Over 500 million people are on micro-blogging site Twitter and Americans and Brazilians are the most connected, according to a study by social media monitor Semiocast released Monday.

Twitter surpassed the half-billion mark at the end of June, with the United States accounting for both the most users and largest number of "tweets" or short messages of no more than 140 characters posted on the site.

Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University has filed a suit against U.S. tech giant Apple, claiming the company's Siri intelligent assistant has infringed on two of its patents.

Apple introduced the voice-activated assistant technology when launching the iPhone 4S in 2011.

Long before Google online mapping service cars snatched data from private wireless hotspots there was the Wall of Sheep.

The Wall, created by Aires Security, has long been a mainstay of the infamous Def Con gathering of hackers that ended Sunday in Las Vegas.

Crime fighters have long used brains and brawn, but now a new kind of technology known as "predictive policing" promises to make them more efficient.

A growing number of law enforcement agencies, in the U.S. and elsewhere, have been adopting software tools with predictive analytics, based on algorithms that aim to predict crimes before they happen.

Hackers at an infamous Def Con gathering on Sunday were shown how to easily slip into computer networks through some routers made by Chinese electronics colossus Huawei Technologies.

"For the 20th anniversary of Def Con the gift is China," Recurity Labs chief Felix "FX" Lindner said as he opened his presentation.

A custom mobile phone network came to life in the middle of Def Con as hackers showed off their technology skills in tribute to the infamous gathering's elite "ninjas."

A Def Con team bought a telecom company van and configured a "Ninja Tel" cellular phone network to pay homage to longtime hackers who have kept the spirit of the event alive and, admittedly, just to do something "over the top."

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.