Google, the king of Internet search but a bust on the social front, launched its rival to Facebook on Tuesday, a social networking service called Google+.

"Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it," Google's senior vice president for engineering Vic Gundotra said in a blog post about the long-awaited social networking initiative from the Internet giant.

Microsoft has officially launched its Web-based email and Office services, part of its ongoing effort to keep Google at bay when it comes to business software.

"Office 365" has been available in a test version since last year. It combines Web-based versions of Word, Excel and other Office applications. It also includes the Exchange e-mail system, SharePoint online collaboration technology and Microsoft's instant messaging, Internet phone and video conferencing system.

Call him the Digital Candidate: President Barack Obama is asking supporters to use Facebook to declare "I'm In!" for his re-election campaign and is using Twitter to personally blast out messages to his nearly 9 million followers.

Emails to supporters seek small-dollar donations in exchange for campaign coffee mugs or a chance to win dinner with the president. The campaign's website helps supporters find local events, plan meetings and raise money while its digital team develops the next big thing.

States cannot ban the sale or rental of ultraviolent video games to children, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting such limits as a violation of young people's First Amendment rights and leaving it up to parents and the multibillion-dollar gaming industry to decide what kids can buy.

The high court, on a 7-2 vote, threw out California's 2005 law covering games sold or rented to those under 18, calling it an unconstitutional violation of free-speech rights. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia, said, "Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply."

More virtual livestock looks set to be traded and petulant fowl hurled at targets as social gaming takes hold in the booming mobile phone market, industry experts say.

Social gaming, made popular by titles such as "Farmville" and "Angry Birds", was one of the closely followed topics at last week's CommunicAsia trade fair in Singapore, where telecom executives meet annually to check on new trends.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt on Monday warned that the ongoing Arab uprisings could lead to an upsurge in internet censorship and an increased risk of arrest for colleagues working in restive nations.

Speaking at the Summit Against Violent Extremism in Dublin, Schmidt claimed regimes were keen to clamp down on internet freedoms after the web was widely used by dissidents to organize anti-government movements in the Arab world.

New recruits to Singapore's military, air force and navy are to get a new standard-issue item of equipment besides their rifle -- the iPad.

The defense ministry said Monday it will be issuing "about 8,000" of the sleek, touch-screen tablet computers -- already wildly popular with the city-state's tech-savvy youth -- to recruits from November.

The Vatican, whose communications problems are no secret, is taking a leap into the world of new media next week with the launch of a news information portal that Pope Benedict XVI himself may put online with a papal click.

Vatican officials said Saturday that Benedict has been following the development of the portal, which will for the first time aggregate information from the Vatican's various print, online, radio and television media in a one-stop-shop for Holy See news.

U.S. videogame giant Electronic Arts (EA) on Friday revealed that hackers had looted user data in "a highly sophisticated" attack.

A computer network hosting BioWare Edmonton's "Neverwinter Nights" game forums was hit by hackers who made off with users' names, passwords, email addresses, birth dates and other personal information, EA said at its website.

Google on Friday announced that it is pulling the plugs on free Health and PowerMeter services that haven't won legions of users.

"We're going to retire two products that didn't catch on the way we would have hoped, but did serve as influential models," Google Health senior product manager Aaron Brown and Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl said in a blog post.