Facebook has allied with Taiwan's HTC to build a customized smartphone powered by Google's Android mobile operating system, according to technology blog All Things Digital.

The project, code named "Buffy," is aimed at making a handset tailored for the California-based social networking platform, according to the blog, which is owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Samsung Electronics is holding final talks with Google about launching a television using the US search giant's software platform next year, an executive of the South Korean company said Tuesday.

Yoon Boo-Keun, president of the visual display division, declined to elaborate on the timing of the launch saying only that Samsung would not unveil the new model at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

U.S. telecom giant AT&T said Monday it was advising customers of an apparent hacking attempt but that no accounts were breached.

"We recently detected what could have been an organized attempt to obtain information on a number of customer accounts," an AT&T spokesman told Agence France Presse by email.

Internet auction giant eBay said Monday it has bought Hunch, an online service which provides users with personalized recommendations for products and services.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but former TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, in a post on his personal blog Uncrunched.com, put the purchase price at around $80 million.

Indian IT entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia on Tuesday launched a free text messaging service, promising that it would be as revolutionary as his previous venture, Hotmail.

Bhatia, who co-founded the free email service 15 years ago, said in a statement that his latest venture, JaxtrSMS, would do "to SMS what Hotmail did for e-mail".

Microsoft's Bill Gates was set to testify Monday in a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit accusing the software maker of duping a competitor prior to its rollout of Windows 95.

The case against Microsoft has been ongoing in federal court in Salt Lake City for about a month.

Lisa Gesik hesitates to log into her Facebook account nowadays because of unwanted "friend" requests, not from long-ago classmates but from the ex-husband now in prison for kidnapping her and her daughter.

Neither Gesik nor prison officials can prove her ex-husband is sending her the messages, which feature photos of him wearing his prison blues and dark sunglasses, arms crossed as he poses in front of a prison gate. It doesn't matter if he's sending them or someone else is — the Newport, Ore., woman is afraid and, as the days tick down to his January release, is considering going into hiding with her 12-year-old daughter.

Here's one way to avoid getting trampled by bargain-hunting hordes knocking down store doors on Black Friday: Online deals service LivingSocial is unveiling a slew of bargains for the holidays that are just a couple of mouse clicks away.

LivingSocial is announcing Monday that it will offer discounts from national businesses such as Verizon Wireless, Electronic Arts Inc. and the sneaker brand Sketchers USA Inc., a contrast to the local deals for spas, restaurants and weekend escapes that it's known for.

A Chinese industry group of game developers said Monday it was suing Baidu for more than 30 million Yuan ($4.7 million) for copyright infringement, the latest such case to hit the Internet giant.

Content Provider Union (CPU), which represents developers of games for mobile devices, has accused Baidu of providing unauthorized downloads for more than 350 games designed by member firms, said Tian Lifeng, a CPU spokeswoman.

Wolfram Alpha, the online search service launched two years ago, now lets inquiring minds in the United States find out what flights happen to be overhead at any given moment.

Typing "flights overhead" into a Wolfram Alpha query box is rewarded with information about airplanes above, including altitudes, distances, aircraft types, and which airlines are operating them.