Hackers calling themselves the 'Iranian Cyber Army' have attacked the website of mainly Muslim neighbor Azerbaijan's state television station, the communications ministry said on Thursday.

In the overnight attack, the hackers replaced AzTV's homepage with the message: "Life is a game. Game over!"

Sony's slick PlayStation Vita handheld videogame gadget hit major markets around the world on Wednesday as the Japanese entertainment titan bucked a trend towards play on smartphones.

Sony packed movies, music, and the Internet into PS Vita handsets along with what it called the "biggest and best launch lineup" of games in PlayStation history.

New Yorkers may be able to surf and ride at the same time if a plan to put iPads, or a similar device, in the back of taxis takes off.

A San Francisco company, Square, is proposing a pilot program to install tablet computers in the back of 50 taxis, replacing the little-loved miniature television screens used in all cabs since 2007, showing commercials and some news and entertainment clips, The New York Times and New York Post reported.

U.S. bookseller Barnes & Noble unveiled a new version of its Nook tablet computer Tuesday, a device with the same $199 price tag as Amazon's Kindle Fire.

The seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) Nook Tablet also has eight gigabytes of memory like the tablet released by online retail giant Amazon in November.

U.S. online payments giant PayPal is to create 1,000 new jobs inIreland in a major expansion of its operations in the Eurozone member, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said on Tuesday.

Kenny said it was a "a great signal of confidence in Ireland and in our talented workforce.

Research In Motion on Tuesday released a long-overdue new operating system for its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer in the hope of gaining ground in a market led by Apple and Android gadgets.

PlayBook OS 2.0 software, available as a free download, comes just shy of a year later than it was originally slated for release by the Canada-based company.

Tunisia's court of cassation on Wednesday threw out a ruling banning pornographic websites, a judicial source and a press freedom watchdog said.

"The court quashed the first instance and appeals ruling that ordered the censorship of pornographic websites," the judicial source told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

The European Commission said Wednesday it has asked the EU's highest court to rule on the legality of a controversial treaty covering copyright, counterfeiting and Internet freedom.

The EU executive "decided today to ask the European Court of Justice for a legal opinion to clarify that the ACTA agreement and its implementation must be fully compatible with freedom of expression and freedom of the internet," said a statement.

Apple Inc. defended its right to use the iPad trademark in China in a heated court hearing Wednesday that pitted the electronics giant against a struggling Chinese electronics company that denies having sold the mainland China rights to the popular tablet computer's name.

Shenzhen Proview Technology's lawyer Xie Xianghui argued that the sale of the iPad trademark to an Apple subsidiary by Proview's Taiwan affiliate in 2009 was invalid. Apple countered that Proview violated the sales contract by failing to transfer the trademark rights in mainland China.

Iran's authorities this week launched a new, sophisticated offensive against the Internet, stifling Gmail and other messaging services and totally blocking software that provides secure browsing.

The severe clampdown has prompted an outcry by media, businesses, students and private web users, and has even provoked criticism within the regime.