CNN said Monday it was launching a research project with the Georgia Institute of Technology on how drones could be used for newsgathering by media organizations.

The research will evaluate the technology, personnel and safety needs to operate effectively and will share its findings with the Federal Aviation Administration, which is considering rules for unmanned aerial vehicles.

Vast amounts of hot water from household appliances, businesses and factories gurgle down the drain every day, wasting not only H2O but also another precious resource: heat energy.

Not, however, in the Austrian town of Amstetten, where a pilot project by the local utility company is "recycling" this energy from a place where normally few dare to tread -- the sewer.

Japan's electronics giant Panasonic will sell the plant where it first got into the television business half a century ago as it shifts away from the money-losing division, a report said Saturday.

Google's Nest Labs said Friday it was buying video monitoring startup Dropcam for a reported $555 million in cash.

The deal comes amid huge growth in the smart home sector. One such example is Nest, which began as a smart-thermostat startup and Google bought in January in a deal valued at $3.2 billion.

Facebook took the blame Thursday for a brief outage that resulted in a flood of comments -- chiefly on rival social network Twitter.

The problem began late Wednesday when "we ran into an issue while updating the configuration of one of our software systems," a Facebook spokesman told Agenece France Presse.

Twitter announced plans Thursday to buy SnappyTV, a service which allows for the clipping, editing and sharing of video over the messaging platform.

The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, will help Twitter step up efforts to become more visually engaging as it struggles to grow its user base.

Google has taken down a blog that listed ways to harass Singapore's Filipino population, drawing praise from Internet users appalled by growing racial tensions in the city-state.

Police said Thursday that they are investigating the anonymous "Blood Stained Singapore" blog, which suggested Singaporeans should refuse to be served by Filipinos in restaurants, or "accidentally" shove them in crowded places.

Facebook, which recently bought Whatsap for $19billion (£11.4bn), went down Thursday frustrating users from across the world.

On logging in to Facebook.com, a message appears that reads: "Sorry, something went wrong. We are working on getting this fixed as soon as we can."

Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry announced Wednesday a deal with Amazon giving its users access to more than 240,000 software applications from the online retailer's Appstore.

The deal triples the number of apps available on BlackBerry smartphones, including popular apps such as Groupon, Netflix, Pinterest, Candy Crush Saga and Minecraft.

A new instant messaging app that only allows users to send a single word to their friends is quickly becoming a hot commodity, raising $1 million in two months, U.S. media reported Wednesday.

The Yo app lets users say "Yo" to their friends, sending them a text notification accompanied by a recorded voice shouting the greeting. But co-founder Or Arbel insisted the deceptively simple app has a lot of potential.