VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Apple Inc's iTunes and App Store came back online on Wednesday afternoon after an unusually long service disruption that the company blamed on an internal technical error.

Visa Europe has announced a new, more secure way for consumers to pay retailers via smartphones, a move that could set the stage for Apple's Apple Pay and rival payment services to be introduced into Europe in the coming months.

Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc released a barrage of data, special "heat" maps and slick animations on Monday to claim the title of most-popular social network for spectators watching the Super Bowl, but a winner was difficult to pick.

The New York Post said some of its Twitter accounts were hacked on Friday, in the wake of a series of inaccurate posts on the social network relating to the Federal Reserve, Bank of America and U.S. military engagement with China.

The Twitter and YouTube accounts for the U.S. military command that oversees operations in the Middle East were hacked on Monday by people claiming to be sympathetic toward the Islamic State militant group being targeted in American bombing raids.

A hacker claiming to be behind a cyber attack on Banque Cantonale de Geneve on Friday divulged confidential client information after the Swiss bank failed to meet demands for payment.

Crowdsourced fundraising site Kickstarter has dropped Amazon.com Inc as its global payments processor in favor of Stripe, the fast-growing startup used by Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc and Apple Inc.

Twitter Inc said it has fully resolved an issue with a delay in tweets appearing on users' timelines from 1651 PST to 1830 PST on Monday (from 7.51 p.m. ET to 9.30 p.m. ET).

Iran is to expand what it calls "smart filtering" of the Internet, a policy of censoring undesirable content on websites without banning them completely, as it used to, the government said on Friday.

Twitter Inc will begin tracking what third-party apps are installed on users' mobile devices so the social media company can deliver more tailored content, including ads, the company said late on Wednesday.

Twitter Inc is in talks to buy Shots, a selfie photo-sharing app, CNBC reported, citing a source close to the Justin Bieber-backed company.

U.S. President Barack Obama will attend India's Republic Day celebrations in January as chief guest, a sign of steadily expanding ties between two countries that share concerns about China's growing power in Asia.

Children and teens are seeing fewer ads for sugary drinks on television, but they remain a prime target for marketers through other means such as product placement and social media, a report released on Wednesday found.

After two years of popping up at high-profile events sporting Google Glass, the gadget that transforms eyeglasses into spy-movie worthy technology, Google co-founder Sergey Brin sauntered bare-faced into a Silicon Valley red-carpet event on Sunday.

The mission of the first robotic probe to land on a comet reached a high point on Friday when the spacecraft radioed back to Earth that it had successfully drilled into the comet's body.