Yahoo Inc. is giving its popular email service a long-promised facelift in an attempt to make it more appealing to people who are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter, Google and other online alternatives to communicate.

The changes announced Tuesday build upon a redesigned email format that Yahoo began testing seven months ago. The estimated 277 million users of Yahoo's free email service will be switched to the new version during the next few weeks.

Britain's privacy rules are under assault by rambunctious journalists, Twitter users and even sports fans, as thousands defy a judge's order keeping the name of a well-known soccer star secret.

The disclosure of the sportsman's identity has made a mockery of recently introduced rules protecting public figures' privacy, raising questions about whether it was desirable — or even possible — to order journalists to keep a secret in an age where a single rogue tweet can be read around the world.

Japan's Toyota Motor on Monday said it planned to create a private social networking service that will let cars "tweet" their drivers when they need servicing.

The Japanese automaker said it would work in conjunction with US cloud computing firm Salesforce.com to create the "Toyota Friend" service for owners of electric cars and plug-in hybrid vehicles to be introduced next year.

Just weeks after Amazon and Google unveiled their music offerings, Apple appears set to raise the bar.

The Cupertino, California-based gadget-maker is expected to launch a new Web-hosted music service next month, according to multiple reports, after negotiating deals with at least three of the four major record labels.

Google on Friday had stopped digitizing old newspapers as publishers sought to make money off story archives instead of having them hosted free online.

People will still be able to find newspapers already converted to digital format in the Google News Archives at news.google.com/archivesearch but the collection won't grow.

Internet users in China are hailing a student who claims to have thrown a shoe at the architect of the country's so-called "Great Firewall" of Internet controls during a university appearance.

Police in central China on Friday refused to comment on the alleged attack on Fang Binxing at Wuhan University by a student who identified himself online only as "hanunyi".

Online retail giant Amazon said Thursday that sales of digital books for the Kindle electronic reader have surpassed sales of print books.

"Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books," Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos said in a statement.

Microsoft on Wednesday warned that hackers use mind tricks more often than software skills to get viruses into computers.

Feedback from globally popular Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser indicated that one of every 14 programs downloaded turned out to be malicious code, according to the U.S. software titan.

The tablet computers that compete with the iPad have mostly been uninspiring. The Eee Pad Transformer stands out with a design that isn't just copied from the iPad: It's a tablet that turns into a laptop.

For $399, $100 less than the cheapest iPad, you get a tablet computer with a 10-inch screen and hardware that doesn't cut corners. It's fully usable on its own. For another $149, you can buy a keyboard that connects to the tablet. Together, they look and open like a small laptop.

Times have changed in Bollywood from the days when all that was required to promote a film was a giant, hand-painted poster, a television or cinema trailer and the pulling power of a star actor.

Now, the popular Hindi-language film industry is harnessing the latest technology, hoping that the explosive increase in mobile phones and rapid take-up of the Internet will draw in much-needed audiences.