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.

The crowd-funded Ouya videogame console hit the market on Tuesday and sold out quickly at online retailer Amazon as well as on the website of major U.S. chain store Target.

"Unreal," Ouya said in a message fired off on Twitter. "Ouya has officially sold out on @amazon U.S. and UK."

The first four of 12 satellites in a new constellation to provide affordable, high-speed Internet to people in nearly 180 "under-connected" countries were blasted into Space on Tuesday.

The orbiters, part of a project dubbed O3b, for the "other 3 billion" people with restricted Internet access, were lifted by a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kourou in French Guiana at 1927 GMT, according to a live broadcast on the website of launch company Arianespace.

Smartphone users have seen an explosion of malware in the past year, dominated by schemes targeting Google's Android operating system, a survey showed Wednesday.

The attacks are also starting to hit corporate networks, possibly as part of broader espionage efforts, according to the Juniper Networks Mobile survey.

The startup behind a Snapchat application for sharing self-destructing smartphone photos and messages got a dizzying valuation on Monday in a new funding round.

Reports that the company launched in late 2011 had raised $60 million from investors, giving it a market value of about $800 million, hit the Internet along with word that people are sharing more than 200 million 'snaps' daily.