Turkmenistan gave away thousands of free Chinese-made laptops to first-grade students who will start school this year, a source in the ministry of education told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

"Around 100,000 first-grade students were given priceless gifts from our honorable president -- computer notebooks for the new school year," the source said.

Facebook is preparing to bolster the programming tools it offers to licensed music services like Rhapsody, Spotify, MOG and Rdio to make it easier for users of the social network to find out what songs their friends are digging.

The tools won't amount to a unique music service on its own, since Facebook has not negotiated licensing deals with major music companies, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday it plans one last production run of the TouchPad, which has become a hot seller following a price cut and the announcement the company was killing the tablet computer.

Citing disappointing sales, HP, the world's largest personal computer maker, announced on August 18 that it was ending production of the TouchPad, its rival to Apple's iPad, after just seven weeks on the market.

CNN has acquired Zite, an iPad service that learns about readers' tastes and customizes a digital magazine with stories from hundreds of different websites.

CNN, a cable news channel owned by Time Warner Inc., has no plans to change Zite's format, said K.C. Estenson, general manager of CNN's digital division.

Swedish automaker Volvo Cars says it is joining forces with Germany's Siemens AG in the development of a new line of electric cars.

Volvo, owned by China's Geely Holding Group, says Siemens will make the electric motors that will be fitted into Volvo C30 Electric vehicles.

Streaming movies might not yet have the equivalent of a theater experience, with roaring crowds crunching on popcorn, but they are getting more social.

Hollywood studios have increasingly looked to social media and Facebook, in particular, as a distribution platform. The early inroads have been experimental, but turning social media users into audiences is a bright new hope for a Hollywood looking to counter sagging DVD sales.

The display businesses of three major Japanese electronics makers are joining forces to become more competitive in small and medium-sized panels — a sector that's expected to grow because of the popularity of smartphones and tablets.

The display-business subsidiaries of Sony Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. agreed to sign a deal later this year and to complete the business combination by the first few months of next year, the companies said Wednesday.

Sony says it will start selling a head mounted display that provides a 3-D theater of music videos, movies and games, targeting people who prefer solitary entertainment rather than sitting in front of a TV with family or friends.

Sony Corp. said Wednesday that the 60,000 yen ($800) "HMZ personal 3-D viewer" is set to go on sale Nov. 11 in Japan, and is planned for the U.S. and Europe, perhaps in time for Christmas, although dates have not yet been set.

British mobile phone giant Vodafone said Tuesday that it was holding initial talks to merge its Vodafone Greece division with Greek telecommunications operator Wind Hellas.

"Vodafone Group confirms that it has entered into discussions with Largo Limited to explore a potential business combination between Vodafone Greece and Wind Hellas," it said in a brief statement. Wind Hellas is controlled by Largo.

Twitter users fired off a record number of tweets per second following the announcement by pop diva Beyonce at the MTV Video Music Awards that she is expecting a baby.

"Last night at 10:35 pm, Beyonce's big MTV #VMA moment gave Twitter a record bump: 8,868 Tweets per second," the San Francisco-based real-time messaging service said in a statement on its @TwitterGlobalPR feed.