Internet retail colossus Amazon.com on Thursday announced the purchase of a text-to-speech technology company in a move evidently aimed at ramping up the capabilities of its Kindle Fire tablet computers.

Amazon did not disclose financial terms of the deal to buy Poland-based Ivona Software, which it said already powers text-to-speech, Voice Guide, and Explore by Touch features on Kindle Fire tablets.

A French court ruled Thursday that Twitter, which has steadfastly refused calls to police its millions of users, must hand over data to help identify the authors of racist or anti-Semitic tweets.

In a test case that pitted the right to free speech against laws banning hate speech, the court granted a request lodged in October by France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) which argued that many tweets had breached French law.

Toyota Motor Corp. and BMW Group are working together on next-generation batteries for green vehicles called "lithium-air" as their collaboration, first announced in late 2011, moves ahead in fuel cells, sports vehicles and other fields.

But both sides said Thursday the partnership will not involve a capital alliance while spanning a wide range of technologies for green vehicles.

British regulators have fined Sony 250,000 pounds ($396,100) for failing to prevent a 2011 cyberattack on its PlayStation Network which put millions of users' personal information — including names, addresses, birth dates and account passwords — at risk.

Britain's Information Commissioner's Office said Thursday that security measures in place at the time "were simply not good enough." It said the attack could have been prevented if software had been up to date, while passwords were also not secure.

Global Internet connection speeds around the world slowed in late 2012, according to a survey released Wednesday that suggested a temporary stall in broadband gains.

Akamai Technologies' third quarter "State of the Internet" report also showed China remained the biggest source of computer attacks, and that Brazil and China appear to have the biggest surge in Web use.

Microsoft says that the pro version of its Surface tablet will be available to purchase Feb. 9 in the U.S. and Canada.

Unlike the previous version that launched in October, the "Surface Windows 8 Pro" will use the full version of Windows 8, which is compatible with programs that run on earlier versions of Windows.

Yahoo! confirmed Tuesday that it bought Snip.it, a young San Francisco startup that lets people create scrapbooks with pictures, articles, videos and other content found online.

"The Snip.it team created an innovative technology that lets people share content in a social and fun way," Yahoo! vice president of product Mike Kerns said in a statement emailed to Agence France Presse.

A Dutch architect has designed a house "with no beginning or end" to be built using the world's largest 3D printer, harnessing technology that may one day be used to print houses on the moon.

Janjaap Ruijssenaars, 39, of Universe Architecture in Amsterdam, wants to print a Mobius strip-shaped building with around 1,100 square meters (12,000 square feet) of floor space using the massive D-Shape printer.

The Mozilla Foundation on Tuesday unveiled two preview smartphones as it invited developers to try its new open-source mobile operating system challenging Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

The announcement marked a major step forward for the new Firefox OS mobile operating system which is being built using open Web standards, like its Firefox Web browser.

The Library of Congress, repository of the world's largest collection of books, has set for itself the enormous task of archiving something less weighty and far more ephemeral -- Americans' billions of tweets.

The venerable U.S. institution is assembling all of the 400 million tweets sent by Americans each day, in the belief that each of the mini-messages reflect a small but important part of the national narrative.