A U.S. judge signed off Friday on Apple's $450 million legal deal to compensate consumers harmed by an illegal price-fixing conspiracy for electronic books.

The settlement negotiated to avoid trial in the civil case brought by authorities in 33 states calls on Apple to reimburse consumers to the tune of about $400 million and then pay legal costs and fees.

Google on Thursday began rolling out a way for people to support websites they frequent and, in return, be rewarded with ad-free pages.

A "Google Contributor" experiment was introduced with a handful of partners including tech news website Mashable and The Onion, which is known for clever satires.

Singapore on Friday announced new rules for mobile taxi booking apps, including U.S.-based Uber, in the latest move by governments around the world to regulate the increasingly popular services.

Taxi-booking and ride-sharing apps like Uber, Hailo and Lyft have spread rapidly in recent years, drawing protests from cabbies in cities from London to San Francisco who say it has led to soaring competition from unlicensed drivers.

Hundreds of robotics experts and their whirring, flashing robot creations gathered in Madrid on Wednesday for a top world congress on humanoid technology.

"Hello human friends, I am Reem-C," said one of the guest exhibits, a 1.65-meter (five-and-a-half-foot) humanoid robot weighing 80 kilos (176 pounds).

Firefox maker Mozilla announced Wednesday that it is switching to Yahoo as the default service for online searches done through the Web browser in the United States.

Google has been the default option for Firefox searches since 2004, but beginning next month that role in the U.S. will go to Yahoo, according to Mozilla Corporation chief Chris Beard.

Top executives from U.S. technology giant Apple and Chinese smartphone upstart Xiaomi traded light-hearted barbs on Thursday at a Chinese Internet conference, acknowledging the fierce competition between the rivals.

Apple's iPhones and iPads are wildly popular in China, encouraging smuggling and crowds at the company's stores as consumers try to lay their hands on the latest products.

Video game and e-commerce markets are growing "exponentially" across the Middle East and North Africa, driven by the mobile revolution and new youth-produced content, according to a study.

The gaming market is expected to nearly triple in size, from $1.6 billion in 2014 to $4.4 billion in 2022, said the study conducted by consulting firm Strategy& and the Abu Dhabi media regulatory body twofour54.

Facebook on Tuesday launched FB Techwire, billed as a showplace for technology talk shared by influential sources.

"The goal of FB Techwire is to aid in the discovery of original content including breaking news, first-person analysis, photos and videos for journalists that care about and cover tech," Facebook said in an email to Agence France Presse.

Finnish telecom equipment group Nokia announced an unexpected return to mobile devices Tuesday with a tablet aimed at the Chinese market.

"We are pleased to bring the Nokia brand back into consumers' hands with the N1 Android tablet, and to help make sophisticated technologies simple," Nokia's head of products Sebastian Nystroem said in a statement.

Thousands of high-tech terminals offering free WiFi and other services will soon replace New York's remaining fleet of seldom-used pay phones, the city mayor said Monday.

Mayor Bill de Blasio called the "LinkNYC" system "the fastest and largest municipal WiFi network in the world."