Computer and smartphone maker Apple has been discussing with social media company Twitter the possibility of making a significant investment in it, The New York Times reported late Friday.

Citing unnamed "people briefed on the matter," the newspaper said Apple was considering investing into Twitter hundreds of millions of dollars, which could increase Twitter's valuation from $8.4 billion to more than $10 billion.

Apple and Samsung are set to square off in a California court Monday in what is seen as the biggest patent U.S. trial in recent memory.

Apple is seeking more than $2.5 billion in a case accusing the South Korean firm of copying designs and other patents from the iPhone and iPad maker in the trial in San Jose, California, federal court.

Facebook's stock hit a new low Friday after it reported lukewarm second-quarter results and didn't give an outlook for the coming months.

The stock fell $2.88, or nearly 11 percent, to $23.97 in afternoon trading Friday, after earlier trading as low as $22.28.

Google on Thursday unveiled an ultrafast Web service along with an Internet television subscription in the Kansas City area as part of a pilot project to boost broadband speeds.

The Google Fiber superfast broadband network will be available starting in September, with one-gigabyte per second speeds -- about 100 times faster than most current Internet subscriptions.

Apple pitched security measures in its mobile gadgets on Thursday during its first presentation at a premier gathering of hackers and that intent on thwarting cyber attacks.

The unprecedented talk by Apple head of software platform security Dallas De Atley at the 15th annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas came as hackers increasingly target smartphones at the heart of Internet Age lifestyles.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics Friday posted a record net profit of 5.19 trillion won ($4.53 billion) in the second quarter, powered by strong smartphone sales despite the global downturn.

The company, the world's biggest technology firm in revenue terms, also reported a record operating profit in April-June of 6.72 trillion won.

A freak double failure in its data centers took Twitter down for around an hour Thursday, leaving millions without updates from friends, celebrities and news providers a day ahead of the Olympics.

"We are sorry," said Mazen Rawashdeh, Twitter's vice president of engineering, in a message on the company's support blog.

Improved technology has driven down credit card fraud in Europe dramatically, the European Central Bank said Wednesday in it’s first-ever report on the issue.

"Card fraud has been on a declining trend since 2007 ... technological advances have been key to increasing the security of transactions," the central bank said.

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin made his debut Thursday on Forbes magazine's list of the 40 richest people in Singapore with a fortune estimated at $2.2 billion.

The Brazilian, who moved to the rich city-state in 2009 and is now a permanent resident, was ranked eighth in a list dominated by Singaporeans whose wealth comes from property, finance and other businesses.

Ten years after the fall of the Taliban, who banned modern technology as un-Islamic, the use of social media in Afghanistan is booming as politicians, warlords and even militants rush to get their message across.

The hardline Islamists who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and forbade the use of the Internet, deeming it a Western propaganda tool, now regularly use Twitter to promote their ideas and boast about attacks on NATO forces.