Smartphone character "Talking Tom" has signed with a top Hollywood talent agency in a sign that "apps" are out to break the bonds of mobile gadgets and hit films and television.

"Talking Tom" has become a global sensation since it was launched by startup Outfit7 in Slovenia in July of 2010.

Finnish handset maker Nokia Corp. plans to introduce its first mobile phones using the Microsoft Windows operating system this year, the company's chief executive said Tuesday.

Nokia is facing steep competition from competitors in several products. At the top end of the market it is struggling against smartphones such as Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's Blackberry as well as Android, and on the lower end against emerging market phone makers who are dropping their prices.

A Japanese company has come up with a new way to charge your mobile phone after a natural disaster or in the great outdoors -- by heating a pot of water over a campfire.

The Hatsuden-Nabe thermo-electric cookpot turns heat from boiling water into electricity that feeds via a USB port into digital devices such as Smartphones, music players and global positioning systems.

One of Asia’s biggest telecommunications fairs opens in Singapore on Tuesday with tablets and Smartphones taking center stage and Nokia making a fresh bid to attract a new generation of consumers.

As in past years, industry behemoth Apple which has a stranglehold on the tablet market will not be present at CommunicAsia -- instead it stages its own iconic events in California.

Internet minders voted Monday to allow virtually unlimited new domain names based on themes as varied as company brands, entertainment and political causes, in the system's biggest shake-up since it started 26 years ago.

Groups able to pay the $185,000 application can petition next year for new updates to ".com" and ".net" with website suffixes using nearly any word in any language, including in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided at a meeting in Singapore.

Computer hackers who have hit the websites of the CIA, U.S. Senate, Sony and others during a month-long rampage said Friday that they were staging the attacks for their own entertainment.

"You find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it," the hacker group known as Lulz Security said in a 750-word online "manifesto."

Even though motion-sensing videogame controllers are all the rage, sometimes a player prefers a Batarang for bashing bad guys.

Accessory titan Power A is seeing keen interest in a console controller it designed similar to a throwing weapon in the arsenal of DC Comics crime fighter Batman even though it doesn't hit the market until later this year.

Microsoft on Thursday began letting software developers imbue computers with voice and motion-sensing technology from its Kinect controller for the Xbox 360 videogame console.

A free Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit opens doors for computer programs enhanced with depth-perception, voice recognition, or gesture controls using the popular console accessory.

Sony has released an app making its Music Unlimited online streaming available on smart phones running Google's Android system, amid growing competition from Amazon and Apple in cloud-based services.

Sony's digital cloud-based music service, which launched in December and is available in Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, allows users to stream millions of songs to Sony devices but previously lacked mobile access.

Contrary to popular opinion, social network users actually do have real lives.

According to a poll published Thursday by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, Facebook users are more trusting, have more close friends and are more politically engaged.