Fare dodgers in Germany are using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to warn fellow travellers of the presence of public transport inspectors on buses and trains.

Some even describe the inspectors, who wear ordinary clothes, so that those riding the transit system illegally can avoid them before being challenged to show their tickets.

Sony's next-generation portable game machine, the PlayStation Vita, won't be going on sale in the U.S. or Europe in time for Christmas — a key sales period for game console makers.

Expectations had been high the machine would be ready worldwide for the year-end holiday shopping season. Sony earlier promised a "phased global rollout" starting late this year.

Flat-panel TVs and PCs go great together — the PC gets a giant screen, and the TV gets access to tons of online video.

But getting the two together in an elegant way has been difficult. PC makers haven't shown much interest in making computers that work really well when controlled from the couch.

Research In Motion is unveiling five new BlackBerrys with touchscreens, as it hopes to revive the line's dwindling appeal in the face of competition from the iPhone and Android smartphones.

The new phones had been expected earlier this year, but were delayed. Those delays have weighed heavily on Research In Motion Ltd.'s stock price, which is at its lowest level since 2006.

Google is a latecomer to social networking but its new site, Google+, is growing much more rapidly than Facebook, Myspace and Twitter did in their early days, technology experts said Tuesday.

While Google+ may be the fastest-growing social network ever, it remains to be seen, however, whether it can pose a serious threat to the social networking titan Facebook, which has more than 750 million members.

Facebook on Tuesday said it has bought an innovative young startup devoted to re-imagining electronic books.

Facebook planned to incorporate Push Pop Press technology into the world's leading online social network and said it does not intend to get into the digital book business.

Over 70 organizations including the United Nations and major U.S. defense groups have been targets of a global cyber spying effort, according to security firm McAfee, with analysts pointing to China as the culprit, the Washington Post said Wednesday.

Targets for the intrusions -- identified from logs tracked to a single server -- included computer networks of the United Nations secretariat, a U.S. Energy Department lab, and some dozen U.S. defense firms, said the McAfee report to be released Wednesday, according to the Post.

Internet company AOL is trying to snatch a larger portion of the tablet computer audience by launching free iPad software that presents a customized, daily e-magazine that draws in content from all over the Web.

Called Editions, the software is similar to news-aggregating mobile apps such as Flipboard and Pulse, but more focused on bringing users a finite, tailored amount of content that updates once per day. AOL's app is being released Wednesday.

Nissan's Leaf electric car can feed power from its battery back into a family home and run appliances for up to two days under a new project the Japanese car-maker unveiled Tuesday.

Using the "Leaf to Home" system, the lithium-ion batteries of the zero tailpipe emission Leaf can be used as an emergency power backup for the home during a natural disaster or a power blackout, Nissan said.

Twitter announced on Monday it has closed a deal for a "significant" round of new funding led by Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies (DST).

Twitter did not reveal the amount raised for the wildly popular real-time micro-blogging service but the technology blog All Things Digital reported last month that the deal would be worth $800 million and value the company at $8 billion.