As a schoolboy, Akihiro Matsumura spent hundreds of hours learning the intricate Chinese characters that make up a part of written Japanese. Now, the graduate student can rely on his smartphone, tablet and laptop to remember them for him.

"Sometimes I don't even bother to take notes in seminars. I just take out my tablet to shoot pictures of what instructors write on blackboards," he told Agence France Presse.

Phone numbers and email addresses belonging to some 6 million Facebook users have been improperly shared due to a software bug, the social network said Friday.

But no financial or other information was revealed to others, and there was "no evidence that this bug has been exploited maliciously," Facebook said in a security note, adding it was "upset and embarrassed" by the glitch.

British authorities on Friday gave Internet giant Google 35 days to delete any remaining data "mistakenly collected" by its Street View cars when taking city snapshots for its map service.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued Google with an enforcement notice demanding that it destroy four discs containing information it obtained from unsecured wireless networks.

Facebook on Thursday added smartphone video-sharing to its Instagram photo-based social network, in a move challenging Twitter's popular Vine service.

"We need to do to video what we did to photos," Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom said while unveiling Video On Instagram at a press event at Facebook's headquarters in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park.

Apple on Thursday dismissed allegations it conspired to raise the price of e-books and said the U.S. government's antitrust case against it would deter new entrants to concentrated markets.

The two sides delivered closing arguments at the three-week trial, which has shed an uncomfortable light on the technology icon and the clubby world of high-stakes publishing. A decision is expected in the next couple of months.

France is giving Google three months to be more upfront about the data it collects from users — or be fined.

The legal action accelerates a Europe-wide fight against Google over its use of personal data. While the fines threatened are small by the standards of one of the world's richest companies, the move puts new pressure on Google as it smarts from recent criticism over providing customer data to U.S. government surveillance efforts.

Microsoft handed gamers a victory Wednesday by backing off plans for new-generation Xbox One consoles to require Internet connections and put restrictions on playing second-hand game disks.

Microsoft interactive entertainment business president Don Mattrick announced in a blog post that the U.S. technology titan was surrendering in the face of outrage by gamers in the wake of last week's premier E3 videogame expo.

In a rural classroom in the Thai highlands, hill tribe children energetically slide their fingertips over tablet computer screens practicing everything from English to mathematics and music.

The disadvantaged students are part of an ambitious scheme by the kingdom to distribute millions of the handheld devices in its schools in a move supporters hope will boost national education standards.

Facebook said Tuesday that more than a million businesses now advertise at the leading social network.

"I know business owners like these invest their hard-earned money and time into running their companies," Facebook's Dan Levy said in a blog post that referred to advertisers such as Singapore's Retail Ministry and retailer Springwools in Ireland.

When Google chose New Zealand to unveil secret plans for a balloon-driven wi-fi network last weekend, it cemented the country's reputation as a test bed for global tech companies looking to trial their latest innovations, industry experts say.

They said New Zealand, tucked away deep in the southern hemisphere, offers a tech-savvy, English-speaking population where firms such as Google and Facebook can quietly test new products without risking major fallout if anything goes wrong.