South Korea's capital Seoul said Monday it planned to ban the smartphone car-hailing service Uber, saying it raised passenger safety issues and threatened the livelihood of licensed taxi drivers.

The Uber app which allows clients to connect directly with "black car" services was launched in Seoul in August last year.

U.S. online giant Amazon unveiled a Netflix-style subscription plan Friday for unlimited access to e-books, a move which could shake up the world of publishing.

A messaging app that allows users to send the word "Yo" to friends has discovered newfound fame and fortune.

San Francisco-based startup Yo, which got its start in Tel Aviv and moved to California after becoming a hit in Israel, boasted new backers on Friday as reports estimated its value as high as $10 million.

Rocket science long dismissed as too impractical and expensive for everyday cars is getting a push into the mainstream by Toyota, the world's top-selling automaker.

Buoyed by its success with electric-gasoline hybrid vehicles, Toyota is betting that drivers will embrace hydrogen fuel cells, an even cleaner technology that runs on the energy created by an electrochemical reaction when oxygen in the air combines with hydrogen stored as fuel.

Microsoft on Thursday confirmed that its studio devoted to original television programs for Xbox consoles will be shuttered as part a massive overhaul of the workforce.

Projects started by Xbox Entertainment Studios will be completed, but the unit launched as part of a push to expand the consoles beyond gaming will be shuttered in coming months, the U.S. technology titan told AFP.

Facebook said Thursday it was testing a feature that lets users of the leading social network make purchases by simply pressing an on-screen "Buy" button.

The test was limited to a few small- or medium-sized businesses in the United States.

Payment processor Visa is launching a new service called Visa Checkout that eliminates a few steps in online payment.

The company and its retailing partners, including Neiman Marcus, Pizza Hut, Staples and others, hope a quicker payout will lead to fewer abandoned shopping carts online. As more customers shop on smaller screens like smartphones and tablets, the hassle of entering in credit card numbers and billing addresses is becoming a sticking point and payment processors have been working to find ways to simplify the process.

You've probably decided who gets the house or that family heirloom up in the attic when you die. But what about your email account and all those photos stored online?

Grieving relatives might want access for sentimental reasons, or to settle financial issues. But do you want your mom reading your exchanges on an online dating profile or a spouse going through every email?

Tokyo police said Thursday they had arrested an engineer for allegedly stealing massive amounts of personal data from an educational services firm, a leak that may ultimately affect more than 20 million people.

Private details -- including names, addresses, phone numbers and birthdays -- were stolen by 39-year-old suspect Masaomi Matsuzaki, police said, with Japanese media reporting that he sold the information for about 2.5 million yen ($24,600).

Microsoft on Wednesday followed in Google's footsteps by letting people in Europe ask to have links related to them 'forgotten' on its search engine Bing, under the auspices of a court ruling.

An online request form allowed people to identify specific web pages they thought should be omitted from results served up in response to Bing queries on their names.