YouTube is launching a film festival that will play out online and ultimately send 10 finalists to the Venice Film Festival.

The Google Inc.-owned video site announced Thursday that Your Film Festival will take submissions of short films up to 15 minutes in length between Feb. 2 and March 31. Fifty semi-finalists will be selected by Scott Free Productions, Ridley and Tony Scott's production company.

Social media giant Facebook released dozens of new applications to let users catalogue every aspect of their lives, from movies to books to food to fashion, and share them with friends.

"Whatever you love, whatever story it is you want to tell, you can add that to your timeline," said Carl Sjogreen, director of platform products for Facebook.

A senior Chinese propaganda official has said real-name registration for the nation's hugely popular microblogs will be expanded, as authorities tighten their grip on the web amid fear of unrest.

Beijing, Shanghai and the southern province of Guangdong have recently ordered new users of weibos -- microblogs similar to Twitter -- to register using their real names, making it easier for authorities to track them.

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is leaving the struggling Internet company, as it tries to revive its revenue growth and win over disgruntled shareholders under a new leader.

The departure, announced Tuesday, punctuates the end of an era at Yahoo, a tarnished Internet icon that has spent much of the last decade scrambling to catch up to Internet search leader Google Inc. — a company that got early encouragement and advice from Yang. It comes just two weeks after Yahoo Inc. hired former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as its CEO.

The French version of the U.S. socialite blogger Arianna Huffington's news website, the Huffington Post, will go online Monday, hoping to repeat the success that made her an Internet multimillionaire.

The team behind the French language "HuffPo" will put the site on the web on Monday shortly before an 0830 GMT press conference, it said.

Wikipedia went dark, Google blotted out its logo and other popular websites planned protests on Wednesday to voice concern over legislation in the U.S. Congress intended to crack down on online piracy.

Wikipedia shut down the English version of its online encyclopedia for 24 hours to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) introduced in the House of Representatives and the Senate version, the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

Online security researchers claimed Tuesday to have identified the members of a Russian gang of cyber criminals behind the Koobface computer virus which has attacked Facebook and other sites.

Facebook said meanwhile that its security team had helped knock out a computer server which controlled a Koobface "botnet" of malware-infected personal computers.

With a rise in entrepreneurialism across the Middle East in full swing, 2012 is expected to see unprecedented growth in start-ups in the region, according to Arabnet Founder Omar Christidis.

Following hard on the heels of the ‘Arab Spring’, many young people across the region have decided to take the leap and start their own ventures. The Arabnet Digital Summit 2012, to take place between 27-21 March, is the premier regional conference for the emerging Arab web/mobile industry.

A motorized, seat-less unicycle, a video game you control with your eyes, and a mind-reading headset that serves as a game controller were among the more bizarre gadgets being shown off at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show.

Some 3,100 exhibitors attended the show, and although there were plenty of mainstream technologies on display, the show attracted a fair share of off-beat gadgets. Here's a roundup of some of the weirdest devices:

Google is focusing on the importance of protecting personal information in an unusual marketing campaign for a company that has been blasted for its own online privacy lapses and practices.

The educational ads will start appearing Tuesday in dozens of U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, and magazines, including Time and the New Yorker. Google Inc. also will splash its message across billboards within the subways of New York and Washington, as well as various websites.