Twitter's triumphant market debut, the rise of smart fashion and a new generation of game consoles highlighted the tech world this year, portending more mobile and social trends in 2014.

Meanwhile Apple regained some lost momentum and Microsoft sought to reboot by announcing it was seeking a new chief executive.

Music service Spotify has launched a new free streaming service for mobile devices.

The Swedish-based company announced Wednesday that it will allow users to stream playlists for free as long as the songs are shuffled randomly. It's a step closer to picking songs and albums on demand, a feature Spotify continues to reserve for premium members who pay $10 a month.

German police are touting a new high-tech tool to identify illegal neo-Nazi songs in seconds, dubbed "Nazi Shazam" after popular music identification software.

Authorities in the eastern state of Saxony hope to use their brainchild to identify and shut down Internet radio stations that play banned songs.

A Seoul court rejected Samsung's claim that iPhone and iPad models violated three of its patents, another setback for the South Korean electronics giant in a global battle with Apple over rights to technologies that power smartphones and tablets.

A Seoul Central District Court judge ruled Thursday that Apple did not violate Samsung's intellectual property rights. The technology in two of Samsung's patents could be developed easily from other inventions, Judge Shim Woo-yong said, making it unlikely they were copied. He said one patent was not used in the iPad.

U.S. search engine giant Google Wednesday opened its first data centers in Asia to cater for soaring demand, and said it would double its planned investment in the Taiwan facility to $600 million.

Google inaugurated one of the new centers at an industrial park at Changhua in central Taiwan, and said a similar facility in Singapore was also up and running as of Wednesday.

A law under consideration in South Korea's parliament has sparked vociferous debate by grouping popular online games such as "StarCraft" with gambling, drugs and alcohol as an anti-social addiction the government should do more to stamp out.

The bill is winning support from parents, religious groups and doctors but has alarmed the Internet industry and enraged gamers. The legislation includes provisions to limit advertising while a separate bill would take 1 percent of the gaming industry's revenue to create a fund to curb addiction.

When he sees people listening to music on portable digital devices, David Chesky cringes.

"You can have an $8 million Stradivarius, and it sounds like you bought it at a local hardware store," says Chesky.

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia faces a tax bill of more than 210 billion rupees ($3.4 billion) in India from liabilities arising out of unpaid charges and penalties since 2006, a report said Tuesday.

Indian tax authorities froze some of Nokia's assets in October including its bank accounts and buildings over a dispute which has forced Nokia to approach the Indian courts seeking relief.

Facebook unveiled plans Monday on a partnership with New York University for a new center for artificial intelligence, aimed at harnessing the huge social network's massive trove of data.

The California-based tech giant named professor Yann LeCun of NYU's Center for Data Science to head up the project.

Germany's express delivery and mail company Deutsche Post DHL is testing a drone that could be used to deliver urgently needed goods to hard-to-reach places.

The small pilot-less helicopter flew a package of medicine Monday from a pharmacy in the town of Bonn to the company's headquarters on the other side of the Rhine River. The aircraft can carry up to 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds).