Nintendo provided a glimpse Sunday into its second-generation Wii console as the Japanese videogame giant set out to generate excitement ahead of the E3 industry extravaganza.

In a webcast streamed online, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed details about the Wii U GamePad and promised more to attend a press conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday prior to the opening of the E3 show floor.

Microsoft on Friday rolled out a revamped Bing that includes insights from Facebook and Twitter in the biggest overhaul of the search service since its launch three years ago.

"Most things in life are better with people you trust," Microsoft said in a release announcing that the changes promise in May have arrived.

The U.S. online movie business more than doubled in 2011 to rake in $992 million and will almost double again this year, a research report showed Friday.

The biggest surge came from Netflix, which shifted its focus to subscription video on demand and snagged 44 percent of the market, overtaking Apple's iTunes service, said the report from IHS iSuppli.

Cricket Communications said Thursday it would be the first U.S. carrier to offer the iPhone to customers under a prepaid plan, a move expanding the footprint of the wildly popular Apple device.

Cricket, a unit of Leap Wireless International, will offer the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 with its $55 per month, all-inclusive plan.

One out of seven Americans who go online use Twitter and eight percent do it every day, a survey showed Thursday.

The survey by the Pew Research Center found the number of Twitter users has doubled in the past two years to 15 percent of online adults.

Microsoft on Thursday released the final test version of its next-generation Windows software crafted to power devices ranging from tablets to desktop computers.

"We're thrilled to be at this milestone with the Windows 8 Release Preview," said Windows and Windows Live division president Steven Sinofsky.

Microsoft's Skype Internet telephone service hopes to quadruple the number of users to get to one billion, division president Tony Bates said Thursday.

Bates, who heads the unit that was acquired by Microsoft last year but operates autonomously, said growth will come from mobile users and from partnerships like the one Skype has with Facebook.

The boom in the number of mobile Internet devices and tablet computers in use will help quadruple Web traffic in the coming years, a study said Wednesday.

The Cisco Visual Networking Index said global Internet traffic by 2016 will be 1.3 zettabytes. A zettabyte is one trillion gigabytes, or one sextillion bytes.

Google on Wednesday added the Zagat restaurant review content to its Google+ social network, as it rolled out a new local search feature that takes on services such as Yelp.

The Internet giant added a "Local" tab to its Google+ social network to allow users to search for specific places or browse for nearby businesses or services.

Silicon Valley stars on Wednesday argued that the mobile-focused Internet startups will shine despite the dim stock market debut by leading social network Facebook.

Facebook, which ended the trading day almost $10 below its Nasdaq debut price of $38 a share, has sparked worry that technology startups are overprice in risky scenario reminiscent of the dot-com bubble burst some 12 years ago.