A U.S. government consumer watchdog agency called Tuesday for better privacy and security to be built into the myriad of connected devices, for fitness, smart homes or other uses. 

The "Internet of Things" guidelines released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission stop short of a new regulatory effort but nonetheless provoked critics who said the agency is overstepping its authority.

Google's super-fast Internet service -- up to 100 times quicker than basic broadband -- is heading for four more U.S. metropolitan areas as the technology titan ramps up pressure on cable service giants.

A Google Fiber program launched nearly five years ago will expand to 18 cities in the Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham areas.

Google's newly acquired Waze application poses a danger to police because of its ability to track their locations, the Los Angeles police chief said in a letter to the tech company's CEO.

According to the document police chief Charlie Beck sent to Google CEO Larry Page on December 30, people are using the "unwitting" Waze community as "their lookouts for the location of police officers."

Microsoft on Monday reported that its quarterly profit dipped but revenue increased in a sign that it is adapting to lifestyles centered on mobile devices and cloud services.

Bright spots during the three-month period ending December 31 included rising sales of Microsoft devices such as Surface tablets, Lumia smartphones, and Xbox One video game consoles.

Alfredo Castellano travels half an hour to Havana twice a week to write emails in a computer center with a Fidel Castro poster outside and aging machines inside.

Like most Cubans, he lacks Internet access at home, but many hope this will change after the United States offered to bolster the communist island's tightly-controlled telecommunications as part of a historic diplomatic detente.

Facebook, the world's most popular social network, and its Instagram photo site were interrupted temporarily Tuesday, provoking panic, rumors of a hack, and jokes of how more than one billion users were struggling to cope.

"This was not the result of a third party attack," Facebook said in a statement after its services were restored.

The number of Internet users in China has risen to nearly 650 million, authorities said over the weekend, as the world's largest online population continues to rise.

There were 648 million Internet users in China at the end of 2014, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the official Xinhua news agency reported.

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The Malaysia Airlines website was commandeered Monday by hackers who referenced Islamic State jihadists and claimed to be from the "Lizard Squad", a group known for previous denial-of-service attacks.

It was not clear why the troubled airline was targeted but the hacking group said on its Twitter feed that it was "Going to dump some loot found on malaysiaairlines.com servers soon."

GoPro has signed a deal with the NHL to bring its wearable cameras closer to the action on the ice and let viewers see games from the perspective of players and referees.

It's the company's first such deal with a major professional sports league. While GoPro would not comment on whether other partnerships are in the works, they would make sense.