A judge on Friday granted Apple's request for an injunction blocking U.S. sales of Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphones made in collaboration with Google to challenge the iPhone.

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh was the second victory for California-based Apple this week in a fierce and complex patent war with the South Korean consumer electronics giant.

Celebrity scandals fueled by leaked text messages or emailed images inspired a new application to give users of Apple gadgets uncrackable communications that can be made to self-destruct.

The Wickr app has been downloaded thousands of times since the software crafted for iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices hit the virtual shelves of Apple's online App Store on Wednesday.

Attorney Bob Burns already gets a lot of information from his smartphone, but he welcomes the prospect of getting a little more — free warnings about life-threatening weather from a sophisticated new government system.

Beginning Thursday, the new Wireless Emergency Alerts system gives the National Weather Service a new way to warn Americans about menacing weather, even if they are nowhere near a television, radio or storm sirens. It sends blanket warnings to mobile devices in the path of a dangerous storm.

The organization in charge of creating additional Internet address suffixes to rival ".com" is killing a much-criticized Web-based system set up to help decide the order in which it will review proposals.

Participants complained that the system, described as digital archery, was overly complicated. And the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers had to suspend the system after finding "unexpected results."

Struggling BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. said Thursday it will delay the launch of new phones deemed critical to the company's survival and revealed its business is crumbling faster than thought.

The Canadian company posted results for its latest quarter that were worse than analysts had expected. It's cutting 5,000 jobs and unexpectedly delaying the launch of its new phone operating system, BlackBerry 10, until after the holiday shopping season.

Google on Thursday took the web browser battle to iPads and iPhones with the release of Chrome software for popular Apple devices built with Safari online surfing programs at heart.

"People have been asking to use Chrome on the iPhone," Chrome product management director Brian Rakowski said while showing off the new browser programs slated to be available in Apple's online App Store.

The Wall Street analysts who know Facebook best are giving the company's stock a mixed review. Think: like, not love.

A flood of analyst reports from 33 banks gave Facebook's stock a mix of "Neutral" and "Buy" ratings on Wednesday. And there was at least one review that equated to a "Sell" rating.

Google on Wednesday opened fire on iPad and Kindle Fire with a Nexus tablet designed to showcase the latest Android software and be a window into its online shop for films, music and more.

The Nexus 7 tablet computer will be priced at less than half the cost of the market-leading iPad and broadens Google's arsenal in its battle against Apple, Amazon.com, and Microsoft to be at the heart of Internet Age lifestyles.

Hong Kong researchers have developed software able to identify censored posts on China's main microblog, they said Thursday.

Called "WeiboScope", the program developed as a project at the University of Hong Kong is able to detect politically sensitive posts deleted by Chinese censors on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

Google glasses that overlay the Internet on daily lives should hit the market within two years -- technology the tech giant hopes will someday make fumbling with smartphones obsolete.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin offered the estimated timeline after a project update that included sky divers dropping in with a new version of "Glass" wearable computers.