A unified effort has lopped the head off a treacherous Conficker computer worm but the malicious computer code lives on in infected machines.

A Conficker Working Group report available online on Tuesday said the alliance has prevented the people who released the worm from using it to command computers as an army of machines referred to as a "botnet."

Twitter's website was inaccessible in Egypt on Tuesday, in an apparent move to thwart protesters using the social network in a campaign to oust President Hosni Mubarak.

The U.S.-based microblogging service that allows people to use mobile phones and computers to

Verizon Communications Inc. on Tuesday said it attracted more than half a million smart-phone subscribers in the latest quarter, showing strength even before it starts selling the iPhone in February.

Verizon Wireless added 872,000 subscribers on contract-based plans, well above analyst expectations of about 650,000. Contract-based subscribers are the most lucrative, and Verizon said three-quarters of the new subscribers bought smart phones, which come with added data fees.

The Firefox and Google Chrome browsers are getting tools to help users block advertisers from collecting information about them.

Alex Fowler, a technology and privacy officer for Firefox maker Mozilla, said the "Do Not Track" tool will be the first in a series of steps designed to guard privacy. He didn't say when the tool will be available.

Music is taking to the clouds after Sony said it is expanding its cloud-based digital Music Unlimited service around Europe to enable fans to access music on their digital devices.

After being launched in the United States, Britain and Ireland, Sony's "Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity" service, is being extended to France, Germany, Spain and Italy, Sony said in an announcement to coincide with Sunday's opening of the MIDEM music industry convention on the French Riviera.

Facebook said Friday it has raised $1 billion from non-U.S. investors, which combined with an infusion from Goldman Sachs and Russia's Digital Sky Technologies in December, brings the haul from its latest round of funding to $1.5 billion.

The investments value the social networking site at $50 billion, more than the current market values of Yahoo Inc. or eBay Inc., but below those of Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc.

The world will run out of Internet addresses "within weeks", according to one of the founding fathers of the web, a report said Friday.

Vint Cerf, who helped create the web by connecting computers using Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, said it was his "fault" that the 4.3 billion addresses created were running out, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Online auction house eBay reported better than expected earnings Wednesday, driven by the success of its online financial transactions service PayPal.

EBay revenue for the quarter ending December 31 was slightly less than $2.5 billion and its net profit was $559.2 million dollars.

Microblogging site Twitter on Wednesday opened a Korean-language website in an attempt to expand further into a market that has grown almost tenfold in the past year.

Korean is now one of seven languages offered on Twitter.com.

Two men who authorities say were competing to impress their fellow hackers were arrested Tuesday on federal charges they stole the e-mail addresses of more than 100,000 Apple iPad users, including politicians and media personalities.

The theft and the AT&T security weakness that made it possible were revealed months ago, and U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said there was no evidence the men used the swiped information for criminal purposes. Authorities cautioned, however, that it could theoretically have wound up in the hands of spammers and scam artists.