Flying cars. Waterproof living rooms that you clean with a hose. A pool on every rooftop.

Many of the old dreams and schemes about daily life in the 21st century didn't come true — at least not yet. Author Gregory Benford has gathered them — along with more successful predictions — in a book, "The Wonderful Future that Never Was" (Hearst, 2012). Some of the imaginative ideas just weren't imaginative enough, he says.

Google on Wednesday unveiled a slimmer, more powerful tablet computer on its Nexus brand and a thumb-sized device that lets popular mobile gadgets feed online content wirelessly to television sets.

The ramped-up second-generation Nexus 7 by Taiwan-based Asus made its debut along with a Chromecast dongle that plugs into television sets to let people easily route online content to big screens.

Facebook surprised Wall Street by showing it can make money from folks on smartphones and tablets, causing the leading social network's stock to rocket.

"The work we've done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides us with a solid foundation for the future," said Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg as the social network reported a quarterly profit of $331 million.

In the basement of Madrid's Reina Sofia museum, a giant robotic machine painstakingly scans a painting by Catalan surrealist artist Joan Miro, slowly snapping hundreds of microscopic shots.

The pictures taken by the machine, which uses infrared and ultraviolet photography, will help experts determine the condition of the 1974 oil on canvas painting called "Women, Bird in the Night" in unprecedented detail.

Like many young Palestinians, Amir was excited to get his first smartphone, despite the heavy price tag. But he did not keep it long after realizing the lack of 3G network meant its applications were largely unusable.

"I sold my iPhone because I just couldn't use it when I was out and about," said the Internet cafe worker, who asked to be given a pseudonym.

Apple could roll out smartphones and tablets with bigger screens in a move analysts say is an attempt to catch up with a trend set by its major rival Samsung.

The Californian tech giant and its Asian suppliers are testing smartphone screens larger than four inches and tablet screens slightly less than 13 inches, the Wall Street Journal reported, without naming the suppliers.

Network analytics specialty firm DeepField on Monday said that Google accounts for nearly a quarter of Internet traffic in North America.

"Based on measurements of end devices and user audience share, Google is now bigger than Facebook, Netflix and Twitter combined," DeepField chief Craig Labovitz said in a blog post.

A study released on Monday showed that Internet-powered shopping across national borders has created "modern spice routes" holding wealth for local merchants who tap into the booming trend.

Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, Germany, China, Britain and the United States will see a combined total of $105 billion in "cross-border online shopping" this year and that figure should nearly triple to $307 billion in the next five years, according to Nielsen research commissioned by Internet financial transactions service PayPal.

Graphics chip star NVIDIA has set a July 31 release date for its Shield handheld gaming and entertainment device powered by Google's Android software.

The high-performance, handheld gadgets are in full production and will begin shipping at the end of this month, Shield director Jason Paul said in a blog post at the Silicon Valley company's website.

U.S. social network giant Facebook said Monday it has surpassed 100 million users a month using an application designed for "simple" mobile phones widely used in developing nations.

Launched two years ago, the "Facebook For Every Phone" app enables people to connect "no matter what kind of mobile device they use," the company said in a statement.