Microsoft said Thursday its Bing search engine would be reconfigured to give more prominence to "mobile-friendly" websites, an acknowledgment of the growing importance of smartphones and other mobile devices.

The announcement comes just weeks after Google implemented a similar shift. The moves by the two search engines could have big implications for website operators, advertisers and for those who seek to optimize search rankings.

Facebook pushed deeper into the media business Wednesday by crafting a deal with news publishers which allows the social network to deliver articles directly to readers and could reshape the news landscape.

The long-anticipated move by Facebook means it will host news items on its servers to give readers faster access.

China has warned soldiers against using smartwatches, high-tech spectacles and other Internet-connected wearable gadgets, saying they could "endanger security" after a recruit was caught trying to take a photograph of troops.

"The use of watches that have internet access, location information, and telephone conversation functions should be considered a violation of secrecy regulations at army barracks," the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Daily said.

Japan is readying to lift the lid on what could be its most effective global marketing gimmick yet: the high-tech toilet seat.

Few foreign visitors make it through their first day in Japan without singing the praises of this epitome of Japanese know-how; a contraption that offers both comforting warmth and a frighteningly accurate bidet jet.

Verizon Wireless will pay $90 million and Sprint $68 million to settle charges that the mobile giants allowed phony charges on their customers' monthly bills so they could keep a cut of the profit, federal regulators announced Tuesday.

The two mobile providers had partnered with third-party vendors that sell premium text messaging services, such as daily horoscopes, trivia and sports scores. But consumers who hadn't signed up for the services were being billed anyway, typically about $9.99 a month, according to the Federal Communications Commission and several state attorneys general. Regulators said they launched an investigation after receiving numerous complaints that the carriers had refused to refund the charges.

Shoot enough photos and videos, and your phone will eventually fill up. Many phones don't let you add storage, and moving images to a personal computer is complicated for many people.

Help comes from Yahoo and Apple. Yahoo's Flickr and Apple's iCloud Photo Library will automatically transfer photos and videos to your online account, so you get a backup and more space on your device.

Microsoft-owned Skype on Tuesday cleared the way for anyone to use a new feature that translates video chats or instant messages in real time.

People no longer need to sign-up to use a preview version of Skype Translator, which handles spoken English, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin.

Facebook has teamed up with nine news publishers to launch a feature that will allow them to publish articles directly on the network's mobile news feeds.

Sharing articles on Facebook's mobile app is more and more common. But as it stands, it takes about eight seconds to load articles. And this is by far the single slowest content type on Facebook, it said.

Google on Monday said that even self-driving cars that can sense and react faster than humans still wind up in accidents.

"We've been hit from behind seven times, mainly at traffic lights but also on the freeway," Chris Urmson, the head of Google's autonomous car program, said in an online post.

The U.S. strategy of "deterrence" for cyber-attacks could involve a wide range or responses, potentially including the use of conventional weapons, the nation's top cyber-warrior said Monday.

Admiral Michael Rogers, who heads the U.S. Cyber Command as well as the National Security Agency, told a Washington forum that the idea of cyber-deterrence is evolving but that there are many ways to get that message across.