Leo King

The FBI has said it is closely watching social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as the Skype chat service, in order to catch insider traders.

Michael Douglas

As it launched a campaign fronted by actor Michael Douglas -- who famously played ruthless businessman Gordon Gekko in the Wall Street films -- the FBI said it is stepping up Operation Perfect Hedge investigations, which are designed to catch hedge funds and associates involved in illegal trading.

JP Morgan Chase has invested in a start-up called GoPago, targeting a much greater presence in the fast-growing mobile payments market.

The news comes hot on the heels of Barclays last week announcing its own mobile payments service, called Pingit.

Automated software control systems are proliferating in cars, but vehicle safety authorities do not have anywhere near enough expertise to measure or regulate their usage.

That is according to the stark warnings of a US government-commissioned report, which found that it was "unrealistic" for the country's vehicle safety agency to be able to maintain the skills to keep up with rapid technology change.

The rise of the "app internet" -- in which users' PCs, smartphones and tablets run the business applications - will drive completely different demands from technology next year.

That is the verdict of technology industry experts, who predicted fast-shifting pressures on technology from the rise in mobile application development, cloud computing and new security threats.

Microsoft has reportedly signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), alongside several private equity firms, around a potential acquisition of Yahoo.

Microsoft, Silverlake and TPG Capital were all signatories with Yahoo, unnamed sources close to the situation told the New York Times.

Wikileaks is set to stop publishing classified files, following a "blockade" by US finance companies.

The whistleblower website said financial services firms including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Western Union and Bank of America had been blocking payments since December, the BBC reported.

Executives at the main social media networks and messaging outlets -- Facebook, Twitter and RIM's BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) -- were called to meet Home Office ministers to discuss their products' usage in the UK riots.

Last week, rioters caused destruction across London and later Manchester, Salford, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, and Nottingham, often using the social networks to organize large groups of people to join in.

Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility raises significant concerns around the Android operating system, according to industry experts.

Ovum analyst Nick Dillon said that by becoming a hardware vendor, Google will "move from the position of partner to that of competitor to Android handset manufacturers."

Rival manufacturers to Apple's iPad tablet could increase their market share by dropping their prices, but they will need to fight hard, according to analyst firm Forrester.

Companies including Acer, Archos, Asus, HP, Motorola, Research In Motion, Samsung, and Toshiba all needed to investigate better content and business apps for their devices, it added.

A former executive at NASDAQ has pleaded guilty to insider trading, allegedly using his wife's online brokerage account on his work computer.

Donald Johnson, 56, had access to pre-release data including earnings and product launches, in his capacity as managing director on the stock exchange's market intelligence desk. He had pleaded guilty to making $640,000 (£390,000) in illegal gains from the information.

Companies are expanding their social media and mobile presence at a rate that far exceeds their customer support abilities, according to a report by Constellation Group.

As a result, contact centres face a "coverage gap", according to the report's author, Constellation contributing analyst Elizabeth Herrell.

Seventy one percent of businesses are concerned about managing cloud computing, according to a survey.

The companies are worried about the potential complexity of controlling a software as a service setup, the survey found. Additionally, over half of IT directors said they feared they would lose control of infrastructure if they shifted systems to the cloud.