Netflix on Friday introduced a chatty virtual assistant named 'Max' to help people find on-demand films or television shows at the service using PlayStation 3 consoles.

"Max, rumored to be the child of Siri and HAL 9000, asks a few questions about your mood or movie and TV show tastes to arrive at a suggestion," Netflix vice president of product innovation Todd Yellin said in a blog post.

The agency in charge of website addresses passed a major milestone Friday on the path to broadening the world of domain names by the end of this year.

The board of U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) touted freshly-approved benefits and responsibilities for registrars that essentially act as domain name wholesalers.

Facebook on Monday will tighten its review process to spare advertisers the embarrassment of having their ads pop-up on pages containing porn or violent imagery.

"Our goal is to both preserve the freedoms of sharing on Facebook but also protect people and brands from certain types of content," the leading social network said Friday in a blog post.

Google is working on a videogame console and smart watch powered by Android software that has been a hit in smartphones and tablets, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The Journal cited unnamed sources as saying that the California-based Internet titan is out to expand its hardware line-up to include a new version of a Nexus Q digital media device introduced last year but never brought to market.

Cuban teacher Nancy Garcia would love to surf the Web at home. But since that is restricted in this communist country, she now logs on from new hotspots -- at a price few can afford.

"I don't stay long so as not to throw money out the window," said the 53-year-old as she checked her email near the Havana waterfront at one of the island's 118 new public access Internet points, open for several weeks now.

The notion of being fashionably smart is getting a makeover as Internet-linked computers get woven into formerly brainless attire such as glasses, bracelets and shoes.

A wearable computing trend is at the heart of the "quantified self" movement in which people track anything from how many calories they burn to how well they sleep or their moods at any given moment.

Kim Nam-Hee pulls no punches as she warns a classroom of wide-eyed South Korean 10-year-olds that they stand on the edge of an addiction that will turn them all into "mindless slaves".

The grim presentation by the social campaigner follows a survey with the loaded title: "Who's your real family?" It asked the students to compare the hours they spend on their smartphones with the time they spend interacting with relatives.

Microsoft has joined Google in a legal push for permission to disclose more information about secret government requests for data, according to a U.S. court filing made public on Wednesday.

Microsoft's legal request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) on June 19th came a day after a similar petition by Google.

Earthbound financial transactions service PayPal late Wednesday launched a quest for an intergalactic currency, saying it is time to figure out what space travelers will use as cash.

"The time has now come for us to start planning for the future; a future where we aren't just talking about global payments," said PayPal president David Marcus. "We are expanding our vision off earth into space."

The White House added Instagram to its social media portfolio on Wednesday, as it posted a picture of a helicopter with President Barack Obama and his family taking off on a trip to Africa.

"The First Family takes off for a three-country trip across Africa #MarineOne #ObamaInAfrica Follow @WhiteHouse for more!," said the caption for the picture of the presidential helicopter leaving the White House.