Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites boost public awareness of disease outbreaks but also make it more difficult to separate fact from fiction, world health officials said on Thursday.

World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Margaret Chan said the Geneva-based U.N. body scans websites and online forums in different languages for indications of outbreaks across the world.

EBay set the stage for shops large and small to tap into Internet age techniques for taking payments with PayPal technology at the heart of cashless transactions.

A PayPal Access online identity program and an X.commerce platform for payments were launched as eBay opened its Innovate Developer Conference in San Francisco.

U.S. technology giant Apple on Thursday won a temporary ban on Samsung selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia, the latest victory in its global battle over patents related to the iPad.

The Federal Court of Australia granted an interim order against the sale of the Galaxy 10.1, ruling that Apple had established a prima facie case that the South Korean company had breached touchscreen technology copyrights.

Robots that learn from experience and can solve novel problems -- just like humans -- sound like science fiction.

But a Japanese researcher is working on making them science fact, with machines that can teach themselves to perform tasks they have not been programmed to do, using objects they have never seen before.

Sony said Wednesday it suspended 93,000 accounts on its online entertainment networks after a large number of unauthorized sign-in attempts, months after a huge breach forced it to halt some services.

The attempts took place between October 7 and 10 and succeeded in verifying valid sign-in IDs and passwords of about 93,000 accounts on its PlayStation Network, Sony Entertainment Network and Sony Online Entertainment services.

Cray Inc. said it has sealed a deal to overhaul the U.S. Department of Energy's "Jaguar" supercomputer, making it faster than any other machine on the planet.

The supercomputer at the DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory will be renamed "Titan" after it is beefed up with speedy, powerful chips from California companies NVIDIA and Advanced Micro Devices.

Taiwan's leading Smartphone maker HTC on Wednesday unveiled its first mobile phones using Microsoft's much-anticipated software platform "Mango" after Apple launched its latest iPhone.

The two handsets -- "Titan" and "Radar" -- will become the first mobile phones launched by HTC to run on "Mango".

Netflix said Monday it will keep its DVD-by-mail and Internet streaming services on one website for US subscribers, abandoning plans announced last month to completely separate the services.

But Netflix did not change the new pricing announced for the two services, which upset some subscribers and reportedly led to numerous cancellations.

BlackBerry customers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa are experiencing problems, the smartphone's maker said in a brief statement Monday.

Research in Motion Ltd. gave few details about the issues, but telephone companies whose customers use the company's smartphones said that Internet access and BlackBerry's popular messenger service appeared to be affected.

Apple says first-day pre-orders of the iPhone 4S topped 1 million, breaking the record set by last year's model.

Apple Inc. and various phone companies started taking orders for the phone last Friday. It hits stores this Friday.