Global spending on information technology is expected to reach $3.8 trillion in 2014, driven by growth in connected devices ranging from jewelry to refrigerators, researchers said Monday.

A report by the research firm Gartner said IT spending is expected to increase 3.6 percent from 2013.

Iranian Telecommunications Minister Mahmoud Vaezi rejected on Monday any official plans to legalize Facebook and Twitter, although President Hassan Rouhani pledged to reduce online censorship, ISNA news agency reported.

"The ban on networks such as Facebook and Twitter was not supposed to be lifted," said Vaezi.

People don't just watch TV anymore; they talk about it on Twitter. From the comfort of couches, they share reactions to touchdowns and nail-biting season finales —and advertisers and networks are taking note.

Examples of Twitter's influence abound. The recent finale of "Breaking Bad" generated a record 1.24 million tweets. The conversation peaked at 22,373 tweets per minute according to analytics firm SocialGuide. People used the hashtag "GoodbyeBreakingBad" nearly 500,000 times. During this year's Super Bowl, sports fans generated 24 million tweets about the competition and nearly half of the game's nationally televised commercials contained hashtags that encouraged viewers to tweet.

China is employing two million people to keep tabs on people's Internet use, according to state media, in a rare glimpse into the secret world of Beijing's vast online surveillance operation.

Many of the employees are simply performing keyword searches to monitor the tens of millions of messages being posted daily on popular social media and microblogging sites, the Beijing News said.

Apple is fighting a legal order requiring the company to modify its digital book contracts and submit to oversight by a court-appointed antitrust monitor.

The Cupertino, California, company filed its notice of appeal Thursday in New York, following through on a pledge to fight the verdict. A federal court had concluded that Apple Inc. had illegally colluded with five major publishers to fix the prices of electronic books at the expense of consumers. The challenge comes a month after U.S. District Judge Denise Cote finalized her order based on a verdict that she reached in July.

Samsung Electronics Co. said Friday it expected to post a record operating profit of 10.1 trillion won ($9.4 billion) in the third quarter of this year.

The estimate was slightly higher than analyst predictions and represents a 25 percent increase from a revised operating profit of 8.06 trillion won a year earlier for the world's top maker of smartphones, memory chips and flat-panel TVs.

Twitter on Thursday unveiled plans to pump up the globally popular one-to-many messaging service with a $1 billion stock market debut.

The initial public offering (IPO) is expected to be the most sought-after since Facebook in May 2012, a listing that faced numerous glitches on the Nasdaq and which saw the company's share price slump before recovering this year.

Software titan Adobe Systems on Thursday warned that hackers breached its defenses and stole source code along with credit card numbers and other information relating to nearly three million customers.

"Very recently, Adobe's security team discovered sophisticated attacks on our network, involving illegal access of customer information as well as source code for numerous Adobe products," Adobe chief security officer Brad Arkin said in a blog post.

Digital music service Rdio (AR'-dee-oh) is launching its free Internet radio service in the U.S., Canada and Australia on Thursday.

The move capitalizes on Rdio's tie-up with traditional radio station owner Cumulus Media and helps it compete with digital rivals Pandora and Spotify.

Hyundai Motor said Thursday it would stop putting cigarette lighter sockets in cars made for the domestic market in favour of a USB power point.

The South Korean auto giant said its decision would affect all passenger cars and SUVs sold at home from this month.