More Chinese cities are requiring users of Twitter-like microblog services to register with their real names, state media said Thursday, in a move likely to deter many online voices.

China has more than 485 million Internet users, the most of any country in the world. Sites that are deemed politically destabilizing or pornographic are routinely blocked, but microblogs have been widely used to share information not available in the state media.

When iPods hit the scene 10 years ago, the small, white ear buds that came with the devices became the symbol for listening to music on the go.

Today, that's changing.

The Grammys will pay special tribute to late Apple founder Steve Jobs, Brazil's Tom Jobim -- of "Girl from Ipanema" fame -- and U.S. singer Diana Ross at the upcoming awards show, the organization announced Wednesday.

The Apple co-founder and mind behind the wildly popular iPod, iPad and iPhone died in October after battling pancreatic cancer.

Yahoo! announced that it has ramped up the number of its websites around the world that let visitors automatically share what stories they read with Facebook friends.

A feature added in September to Yahoo! News in the United States has been extended to 26 more of the California Internet pioneers websites around the world.

Mozilla on Tuesday said that it has renewed a deal making Google the default search engine in the nonprofit organization's open-source Firefox Web browsing software.

"We're pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google," Mozilla chief executive Gary Kovacs said in a release.

Online singing sensation Rebecca Black topped a 2011 most-viewed YouTube videos list Tuesday that included spoofs starring pets, talking babies and pop music star Michael Bolton.

The collection of the year's most popular YouTube snippets was based on an analysis of the more than one trillion video views logged at the Google-owned website.

Google on Tuesday ramped up its investment in clean energy by backing the construction of solar panels that will feed electricity to California's power grid.

The Internet giant announced that it is pumping $94 million into Recurrent Energy projects near the state's capitol of Sacramento, raising its investments in Earth-friendly power generation to $915 million.

A German man has been charged with allegedly spreading Islamist propaganda on the Internet glorifying suicide attacks and seeking support for militants abroad, the federal prosecutor's office said Monday.

The 19-year-old German convert to Islam is suspected of running an Internet site for several months which showed videos, pictures and text containing jihadi and radical Islamist content, it said.

The death of Kim Jong-Il was the most talked-about topic on China's popular micro blogs on Tuesday, with more than 10 million posts, most of them critical of the former North Korean leader.

Many were in stark contrast to the stance taken by China's official media, which has hailed the former dictator as a close friend who dedicated his life to his country.

Century-old technology colossus IBM depicted a near future in which machines read minds and recognize who they are dealing with.

The "IBM 5 in 5" predictions were based on societal trends and research which the New York State-based company expected to begin bearing fruit by the year 2017.