Digital technologies are the new life-savers for languages on the verge of extinction, linguists said Friday as they announced eight new dictionaries at a major science conference in Vancouver.

"We're turning the digital divide into a digital opportunity," said David Harrison, a National Geographic Fellow at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia.

The International Telecommunication Union said Friday its World Radio communications Conference (WRC-12) has agreed a treaty aimed at revising the radio frequency spectrum to speed up mobile services.

The increased spectrum will allow easier and cheaper global broadband expansion and will replace the current third generation or 3G technology for more than one billion mobile telephone users, said the ITU.

Libyans celebrated on Friday the first anniversary of the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi with fireworks and slogans, even as their new leader vowed to prevent further instability.

Thousands gathered in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Benghazi, the city which first rose against Gadhafi and his 42-year regime, after traditional Muslim prayers, waving Libya's new flag and proclaiming the revolution's "birthday."

High-tech fluffy seals that respond to human touch are the latest weapon in the battle against depression for survivors of Japan's tsunami disaster.

"Paro" is being offered to people made homeless by the disaster and is offering a much-needed bit of affection with his burbling noises and the appreciative flapping of fins when he comes into contact with people.

Microsoft on Thursday launched an msnNOW website designed to deliver the "latest buzz" from Facebook, Twitter, Bing and BreakingNews.com.

The service at now.msn.com analyzes in real time Bing searches and updates at the popular online social networks to display hot topics and authoritative voices commenting about them.

Move over TV. Tablet computers are the new electronic babysitter.

A Nielsen survey published on Thursday broke down the ways tablet-owning parents of children under age 12 are using gadgets such as the iPad to keep the kids occupied.

Amazon's Kindle Fire, which went on sale in November, had a solid debut, leapfrogging Samsung tablets to become the top-selling device after Apple's iPad, a market research firm said Thursday.

The Seattle-based Amazon shipped 3.9 million Kindle Fires in the fourth quarter to grab 14.3 percent of the global tablet market, IHS iSuppli said.

Facebook on Thursday began testing a way for celebrities, journalists, athletes and others with massive followings to have their identities validated at the globally popular online social network.

"The new process enables people to verify their identities by submitting a government issued ID," Facebook said in an email response to an Agence France Presse inquiry.

Twitter announced it has finished rolling out overhauled pages crafted to boost the appeal of the message-sharing service to users around the world.

"At the very core there are fewer places you have to click and less you have to learn," Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said as he and other executives unveiled the changes at the startup's San Francisco headquarters in December.

Google and other online advertisers bypassed the privacy settings of an Apple web browser on iPhones and computers in order to survey millions of users, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The Journal said the companies used a special code that tricks Apple's Safari software into letting them monitor the browsing habits of many users.