Wrinkled and skinny at first, the translucent, jellyfish-shaped balloons that Google released this week from a frozen field in the heart of New Zealand's South Island hardened into shiny pumpkins as they rose into the blue winter skies above Lake Tekapo, passing the first big test of a lofty goal to get the entire planet online.

It was the culmination of 18 months' work on what Google calls Project Loon, in recognition of how wacky the idea may sound. Developed in the secretive X lab that came up with a driverless car and web-surfing eyeglasses, the flimsy helium-filled inflatables beam the Internet down to earth as they sail past on the wind.

Amid the explosion of social media and new networking tools, governments and businesses are grappling with balancing their security needs against their wish to join the online conversations.

"Communications technology has dramatically democratized the process of gaining a public audience," said journalist and former military analyst Joshua Foust at a Washington forum on digital diplomacy.

Facebook revealed Friday it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data from U.S. authorities in the second half of last year, as it seeks to shield itself from a growing scandal.

The requests covered issues from child disappearances to petty crimes and terror threats and targeted between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts, the social networking site said, without revealing how often it complied with the requests.

U.S. law enforcement officials are demanding the creation of a "kill switch" that would render smartphones inoperable after they are stolen, New York's top prosecutor said in a clear warning to the world's smartphone manufacturers.

Citing statistics showing that 1 in 3 robberies nationwide involve the theft of a mobile phone, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Thursday announced the formation of a coalition of law enforcement agencies devoted to stamping out what he called an "epidemic" of robberies.

Some two-thirds of American parents monitor their children's Facebook activities, but a large percentage say they trust their youngsters to manage on their own, a study showed Thursday.

The survey by the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California found 70 percent of parents keep tabs on their kids' Facebook accounts. Some 46 percent had passwords.

Microsoft on Thursday announced that it is expanding its real-world retail push with mini-shops inside 600 U.S. and Canadian stores operated by consumer electronics chain Best Buy.

Each "store-within-a-store" will feature devices powered by Windows operating systems as well as the U.S. technology titan's Xbox videogame consoles and packaged software offerings.

A toy helicopter created from cannibalized smartphones was among the main attractions at a huge toy show in Tokyo on Friday, where producers were targeting the young and the young-at-heart.

The motor that makes a telephone vibrate provides the power for the rotor blades on the Nano-Falcon, which its makers say is the world's smallest radio-controlled helicopter.

More than half of Americans polled in a survey released Thursday said they agreed with the statement "We are really in the era of Big Brother."

The survey from the University of Southern California was conducted last year, before recent revelations of large-scale, secret U.S. government surveillance programs. It found that some 35 percent of respondents agreed that "There is no privacy, get over it."

Facebook on Wednesday added Twitter-style hashtags to help the more than one billion members of the social network tune into topics of interest at the leading social network.

"To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what's happening or what people are talking about," Facebook product manager Greg Lindley said in a blog post.

A video game with a protagonist who controls the world around him by hacking into systems is generating growing buzz, for its eerie parallels with the current storm about U.S. surveillance.

Games typically use weapons ranging from guns and swords to zappers to special powers to defeat enemies, overcome obstacles or simply score points, and hundreds are on display at the E3 gaming industry conference in Los Angeles.