Amazon is buying the videogame platform Twitch for $1 billion, bringing it access to millions of people who watch games being played on the site, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The Journal said the deal is very close to being announced, and would put an end to talks between Google and Twitch, recently reported to be hovering as well around a $1 billion price tag.

Luxury fashion is making inroads in wearable tech as more designers try their hands at developing smart, stylish accessories and clothing aimed at tracking performance and health, or simply making connected lives easier to manage.

"We actually think the fashion industry should be in the driver's seat," Ayse Ildeniz, vice president of business development and strategy for Intel's new devices group, said at a January event in Las Vegas.

LG Electronics Inc. announced two new giant OLED TVs with ultra-high definition screens Monday, sticking with its strategy of using the exceptionally expensive OLED display technology.

The South Korean company said it will ship 65-inch OLED TVs starting September in South Korea, Europe and North America. A 77-inch model will hit shelves later this year.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Friday warned businesses to watch for hackers targeting customer data with malicious computer code like that used against retail giant Target.

A hacker software weapon dubbed Backoff is "compromising a significant number" of businesses large and small, according to an advisory put out by the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT).

Tired of the selfie? Get ready for the "thermie," or as I like to call it, the "hottie." That's when you take a picture of the heat emanating from your body, using an infrared camera that attaches to the back of your iPhone. It sounds unlikely, but it's coming.

Apple stores started selling the $349 FLIR One this week. It puts thermal imaging within reach of people who probably have never considered it before, and it opens up a whole new way of looking at the world. Warm things show up bright on the iPhone screen, while cold things are dark. It's like everything glows with its own light.

There may be a growing number of applications for smartphones, but people in the U.S. tend to cling to the few they like and shun the rest, an industry tracker says.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. smartphone owners download no applications monthly, comScore said in its Mobile App Report.

A chatty robot with an LED-lit smiley face sent hitchhiking across Canada this summer as part of a social experiment reached its final destination Thursday after several thousand kilometers on the road.

HitchBot, assembled from household odds and ends by university professors Frauke Zeller and David Smith, was to reunite with its creators at an art gallery in Victoria, British Columbia having crossed more than 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles).

Facebook on Wednesday awarded a $50,000 Internet Defense Prize to a pair of German researchers with a seemingly viable approach to detecting vulnerabilities in Web applications.

Johannes Dahse and Thorsten Holz from Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany won the new cash award for a paper outlining how to find flaws hackers could exploit, according to the California based social network.

Internet giant Google will offer management courses to 3,000 tourism businesses on the island of Crete as part of an initiative to promote the sector in Greece, industry union Sete said on Thursday.

"Given the continuing growth in tourism in the past two years, Google has focused on the promotion of tourism services, especially in helping the small businesses that are the heart of the industry," Sete president Andreas Andreadis told Agence France Presse.

A news report out Thursday indicated that Microsoft is poised to give the world a glimpse at a new-generation computer operating system that will succeed Windows 8.

The U.S. software titan could hold an event as early as the end of September to provide a look at a version of what is expected to be called "Windows 9," according to technology news website The Verge.