Eighteen U.S. Olympians including swimming greats Mark Spitz and Janet Evans are suing Samsung Corporation, saying its U.S. Olympic Genome Project Facebook app misuses their names and images.

Spitz and Evans are joined as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court by diver Greg Louganis, athletics great Jackie Joyner-Kersee, beach volleyball player Phil Dalhausser and 13 other swimmers.

LinkedIn users can now access the professional social network on their iPad with an application launched Thursday.

The free app is available through Apple Inc.'s iTunes store. LinkedIn says the app helps today's increasingly mobile professionals who aren't always tethered to a desktop.

Google on Thursday confirmed that it has sold 3D computer modeling program SketchUp as the Internet titan continues streamlining its product line with co-founder Larry Page at the helm.

SketchUp technology and members of the team will join Trimble, a California company specializing in making business or government workers more productive in jobs such as surveying, construction, mapping, fleet management and public safety.

A surge in Galaxy smartphone sales fueled earnings at Samsung Electronics to a record high in the first quarter, usually a tough season for the global consumer electronics industry, outshining handset rivals such as Nokia Corp.

Samsung sold more smartphones in the first three months of the year than Apple Inc. and raked in more than 70 percent of its operating profit from mobile businesses. Shares of Samsung Electronics Co. shot up nearly 3 percent.

The hacktivist group Raise Your Voice hit again on Thursday, hacking around 10 Lebanese government websites, the second such attack in nine days.

“We are RYV, short for Raise Your Voice, and we are simply a group of people who could not bare (sic) sitting in silence, watching all the crimes and injustice going on in Lebanon. We will not be silenced and brainwashed by your media. We will not stop until the Lebanese people mobilize, demand their rights, and earn them,” said the group’s message posted on the hacked websites.

Japanese game giant Nintendo on Thursday posted its first-ever annual loss since becoming a public company, blaming a soaring yen and price cutting on its consoles for losing about $530 million.

The Kyoto-based company said it lost 43.2 billion yen ($530 million) in the fiscal year through March, reversing a year-earlier profit of 77.62 billion yen, although the result was not as bad as the 65 billion yen loss it had forecast this year.

The non-profit group behind the thought-provoking TED conferences on Wednesday launched a website devoted to video lessons cleverly crafted to captivate students.

A beta version of TED-Ed website went live at ed.ted.com with an open invitation to teachers to use video clips from its nascent library or Google-owned YouTube for assignments.

People in China are not only making coveted Apple gadgets, they are snapping them up as the booming nation becomes a top market for the trend-setting California Company.

Aftershocks of blockbuster Apple earnings powered by demand for iPhones in China echoed in rising stock markets on Wednesday.

Twenty-two-month-old George sits on a tiny blue chair, at a baby-sized desk, playing with a grown-up toy -- an iPad, sign of a powerful trend that has set alarm bells ringing among child development experts.

Leaning over the tablet, the little Parisian finger-stabs the duck icon on "Moo Box", an application with animal images that let out moos, oinks and barks.

One of China's most popular micro blogging services has shut several accounts for spreading "malicious" rumors, as Beijing tightens control over the Internet after the ouster of a top leader.

The move followed a broad crackdown on the Internet after rising political star Bo Xilai's downfall in March, sparking a series of online rumors, including one suggesting his supporters had staged a coup.