Taiwan-based HTC on Wednesday unveiled its newest smartphone with high-resolution cameras on both sides to appeal to people who take "selfie" pictures.

The HTC Desire Eye, unveiled at a New York event, includes 13-megapixel cameras on both the front and back.

Google's Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday U.S. online spying is a threat so dire it could wind up "breaking the Internet."

Schmidt's concern was echoed by Facebook, Microsoft, Dropbox and others involved in a panel discussion in Silicon Valley led by Senate finance committee chairman Ron Wyden. 

The European Union will ask major U.S. technology companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter to help tackle online extremism at a meeting on Wednesday, officials said.

Yahoo said some of its servers were breached briefly by hackers, but that the attack was unrelated to the newly discovered Shellshock vulnerability, and that no user data was compromised.

Facebook on Tuesday ramped up its "Audience Network" that mines what it knows about users to target ads in other applications on smartphones or tablet computers.

Twitter sued the US government Tuesday, claiming its free speech rights are being violated by restrictions on its ability to disclose numbers of secret orders to hand over user data.

Drivers using hands-free virtual assistants like Apple's Siri can be distracted by the technology, creating safety hazards, according to a study released Tuesday.

Glasses that tell you how to get home, adverts that know where you are looking and a T-shirt that knows how fast your heart is beating were on display at a huge tech gathering in Japan Tuesday.

Smartphones, tablets and other gadgets aren't just changing the way we live and work. They are shaking up Silicon Valley's balance of power and splitting up businesses. Long-established companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and eBay Inc. are scrambling to regain their footing to better compete against mobile-savvy trendsetters like Apple and Google, as well as rising technology stars that have built businesses around "cloud computing."

That term covers a swath of Internet-driven services that shifted technology from the days software users paid a one-time fee to buy and install programs on individual machines where they also stored all their data on hard drives. But with the advent of the "cloud," people can now rent software to use over the Internet. This enables customers to access documents, pictures and other vital information from any kind of Internet-connected device, a convenience that's become a necessity during the past few years as people increasingly rely on smartphones and tablets instead of laptop and desktop computers.

Two new studies have found that voice-activated smartphones and dashboard infotainment systems may be making the distracted-driving problem worse instead of better.

The systems let drivers do things like tune the radio, send a text message, or make a phone call while keeping their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel, but many of these systems are so error-prone or complex that they require more concentration from drivers rather than less, according to studies released Tuesday by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and the University of Utah.