Buyers of tablets that run Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows 8, are in for a pleasant musical surprise: they'll be able to handpick from a selection of millions of songs and stream them for free as long as they put up with an audio ad every 15 minutes.

The new feature, called Xbox Music, is not on offer anywhere else at the moment.

A push to lower music royalties paid by Internet radio has created political disharmony in Washington.

The row began to heat up in September, when a group of lawmakers introduced the Internet Radio Fairness Act to equalize royalty payments paid per song for digital radio, whether it is transmitted over the Internet, cable or satellite.

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the crisis-torn EU on Friday sparked a stunned Twitter backlash, many reacting with derision and anger, although some netizens came to its defense.

"Let's forget about #Malala & peers, brave community workers, prisoners of conscience, & give the Nobel Peace Prize to, drumroll, the EU," one person from Egypt named @RawahBadrawi said.

The United States believes Iran was behind a major cyberattack on Saudi Arabia's state oil company and a Qatari gas firm, a former U.S. official who has worked on cybersecurity issues said Friday.

In a major cybersecurity speech on Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a veiled warning to Tehran that Washington is ready to take preemptive action to protect U.S. computer networks, the former official said.

A news report says federal regulators are moving closer to suing Google over allegations that the company has abused its dominance of Internet search to stifle competition and drive up online advertising prices.

The New York Times reported Friday that staff members at the Federal Trade Commission are preparing to recommend that the agency file an antitrust lawsuit against the search giant.

Apple's widely anticipated unveiling of its "iPad Mini" is expected to come on October 23, the Dow Jones technology website AllThingsD said Friday.

Reports have been swirling for months about the smaller version of the market-leading iPad, but Apple has made no comment.

The digital world is knocking at the classroom door, but it is not simply a matter of shifting from paper to screen, educational experts and interactive content producers warn.

While portable devices such as the smartphone and tablet computer have revolutionized daily life for millions of people by enabling access to the Internet, schools have largely remained untouched by new technology.

U.S. retail sales of new video-game hardware, software and accessories fell 24 percent in September.

The falloff marked the 10th-consecutive month of declining sales as the gaming world holds off buying ahead of the release of Nintendo's Wii U console next month

Electronic books, which have sparked excited chatter for several years in the publishing world, are now gaining momentum among European readers, despite a late start compared to the U.S., industry insiders say.

The digital share of the book market in European countries still lags behind the United States but publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair were upbeat about their recent uptake and future prospects.

Samsung Electronics on Friday unveiled a compact version of its flagship Galaxy S III smartphone, with a touch screen sized to match that of arch-rival Apple's new iPhone 5.

The Galaxy S III Mini has a four inch high-definition touch screen, compared to the 4.8 inch version on it's larger Samsung sibling, but the size reduction is offered at a technical price.