Bed bugs, bad service and terrible food used to be inevitable risks when traveling, but a host of online review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor are helping savvy consumers pick the best hotels and eat like locals.

The power of good reviews quickly shows up in the cash register, producing a virtuous circle in which business owners bend over backwards to keep them coming.

Afraid there may be peanuts or other allergens hiding in that cookie? Thanks to a cradle and app that turn your smartphone into a handheld biosensor, you may soon be able to run on-the-spot tests for food safety, environmental toxins, medical diagnostics and more.

The handheld biosensor was developed by researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Communist Vietnam is to ban bloggers and social media users from sharing news stories online, under a new decree seen as a further crackdown on online freedom.

Blogs or social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter -- which have become hugely popular over the last few years in the heavily-censored country -- should only be used "to provide and exchange personal information", according to the decree.

Major German publishers have decided to continue allowing Google to display extracts of their articles despite campaigning to tighten copyright rules for online news.

Google has said it will now only display material from publishers who have "opted in" to have free extracts appear on its news page.

If Twitter is the chirping chatterbox of the Internet, trolls are its dark underground denizens.

The collision of the two is driving a debate in Britain about the scale of online hatred and the limits of Internet free speech.

Facebook on Tuesday got into the business of publishing mobile games, offering developers help at going global with smartphone or tablet titles in exchange for a share of revenue.

The leading social network announced a Facebook Mobile Games Publishing pilot program in which it will work with small or medium-sized developers and promote their works in the online community.

Smart homes that let residents control alarms, locks and more over the internet are opening doors for crooks with hacker skills, according to computer security specialists.

"The smart home trend is growing, and it evolves quickly into a story of security," Trustwave managing consultant Daniel Crowley told Agence France Presse.

BMW AG is showing off the production model of its new i3 electric compact that uses carbon-fiber materials to keep the weight down and improve driving performance.

CEO Norbert Reithofer stressed at a New York unveiling that the car was designed as an electric from the ground up. The i3 is "born electric," he said.

From cancer-busting ultrasound techniques to ways to boost vitamins in tomatoes, Dutch tech-hub Eindhoven's avalanche of patents has just earned it the crown of "most inventive city in the world."

Despite the Dutch economy hobbling through its third recession since 2009, this southern city of around 750,000 has become a beacon of high-tech hope and is even compared to Silicon Valley in the United States.

Beauty is in the eye of the Google Glass wearer.

At least that's what the Internet search giant hopes a handful of young filmmakers will discover. Google is enlisting film students from five colleges to help it explore how its wearable computing device can be used to make movies.