Facebook is working to become your new best friend, getting to know you better by infusing the billion-member social network's software with artificial intelligence.

The California-based social network giant is hiring professor Yann LeCun of NYU's Center for Data Science to head up a new artificial intelligence lab, aiming to use cutting-edge science to make Facebook more interesting and relevant.

U.S. technology giant Apple has removed an anti-censorship application from its Chinese app store on orders from Beijing, the software's developers said Friday.

The FreeWeibo app is intended to allows users to read sensitive postings on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, that have been censored and deleted, one of its designers said.

Instagram has added a new feature that lets users share photos and videos with up to 15 people rather than everyone who follows them on the popular Facebook-owned photo-sharing app.

Called Instagram Direct, the feature is available for Apple and Android phones, CEO Kevin Systrom said at a news event in New York City. Users can choose up to 15 people who follow them on Instagram to share photos or videos.

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.