most tweeted about event in U.S. political history Tuesday with enthusiastic netizens firing off 20 million poll-related tweets, the social network said.

Americans flocked to Twitter and other platforms all day in a massive social media burst, posting photographic proof they had cast their ballots, cheering their favorite candidates along and analyzing the latest polls.

Blockbuster videogame "Halo" on Tuesday took on new life with the release of a sequel so hotly anticipated that launch day revenue was expected to eclipse anything seen in the industry this year.

Hundreds of thousands of fans queued outside shops in more than 40 countries where "Halo 4" went on sale the moment Tuesday arrived.

Microsoft and Apple are garnering the highest profit margins for their tablets, followed by Google and then Amazon, according to research firm IHS.

Microsoft Corp.'s first self-made tablet, the Surface, costs about $267 in parts and labor when excluding its optional keyboard cover. It went on sale Oct. 26 priced at $499, for a profit margin of around 46 percent. Surface comes with a 10.6-inch screen measured diagonally, and can access the Internet only through Wi-Fi. The price is for its base model with 32 gigabytes of memory.

A federal judge in Madison, Wisconsin, on Monday threw out a suit by Apple Inc. claiming that Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility is seeking unreasonably high license fees for the use of patents on wireless technology.

The suit is part of a world-spanning battle between Apple and Google, whose Android software powers the smartphones that compete with Apple's iPhone. Google bought Motorola Mobility, a once pioneering maker of cellphones, this summer to gain control of its patents and gain leverage against Apple in its court battles.

Picture sharing website Instagram on Monday began rolling out online profiles that let people showcase themselves and photos they've taken with the Facebook-owned smartphone application.

The creation of an online home for Instagram images put a Facebook spin on the startup that the world's leading social network bought this year.