Sony said Thursday the successor to its PlayStation Portable machine will go on sale late this year, offering the quality of a home console in an on-the-go machine boasting a screen double the size of smart phones.

The NGP, short for "next generation portable," has a touch panel in the front and touch pads in the back to allow players to tap on the machine to move images, in addition to the usual buttons and switches.

The number of Internet users worldwide has reached the two billion mark, the head of the U.N.'s telecommunications agency, Hamadoun Toure, said on Wednesday.

"At the beginning of the year 2000 there only 500 million mobile subscriptions globally and 250 million Internet users," he said.

Good news for busy, urban anglers: Japanese toymaker Tomy will release an augmented reality fishing rod allowing users to feel a bite and reel in a heavy fish regardless of their location.

"Virtual Masters Real" -- a palm-sized rod with an antenna-like tip equipped with a reeling handle and small screen -- will go on sale in Japan in July for 6,279 yen ($76), Tomy said on Tuesday.

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.