The era of the smartphone is rapidly becoming a post-smartphone era, a key tech industry analyst said Sunday ahead of the opening of the world's biggest technology show.

Shawn DuBravac, chief economist at the Consumer Electronics Association, told a gathering that the smartphone has become so successful it is become a hub for people's digital lives, and less of a communications device.

Fidel Castro, Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope Benedict XVI -- Italian Tommasso Debenedetti has killed them all in fake tweets aimed at exposing shoddy journalism that have earned him global notoriety.

The latest victim of Debenedetti's unusual hobby is British author JK Rowling, whose death in an accident he announced from a fake Twitter account purporting to belong to fellow writer John Le Carre.

Iran's police chief says the Islamic Republic is developing new software to control social networking sites.

Gen. Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam was quoted in Iranian newspapers Saturday as saying the new software will prevent Iranians from being exposed to malicious content online while allowing users to enjoy the benefits of the Internet. He did not say when the software would be introduced.

The makers of Blekko believe they've built a great alternative to Google, but they're also realistic. They know their two-year-old Internet search engine won't ever supplant Google as the most popular place to search on laptop and desktop computers.

But Web surfing on tablet computers is a different matter, creating an opportunity that Blekko hopes to exploit with a new product called Izik — a search engine designed especially for Apple Inc.'s iPads and tablets running Google's Android software.

Google is letting people peg their New Year's resolutions to an online map and see what promises others around the world have set out to keep in 2013.

By Friday, a resolutions section at the California Internet giant's 2012 Zeitgeist website had logged half a million entries, more than a third of which involved desires to love or be loved.

The final value of Apple phones and computers stolen from a store in central Paris on New Year's Eve has been slashed by more than half, a source close to the investigation said on Thursday.

Initially estimated at about one million euros ($1.3 million), the revised figure lies somewhere around 300,000-400,000 euros' worth of iPhones, iPads and lap-top computers, said the source, who wished to remain anonymous.

The Taipei city government said Friday it will appeal a court ruling which revoked a fine it imposed on the U.S. Internet giant Google in a dispute over its mobile phone apps.

The city government in 2011 fined Google Tw$1 million ($34,000) for refusing to grant customers a seven-day trial period on its mobile phone apps, in accordance with Taiwan's consumer protection law.

BuzzFeed, a fast-growing social news website, said Thursday it had raised $19.5 million in a new round of funding from investors to help its expansion.

The latest round was led by the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates and included previous investors RRE, Hearst, SoftBank, and Lerer Ventures.

South Korea confirmed Thursday that Google chairman Eric Schmidt was planning a visit to North Korea, but was unable to comment on the reason for a trip that has sparked criticism from Washington.

"We are aware that he is planning a personal visit," South Korean foreign ministry spokesman Cho Tai-Young told a regular press briefing.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) paid rival Nokia 50 million euros ($65.8 million) to settle a patent dispute, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing U.S. regulatory filings.

Analysts believe RIM will also have to pay the Finnish company a licence fee of between $2 and $5 for each handset sold using Nokia technology, the newspaper wrote.