YouTube on Thursday began publishing a chart that tracks top music videos at the popular Google-owned website.

A YouTube 100 chart online at youtube.com/music will be updated weekly based on the popularity of videos whether works are amateur or professional, according to YouTube product manager Chris LaRosa.

Startup WhoSay has been working quietly in the background helping Hollywood stars keep control of pictures and videos at social networking sensations Twitter and Facebook.

The invitation-only service caters to celebrities whose mere choice of shoes can spark fashion trends or casual meals out could turn unknown restaurants into hip dining spots.

The popular online file-sharing service LimeWire has agreed to pay $105 million to settle charges that it was a platform for music piracy.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said Thursday that the negotiated settlement came as jurors in a federal court in New York City mulled how much LimeWire should pay for "massive copyright infringement."

With scores of smartphones available, one obvious way for them to stand out is with size. Two new phones take that to extremes: HP's tiny Veer 4G and Samsung's massive Infuse 4G.

Both have the foundations of good smartphones, including great operating software and the ability to run on AT&T's high-speed "4G" network. But their sizes present some major weaknesses, too.

Social networks are "lucrative hot beds" for cyber scams as crooks endeavor to dupe members of online communities, according to a Microsoft security report released on Thursday.

"Phishing" attacks that use seemingly legitimate messages to trick people into clicking on booby-trapped links, buying bogus software, or revealing information rocketed 1,200 percent at social networks last year, it said.

Google wants Android to move into people's homes with the open-source software powering everything from smart light bulbs to sound systems.

More than 5,000 software savants at Google's annual developers conference in San Francisco on Tuesday were shown an "Android@Home" software platform for making dumb devices smart and robots manageable.

U.S. computer security firm Symantec has said that Facebook accidentally left a door open for advertisers to access profiles, pictures, chat and other private data at the social network.

Facebook told Agence France Presse that there was no evidence anyone stepped through that door and swiped any information from the accounts of its more than 500 million members.

YouTube is beefing up its roster of movies for "rent" online in the United States to woo viewers away from television and take on booming Internet service Netflix.

"You're spending just 15 minutes a day on YouTube, and spending five hours a day watching TV," YouTube head Salar Kamangar said Monday in a post at the Google-owned video-sharing website.

Internet giant Google could launch an online music service as early as Tuesday to rival Amazon's "cloud" service, which allows users to store digital music online, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said on Monday that Google, like Amazon, has yet to secure licenses from the major record companies, and would limit users to a "streaming mode" to prevent piracy.

U.S. software giant Microsoft is near to clinching a deal to buy Internet telephony pioneer Skype for $7-8 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The newspaper cited unnamed people familiar with the matter as saying the deal could close as soon as Tuesday or fall apart completely.