A San Francisco startup specializing in security for smartphones and tablets powered by Android software said it had been bought by Twitter.

Whisper Systems did not disclose the terms of the deal.

The Internet on Monday buzzed anew with talk that Facebook is poised to go public after the Wall Street Journal reported the social networking giant could issue stock as early as April.

"We are not going to participate in speculation about an IPO," Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said in response to an AFP inquiry.

U.S. shoppers were on pace to drive "Cyber Monday" sales to a new record high as people flocked the Internet to snap up deals offered by online retailers.

By mid-afternoon in New York, IBM Benchmark reported that online sales on the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday were 15 percent higher than they were at the same point last year.

Agence France-Presse on Monday launched its iPad application in Spanish and Portuguese providing access to the latest stories, videos, pictures and graphics from its network of correspondents around the world.

The application, the first in Spanish and Portuguese by a leading international news agency, can be downloaded, free of charge, on Apple's iTunes page: http://itunes.apple.com/mx/app/afp-ipad-edition/id448339846?mt=8.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange blasted the mainstream media, Washington, banks and the Internet itself as he addressed journalists in Hong Kong on Monday via videolink from house arrest in England.

Fresh from accepting a top award for journalism from the prestigious Walkley Foundation in his native Australia on Sunday, Assange spoke to the News World Summit in Hong Kong before keeping a regular appointment with the police.

Toyota's president unveiled a futuristic concept car resembling a giant smartphone to demonstrate how Japan's top automaker is trying to take the lead in technology at the upcoming Tokyo auto show.

Toyota Motor Corp. will also be showing an electric vehicle, set for launch next year, and a tiny version of the hit Prius gas-electric hybrid at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opens to the public this weekend.

Perched near the Arctic Circle, the Swedish town of Luleaa hopes that a massive data center for U.S. social networking giant Facebook will launch the vibrant industrial region into the digital age as a European data traffic hub.

"The digital industry will be an important addition to our town," Mayor Karl Petersen told AFP.

Japanese electronics giant Panasonic said Friday it would build a new solar cell factory in Malaysia, as it looks abroad to cut production costs caused by the surging yen.

The company said it would spend 45 billion yen ($582 million) on the new factory making cells -- a key component of solar panels -- capable of generating 300 megawatts of power.

The popularity of Twitter has soared in the Arab world over the past year, a study published Thursday revealed, reflecting the key role of the social networking site in the "Arab Spring" revolutions.

Online Twitter messages, or tweets, in Arabic rocketed from 99,000 a day in October 2010 to over two million last month, social media monitor Semiocast showed in its study into the most popular languages used on the popular site.

Like Santa Claus on that one foggy Christmas Eve, Microsoft has summoned Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to guide some precious cargo — a holiday marketing campaign for its Bing search engine.

The advertisements, debuting online and on TV this week, star Rudolph and other characters from the animated story about the most famous reindeer of all. The campaign is part of Microsoft's attempt to trip up Google Inc., an Internet search rival as imposing as the Abominable Snowman was before Yukon Cornelius tamed the monster.