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.

European regulators appeared to be nearing a settlement with Google in their probe over whether the Internet search-and-advertising giant is unfairly stifling competition.

Joaquin Almunia, the top antitrust official at the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said there had been a "significant improvement" in the concessions Google was willing to make in order to avoid a fine. The Commission has been investigating Google since 2010 over complaints that it gives undue preference to its own services in search results and negotiates unfair advertising deals.

Amazon's new Kindle Fire HDX tablet resembles Google's Nexus 7 in many ways — from its light weight to its sharp display. Both tablets run a version of Google's Android operating system, and they even have the same starting price of $229.

The similarities end when you turn them on.

Models wearing Google Glass eyewear, Pebble smartwatches and other hot gadgets strutted a catwalk late Monday as Internet technology continued to merge with the world of fashion.

A Digital Fall fashion show here marked the close of the first Glazed Conference devoted to setting the stage for wearable computing startups to become billion-dollar businesses.

The digital domain is creeping off our desktops and onto our bodies, from music players that match your tunes to your heart beat, to mood sweaters that change color depending on your emotional state — blue for calm, red for angry. There are vacuum shoes that clean the floor while you walk and fitness bracelets, anklets and necklaces to track your calorie burning.

"Everyone agrees the race is just beginning, and I think we're going to see some very, very big leaps in just the next year," said tech entrepreneur Manish Chandra at a wearable technology conference and fashion show in San Francisco Monday that was buzzing with hundreds of developers, engineers and designers.

A car that drives itself and glasses that translate a menu as you read it are some of the glimpses of tomorrow on offer at a gadget fair near Tokyo that began on Tuesday.

The Cutting-Edge IT & Electronics Comprehensive Exhibition (CEATEC) threw open its doors to thousands of visitors eager to sample gizmos they will be using in future.

Move aside Facebook and Skype. Asian social networks, already hugely popular on their continent, have set their sights on Europe where they could prove stiff competition for their U.S. rivals.

China's WeChat and Japan's Line, which let users make free calls, send instant messages and post funny short videos and photos, take attributes from Facebook, Skype and messenging application WhatsApp and roll them all together.

The collapse of negotiations for Alibaba's listing in Hong Kong, which sees the lucrative initial public offering set to head to New York, has prompted sharp criticism of the city's stock exchange from the Chinese online trading giant and some investors.

Talks between the Hong Kong bourse and Alibaba, looking at ways to grant founder Jack Ma and its senior management some control over the board of directors ended in vain, according to a blog post by Alibaba's co-founder Joe Tsai on Thursday.

Augmented reality glasses that can translate a menu in real time were unveiled at a Japanese gadget fair Monday, with promises they could be ready for visitors to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

NTT Docomo was showing off its latest development where cameras, computers and know-how combine to give the wearer a whole different view of what they are looking at.