The Apple Watch goes on sale on Friday but Chinese factories are already churning out cheaper alternatives, to the delight of local consumers.

"Our product has all the functions Apple Watch has, and even surpasses them," said Zheng Yi, founder of a firm whose electronic watches can make phone calls, browse the Internet and play movies.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will head to Silicon Valley on Thursday in a bid to recruit tech gurus for the Pentagon, even if just on a part-time basis.

After giving a speech at Stanford University, Carter will meet with Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and then with employees of the social network giant who used to work for the military. 

Facebook said Tuesday it was reconfiguring its News Feed, in a move aimed at giving people more information about what is happening to "the friends you care about."

The world's biggest social network unveiled changes which decrease reliance on "referral" traffic -- or the sharing of news articles or other content.

Self-driving vehicles hold the key to reducing traffic fatalities and will transform the automobile industry, a top Google executive predicted Tuesday.

Ray Kurzweil, a leading expert in artificial intelligence who joined Google in 2012, told the annual conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers that the rapidly declining cost of computing power and the advances in artificial intelligence will make autonomous driving a reality.

Alerts about hit-and-runs and kidnappings in Los Angeles will soon pop up on traffic app Waze, along with road closure information, the West Coast city's mayor said Tuesday.

The agreement is part of a data-sharing partnership between LA and the Google-owned tech company announced by Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Twitter said Monday it was making it easier to take direct messages private, carving out a bigger space for targeted exchanges on the popular microblogging service.

Previously, direct messaging could only occur between two Twitter users "following" each other, which basically allowed both parties to see whatever they posted publicly.

Microsoft on Tuesday said it will open its first flagship store outside the United States in Sydney, as the technology giant expands its physical footprint to take on global rivals Apple and Samsung.

Microsoft Australia's managing director Pip Marlow said the shop, to be located in Sydney's main Pitt Street shopping district, was a "significant development" for the American firm.

Japan's state-of-the-art maglev train set a world speed record Tuesday in a test run near Mount Fuji, clocking more than 600 kilometers (373 miles) an hour.

The seven-car maglev -- short for "magnetic levitation" -- train, hit a top speed of 603 kilometers an hour, and managed nearly 11 seconds over 600kph Central Japan Railway said.

She can smile, she can sing and this robot receptionist who started work in Tokyo on Monday never gets bored of welcoming customers to her upmarket shop.

"My name is ChihiraAico. How do you do?" she says in Japanese, blinking and nodding to customers in the foyer of Mitsukoshi, Japan's oldest department store chain.

Collaborative robots and intelligent machinery may have wowed the crowds at this year's Hannover Messe, but experts see German industry as having some way to go towards incorporating them on factory floors in what could become the fourth industrial revolution.

The undoubted star of the world's largest industrial trade fair which closed its doors in the northern German city on Friday was YuMi, a collaborative dual-armed robot made by Swiss-based automation technology group ABB.