TOKYO (Reuters) - Apple Inc raised prices of iPads and iPods in Japan on Friday, becoming the highest-profile brand to join a growing list of foreign firms asking Japanese consumers to pay more as a weakening yen squeezes profit.

Some U.S. companies have inoculated themselves at least temporarily against the yen's fall through financial hedging instruments, while others are charging customers more.

The yen has fallen more than 20 percent against the U.S. dollar since mid-November when then-opposition leader Shinzo Abe, who is now prime minister, prescribed a dose of radical monetary easing to reverse years of sliding consumer prices as part of a deflation-fighting policy, dubbed "Abenomics."

The Bank of Japan, under a new Abe-backed governor, in April promised to inject $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years to achieve 2 percent inflation in roughly two years.

Price rises are rare in Japan, which has suffered 15 years of low-grade deflation. A few other foreign brands have also raised prices on products, providing an early sign of inflation for Abe and an indication that these companies feel consumer demand is strong enough to withstand the increases.

Still, price rises would have to spread much more widely, especially to lower-end discretionary goods, to show that Abe's aggressive policies are helping reinvigorate the economy.

TIFFANY, COACH, HARLEY

Apple, one of the most visible foreign companies in Japan, raised the price of iPads by up to 13,000 yen ($130) at its local stores. The 64-gigabyte iPad will now cost 69,800 yen, up from 58,800 yen a day ago, an Apple store employee said. The 128-gigabyte model will cost 79,800 yen compared with 66,800 yen.

Apple also upped prices of its iPod music players by as much as 6,000 yen and its iPad Mini by 8,000 yen.

Mobile phone network operators SoftBank Corp and KDDI Corp, which offer iPhones and iPads at their stores, said they had not yet decided on whether to ask customers to pay more.

By raising prices in response to a weakening yen, Apple joins Tiffany & Co, which on April 10 raised its prices. Tiffany said this week that it has seen no slowdown in sales since the price hike.

Upscale handbag maker Coach Inc told investors in April that it used hedging strategies to shield itself from currency fluctuations for the next three quarters. Delta Air Lines Inc said in an interview that hedging has meant the currency impact is "minimal."

Motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson Inc told Reuters in April that the yen's decline would hit its bottom line, but that it makes it a point to avoid raising prices when the Japanese currency slides.

More recently, German appliance maker Miele raised prices of some products, such as its dishwashers, because of the weaker yen. Volkswagen AG, the biggest foreign car company in Japan, this month also increased the recommended prices of 14 car models by an average of 1.5 percent.

Pressure too is mounting on Japanese companies that shifted production overseas under a stronger yen and now import products to sell at home.

Speaking to investors on Thursday, Kazunori Takami, the head of Panasonic Corp's appliance business, said his company would have to consider shifting production of washing machines and other appliances sold in the domestic market back to Japan if the yen-dollar rate weakened beyond 105 yen.

Still, for some companies, the weak yen is helpful. Caterpillar Inc exports a lot of its equipment from Japan, and last month said a "weaker yen provides a cost benefit."

(Reporting by Mari Saito, Tim Kelly and Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo; additional reporting by Phil Wahba in New York and James B. Kelleher and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Chicago; editing by Matt Driskill, Neil Fullick and Matthew Lewis)

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With the week winding down, you better get busy. Or maybe you could just look busy. Here s some help with that:

World-Changer: Just because you re wasting time doesn t mean you can t be productive. Create your own planet at planetmaker.wthr.us, an interactive site with tools for fiddling with the surface texture, atmospheric density and cloud cover, on the world of your choice. While adding rings to Mars, you can also pretend that you are learning something. Via Prosthetic Knowledge.

Add It Up: Turns out dog years are more complicated than the old multiply by seven rule, so the BBC has offered up a Dog Age Calculator. (Not enough choices on the breed menu, though.)

Best of the Worst: In other calculation news, consider The Wrongulator: The Calculator that Always Gives You The Wrong Answer! For more bad products, keep an eye on The Worst Things For Sale, which catalogs the Internet s most horrible items. Via Coudal.

Product of the Week: TV test card coasters. Via bookofjoe.

Art or Lulz? The Tumblr In Duplo examines the mysterious and liminal space that exists between how people present themselves and how the law presents them. More specifically, it juxtaposes mug shots and Facebook profile pictures. I know that sounds more like a Web stunt than an art project, but it does say liminal, so. . . . More at Hyperallergic.

Lulz or Art? Meanwile, the Tumblr Local People With Their Arms Crossed is just that. Nothing liminal about it or is there? Via Mashable.

Being Watched: Many people are paranoid about a world in which drones follow us around. But this Popular Science video introduces us to a company that hopes to serve those who want a drone to follow them around.

Listening To Cartography: For two hours and 47 minutes of pleasing instrumental music, enjoy the results of a collaboration between music site Disquiet and BLDG BLOG s Geoff Manaugh, which challenged musicians to interpret segments of a map as musical notations.

One Last Thing: Here is a link to a post about a tweet of a Vine of an Instagram of a Tumblr post of a Facebook post of a tweet.

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) It's a warning as familiar as a daily prayer for Tornado Alley residents: When a twister approaches, take shelter in a basement or low-level interior room or closet, away from windows and exterior walls.

But with the powerful devastation from the May 20 twister that killed 24 and pummeled the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore still etched in their minds, many Oklahomans instead opted to flee Friday night when a violent tornado developed and headed toward the state's capital city.

It was a dangerous decision to make.

Interstates and roadways already packed with rush-hour traffic quickly became parking lots as people tried to escape the oncoming storm. Motorists were trapped in their vehicles a place emergency officials say is one of the worst to be in a tornado.

"It was chaos. People were going southbound in the northbound lanes. Everybody was running for their lives," said Terri Black, 51, a teacher's assistant in Moore.

After seeing last month's tornado also turn homes into piles of splintered rubble, Black said she decided to try and outrun the tornado when she learned her southwest Oklahoma City home was in harm's way. She quickly regretted it.

When she realized she was a sitting duck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Black turned around and found herself directly in the path of the most violent part of the storm.

"My car was actually lifted off the road and then set back down," Black said. "The trees were leaning literally to the ground. The rain was coming down horizontally in front of my car. Big blue trash cans were being tossed around like a piece of paper in the wind.

"I'll never do it again."

Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Betsy Randolph said the roadways were quickly congested with the convergence of rush-hour traffic and fleeing residents.

"They had no place to go, and that's always a bad thing. They were essentially targets just waiting for a tornado to touch down," Randolph said. "I'm not sure why people do that sort of stuff, but it is very dangerous. It not only puts them in harm's way, but it adds to the congestion. It really is a bad idea for folks to do."

At least nine people were killed in Friday's storms, including a mother and her baby sucked out of their car as a deadly twister tore its way along a packed Interstate 40 near the town of El Reno, about 30 miles from Oklahoma City.

"We believe all the victims were in vehicles when the storm came through," Canadian County Undersheriff Chris West said Saturday.

More than 100 people were injured, most of those from punctures and lacerations from swirling debris, emergency officials reported.

Oklahoma wasn't the only state to see violent weather on Friday night. In Missouri, areas west of St. Louis received significant damage from an EF3 tornado that packed estimated winds of 150 mph. In St. Charles County, at least 71 homes were heavily damaged and 100 had slight to moderate damage, county spokeswoman Colene McEntee said.

Tens of thousands were without power, and only eight minor injuries were reported. Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency.

Northeast of St. Louis and across the Mississippi, the city of Roxana was hit by an EF3 tornado as well, but National Weather Service meteorologist Jayson Gosselin said it wasn't clear whether the damage in both states came from the same EF3 twister or separate ones.

Back in Oklahoma, Amy Williamson, who lives just off I-40 in the western Oklahoma City suburb of Yukon, said when she learned the tornado was moving toward her home, she piled her two young children, baby sitter and two cats into her SUV.

"We felt like getting out of the way was the best idea," Williamson said. "It was 15 minutes away from my house, and they were saying it was coming right down I-40, so we got in the car and decided to head south."

Williamson said she knows emergency officials recommend taking shelter inside a structure, but fresh in her mind was the devastation of the Moore tornado. Seeing homes stripped to their foundation made her think that fleeing was the best idea, she said.

"I'm a seasoned tornado watcher ... but I just could not see staying and waiting for it to hit," she said. She ended up riding out the storm in a hospital parking garage.

On Saturday, muddy floodwaters stood several feet deep in the countryside surrounding the metro area. Torrential downpours followed for hours after the twisters moved east up to 7 inches of rain in some parts and the city's airport had water damage. Some flights resumed Saturday.

The Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office said a man was missing from a vehicle near Harrah, east of Oklahoma City. Roadways around the area were crumbling because of water, especially near an intersection in northeastern Oklahoma City and in Canadian County south of I-40, between Mustang and Yukon.

When the storm passed between El Reno and Yukon, it barreled down I-40 for more than two miles, ripping billboards down to twisted metal frames. Debris was tangled in the median's crossover barriers, including huge pieces of sheet metal, tree limbs and a giant oil drum. The warped remains of a horse trailer lay atop a barbed-wire fence less than 50 yards from the highway.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission reported more than 91,800 homes and businesses across the state remained without power Saturday.

___

Sean Murphy can be reached at www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy.

___

Associated Press writers Ken Miller in Oklahoma City and Jim Suhr in St. Louis contributed to this report.

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TORONTO (Reuters) - BlackBerry said on Friday it would ask securities regulators in Canada and the United States to probe a report about retail return rates for its new Z10 smartphone that it called "false and misleading."

The Canadian company, which has pinned its turnaround hopes on its new BlackBerry 10 line, said return rates were at or below its forecasts and in line with industry norms.

"To suggest otherwise is either a gross misreading of the data or a willful manipulation," Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said in a statement. "Such a conclusion is absolutely without basis and BlackBerry will not leave it unchallenged."

BlackBerry said research and investment firm Detwiler Fenton had said Z10 smartphones were being returned in unusually high numbers, and had refused to share its report or its methods.

The company said it would present a formal request to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities commission over the next few days.

Shares of Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry fell 8.0 percent on Thursday.

(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Janet Guttsman and Bernadette Baum)

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(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is developing a new lineup of Surface tablets, including a 7-inch version expected to go into mass production later this year, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the company's plans.

Microsoft executives felt they needed to keep pace with the growing popularity of smaller tablets like Google Inc's 7-inch Nexus and the 7.9-inch iPad Mini introduced by Apple Inc last October, one person told the paper. (http://link.reuters.com/wem37t)

Microsoft declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal. The company could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular U.S. business hours.

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

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By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) - A British computer hacker pleaded guilty on Tuesday to cyber attacks on targets including Sony, Nintendo, Rupert Murdoch's News International and the Arizona State Police.

Ryan Ackroyd's plea meant his planned jury trial did not go ahead and, as a result, the court did not hear any evidence on the motivation behind the attacks he made using the persona of a 16-year-old girl named Kayla as part of hacking group LulzSec.

Dressed in a tracksuit bottom and t-shirt, with a large tattoo on his arm and crew-cut hair, Ackroyd spoke only to identify himself and to enter his plea.

Ackroyd, 26, was arrested in 2011 with three other British young men in connection with an international cyber crime spree by LulzSec, a splinter group of hacking collective Anonymous.

The other three had already pleaded guilty to several charges including cyber attacks on the CIA and Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

Anonymous, and LulzSec in particular, made international headlines in late 2010 when they launched what they called the "first cyber war" in retaliation for attempts to shut down the WikiLeaks website.

Ackroyd faced four charges but pleaded guilty to just one. Prosecutors said they would not pursue the other charges.

Ackroyd and his three fellow hackers will be sentenced on May 14, judge Deborah Taylor said.

Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, and Jake Davis, 20, had both pleaded guilty to two counts while Ryan Cleary, 21, had pleaded guilty to six counts including that he attacked Pentagon computers operated by the U.S. Air Force.

Cleary, Al-Bassam and Davis admitted to launching so-called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in which websites are flooded with traffic to make them crash.

Ackroyd denied taking part in DDoS attacks but admitted, as did the three others, to hacking into computer systems, obtaining confidential data and redirecting legitimate website visitors to sites hosted by the hackers.

The targets listed in the charge to which Ackroyd pleaded guilty also included Britain's National Health Service, the U.S. public broadcaster PBS and 20th Century Fox.

The defendants are free on bail pending their sentencing, under the condition that they do not access the Internet.

Cleary was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles last June but U.S. authorities have indicated they would not seek his extradition as he was being prosecuted in Britain on the same charges.

The name LulzSec is a combination of "lulz", another way of writing "lols" or "laugh out loud", and security.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

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By Miyoung Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics is spending more on marketing than R&D for the first time in at least three years, prompting some pundits to warn that the IT giant is sacrificing innovation at a time when the market is teeming with ever smarter gadgets.

The South Korean firm, which warned on Friday it will not post record quarterly earnings for the first time since 2011, looks set to spend big bucks on marketing upcoming mobile devices, including the Galaxy S4 smartphone, to convert more iPhone and iPad users loyal to arch rival Apple Inc.

While the new Galaxy smartphone, unveiled to much fanfare in New York last month, will boast a motion-detecting technology that stops and starts videos depending on whether someone is looking at the screen, and flip between songs and photos at the wave of a hand, industry watchers say the device would not overturn an industry that lives and dies by innovation.

"(Samsung) lagged behind in creating a new category. Apple created a new category with tablets. We are waiting to see something like that happen from Samsung," said Rachel Lashford, an analyst at research firm Canalys in Singapore.

Samsung spent a record 13 trillion won ($11.6 billion) on marketing last year. That was $1.3 billion more than what it poured into research and development.

The firm does not provide marketing and R&D spending forecasts. Some analysts said they expect Samsung to continue spending more on its marketing campaigns than on R&D this year as it fights the next wave of products from Apple.

Smartphone makers are increasingly just tweaking existing specifications such as increasing screen sizes. Every gadget launch by a major global tech giant has so far underwhelmed, lacking the 'wow' factor of old and subsequently pushing their share prices lower, some analysts said.

Apple has tumbled nearly 40 percent since the stock soared to more than $700 in September.

Shares of Samsung hit a record in early January but have since fallen nearly 3 percent. A lack of product lineup in the longer term is also capping their upside, analysts said.

"There is not that much visibility on products next year, but we expect Galaxy Note 3 later this year," said Mark Newman, a senior analyst at Stanford Bernstein in Hong Kong, referring to the phablet that is closer in size to a tablet than a phone.

The smartphone-tablet hybrid, a surprise hit in 2012, appeals to users who prefer larger screens to better access visual content.

Samsung estimated its January-March overall operating profit rose 53 percent to $7.7 billion as mid-tier smartphones and sales in emerging markets helped it tide over the off-peak season.

That marks the end of five straight quarters of record profits for the world's biggest technology firm by revenue.

"We'll keep boosting our R&D spending, while marketing will be executed flexibly according to market conditions," a Samsung spokesman said on Friday.

AHEAD OF APPLE

Apple ramped up its R&D expenditure to $3.38 billion in the year to September 2012, from just $712 million in 2006. Yet that is still far less than what Samsung spends.

"Samsung keeps investing in R&D. They've boosted their smartphone R&D workforce to 25,000 or so from less than 20,000, and I think they have an exciting product lineup ready, probably in the second half, to upend the market," said Lee Do-hoon, an analyst at RBS.

That is a significant departure for a company which used to tear apart a Sony television in 1970s to reverse engineer rivals' products.

Samsung finally overtook Sony to become the world's top TV maker in 2006, largely aided by slim designs and super-thin displays produced as a result of aggressive capital investment.

By contrast, Samsung's mobile devices business now generates 70 percent of its total revenue.

"The Note 3, which I expect to be available in the fourth quarter, will be quite innovative. It'll have a bended display and the screen size will be bigger without having a bigger phone," said RBS's Lee.

"I think it'll be pretty cool." ($1 = 1123.7500 Korean won)

(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Ryan Woo)

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By Clare Jim

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Google Inc will launch a new version of its Nexus 7 tablet powered by Qualcomm Inc's Snapdragon processor around July, two sources told Reuters, as the software giant pushes deeper into the cut-price mobile hardware market.

Google is aiming to ship as many as eight million of the Asustek-made tablets in the second half of the year, throwing down the gauntlet to other low-end tablets such as Amazon.com Inc's Kindle Fire and Apple Inc's iPad mini, the sources with knowledge of the new product said.

This is the first time details about the timing and sales targets for Google's new tablet have been unveiled, although the company has not publicly released any information.

Google, which gets almost all of its revenue from online advertising, wants the aggressively priced Nexus tablets to be a hit as more Nexus users would mean more exposure for Google's ads.

The latest version will have a higher screen resolution, a thinner bezel design and adopt Qualcomm's chip in place of Nvidia Corp's Tegra 3, which was used in the first Nexus 7s released last year, the sources said, declining to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

In a blow to Nvidia, Google weighed both U.S. chipmakers' processors but finally decided on Qualcomm's for power reasons, one of the sources added.

Qualcomm and Nvidia are competing aggressively in the tablet market as they seek to expand from their traditional strongholds of cellphones and PCs respectively.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on its new tablet. Qualcomm and Nvidia also declined to respond to questions.

Google and other traditionally non-hardware companies like Amazon and Microsoft Corp have begun making inroads into mobile devices as consumers increasingly access the Web on the go.

Google introduced its first tablet last June, hoping to replicate its smartphone success in a hotly contested market now dominated by Kindle Fire and iPad.

The Nexus 7 joined the ranks of smaller, 7-inch tablets popularized by Amazon and Samsung Electronics, among others.

Pricing is yet to be determined and Google's plans are fluid, the sources said. Market leader Apple is expected to launch new iPads this year as well, possibly forcing its competitors to change their assumptions.

Google may choose to sell the new gadget for $199, the same as the first generation rolled out last June, while the old model may be discounted, one of the sources said. Alternatively, the new tablet could be priced more competitively at $149 and the previous model discontinued, the source added.

The cheapest iPad mini goes for more than $300.

CORE STRENGTHS

Though pricing has not been finalized, discounting could play to Google's and Amazon's strengths by getting cheaper hardware into more consumers' hands to drive revenue from their core Internet-based businesses.

"This is the 'zero margin strategy'," said Fubon Securities analyst Arthur Liao. "Ninety-seven percent of Google's revenue comes from advertisement, so it needs to sell more mobile devices in order to reach more consumers."

The Internet search giant, which has never disclosed tablet sales, plans to ship six to eight million of the new Nexus 7s in the second half of this year, the sources said. That compares to an estimated 4.6 million Nexus 7s sold in the same period last year, according to Enders Analysis mobile industry analyst Benedict Evans.

The large volume could help to accelerate development of tablet-specific applications for its Android operating software.

Asustek, a netbook PC pioneer, will continue to co-brand with Google on the new Nexus 7. The Taiwanese company has said it aims to ship over 12 million tablets this year, almost double last year's shipments.

Asustek could not be reached for comment.

(Additional reporting by Edwin Chan and Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc, getting a headstart on the annual tradition of April Fools' pranks, released a YouTube clip on Sunday declaring that the world's most popular video website will shut down at the stroke of midnight.

The three-minute video intended as a gag - a montage of clips and cameos from viral video stars like David Devore from "David after the dentist" - describes how the website will wind down as some 30,000 technicians begin to trawl through 150,000 clips, to select the world's best video.

The winner gets a $500 stipend, a clip-on MP3 player - and becomes the sole video to be featured on YouTube when the website relaunches in 2023.

"Gangnam Style has the same chance of winning as a video with 40 views of a man feeding bread to a duck," YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar pronounced, referring to the viral sensation from Korean pop artist PSY that's now the most-viewed video on the site.

Google's video also features intense discussions between judges, who hotly debate the merits of everything from Citizen Kane to "epic skateboard fail". While clearly tongue-in-cheek, several YouTube viewers appeared stricken or dumbfounded, while others expressed sadness and regret in attached comments.

(http://www.youtube.com/watchv=H542nLTTbu0&feature=player_embedded)

(Reporting By Edwin Chan; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Google has picked out 8,000 people who will be given a chance to don a pair of Internet-connected glasses and make a fashion statement likely to be envied by gadget-loving geeks around the world.

The pool selected by Google won a contest conducted last month requiring U.S. residents to submit 50-word applications through Twitter or Google's Plus to explain how they would use a technology that is being hailed as the next breakthrough in mobile computing.

After sifting through a litany of ideas submitted with the hash tag "ifihadglass," Google Inc. began notifying the winners Tuesday.

Prevailing in this contest might not seem like much of a victory if you aren't a technology fan. The winners will have to pay $1,500 apiece if they want a test version of the product, which is called "Google Glass." They also will have to travel to New York, Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay area to pick up the device, which isn't expected to be available on the mass market until late this year or early next year.

But getting a chance to be among the first to experience Google Glass is being treated like a hallowed privilege among the tech set. Some contestants even likened it to winning one of the five golden tickets that entitled children to a lifetime supply of candy and a visit at Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in the popular movie based on a book by Roald Dahl.

The excitement stems from the belief that Google Glass is at the forefront of a new wave of technology known as "wearable computing." Google, Apple Inc. and several other companies also are working on Internet-connected wristwatches, according to published reports that have cited anonymous people familiar with the projects.

Google Glass is supposed to perform many of the same tasks as smartphones, except the spectacles respond to voice commands instead of fingers touching a display screen. The glasses are equipped with a hidden camera and tiny display screen attached to a rim above the right eye.

The engineers who have been building Google Glass tout the technology as a way to keep people connected to their email, online social networks and other crucial information without having to frequently gaze down at the small screen on a smartphone. The hidden camera is designed to make it easy for people to take hands-free photos or video of whatever they are doing, whether it be bicycling, running, skiing, skydiving or just playing with friends and family.

Some of the winning entrants identified Tuesday by Google caught the company's attention by promising to put the camera to good use.

One contest winner promised to take Google Glass to Veteran Administration hospitals so soldiers who fought in World War II can see their memorials before they die. Another plans to wear Google Glass during a trip to Japan so she can take video and pictures that she can share with her grandmother, who now lives in the U.S. but would like to see her native country again. A zookeeper plans to use Google Glass to show what it's like to feed penguins, and another contest winner wants to use the technology to provide maps that will help firefighters in emergencies.

Privacy watchdogs, though, are already worried that Google Glass will make it even more difficult for people to know when they are on camera.

Google said the test, or "Explorer," version of Glass will help its engineers get a better understanding of how the technology might be used and make any necessary adjustments before the device hits the mass market.

The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., also sold an unspecified number of "Explorer" models to computer programmers last year. The finished product is expected to cost from $700 to $1,500.

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TORONTO (Reuters) - BlackBerry stock fell nearly 4 percent on Monday after Goldman Sachs cut its rating, citing a disappointing U.S. launch for the smartphone maker's new touchscreen device that went on sale in the United States on Friday.

"Our retail checks at over 20 store locations since March 22, including at AT&T, Best Buy, and RadioShack, revealed a surprising lack of marketing support and poor positioning of the product," Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski said in a note to clients on Monday.

Jankowski also said advertising of the product launch was limited.

"As a result, despite the product itself being relatively well received by sales associates and online reviews, sell-through at most locations was less than 10 per day," said Jankowski.

The brokerage firm cut its rating on shares of BlackBerry to "neutral" from "buy."

BlackBerry shares were down 3.9 percent at $14.33 in trading before the morning bell in the United States.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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TORONTO (AP) Apple's iPhone is outdated, according to the chief executive of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd.

Thorsten Heins made the comment Thursday on the eve of the much-delayed launch of the new touchscreen BlackBerry in the United States. AT&T begins selling the Z10 touchscreen BlackBerry on Friday, more than six weeks after RIM launched the devices elsewhere.

Heins also told The Associated Press that a new keyboard version of the BlackBerry won't be released in the U.S. until two or three months from now. He previously said it would be eight to 10 weeks, but now he's saying it could be delayed an additional two weeks.

Both the touchscreen and keyboard models are part of RIM's attempt at a comeback after the pioneering brand lost its cachet not long after Apple's 2007 release of the iPhone.

Heins said a lack of innovation at Apple has left iPhone's user interface outdated. He noted iPhone users have to go in and out of applications and the device doesn't allow for multitasking like the new BlackBerry Z10 does.

"It's still the same," Heins said of the iPhone. "It is a sequential way to work and that's not what people want today anymore. They want multitasking."

RIM's new software allows users to have multiple applications open like on a desktop, he said, noting that with BlackBerry you don't have to close an application to check an email.

"We're changing it for the better because we're allowing people to peak in the hub," Heins said.

Heins said the iPhone was revolutionary five years ago, but he said it's now "just kind of sitting there."

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined comment.

But the delay in selling the new keypad BlackBerry, called the Q10, complicates RIM's efforts to hang on to customers tempted by the iPhone and a range of devices running Google Inc.'s Android operating system. Even as the BlackBerry has fallen behind rivals in recent years, many BlackBerry users have stayed loyal because they prefer a physical keyboard over the touch screen found on the iPhone and most Android devices. But the temptations to switch grow with each additional delay, despite favorable reviews for new system.

Heins said the Q10 keyboard version BlackBerry is just not ready yet and said part of the reason is out of his control.

"It's our job to deliver the right software package and the right software quality to the carriers," he said. "Then it is on the carriers to decide how intense they want their testing cycle to be and that really can range from a few weeks to three months."

U.S. carriers reportedly haven't made testing a priority because RIM, which is based in Based in Waterloo, Ontario, has dramatically lost market share. The U.S. has been one market in which RIM has been particularly hurting, even as the company is doing well overseas. According to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the U.S. market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012. The iPhone and Android now dominate.

Heins said the company has to regain market share in the U.S. for BlackBerry to be successful.

"You got to win here to win everywhere else," he said. "That's just the way it is. We've lost market share quite a bit, to put it mildly, and we absolutely need BlackBerry 10 to turn us around."

Heins said initial sales in other countries are encouraging, but he could not release numbers ahead of RIM's earnings report next Thursday.

"I get more and more excited every day," he said. "I really have to make sure I stay grounded and I don't lose my sense for reality. But for the whole company this is so important to finally be here, and to see people buying it, after we were told 30 months ago when we started that two quarters down the road we would be bankrupt, we would be out of business."

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By Poornima Gupta and Ronald Grover

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Technology giants Apple, Google and Amazon are furiously maneuvering for position in the online music business and looking at ways to make streaming profitable, despite the fact that pioneer Pandora has never made a profit.

It has been more than a decade since the iPod heralded the revival of Apple and presaged the smartphone revolution, even as music-sharing site Napster was showing the disruptive power of the Internet in the music business.

Now Google, Amazon.com Inc and Apple are among the Silicon Valley powerhouses sounding out top recording industry executives, according to sources with knowledge of talks and media reports. Streaming service Pandora is spending freely and racking up losses to expand globally. Even social media stalwarts Facebook and Twitter are jumping on the bandwagon.

All of them see a viable music streaming and subscription service as crucial to growing their presence in an exploding mobile environment. For Google and Apple, it is critical in ensuring users remain loyal to their mobile products.

Music has been integral to the mobile experience since the early days of iTunes, which upended the old models with its 99-cent per song buying approach. Now, as smartphones and tablets supplant PCs and virtual storage replaces songs on devices, mobile players from handset makers to social networks realize they must stake out a place or risk ceding control of one of the largest components of mobile device usage.

About 48 percent of smartphone users listen to music on their device, making it the fourth most popular media-related activity after social networking, games and news, according to a ComScore survey of mobile behavior released in February. Users ranked a phone's music and video capability at 7.4 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being most important purchase consideration factor, according to the study.

"Music is very strategic for the various electronic devices Samsung manufactures," said Daren Tsui, CEO and co-founder of streaming music service mSpot, which Samsung bought last year to create the Music Hub service now available on Galaxy smartphones in the United States and Europe.

"By owning it, we can absolutely customize the music experience and leverage the fact that it's not just a service but there's also a hardware component."

In January, Beats Electronics, the startup co-founded by recording supremo Jimmy Iovine and hip-hop performer-producer Dr. Dre, and backed by Universal and Warner Music, announced a new streaming-subscription service dubbed "Daisy" to take on Pandora and Spotify starting this summer.

Now, industry insiders expect Apple, Google and other technology titans to jump into the fray. Apple is talking with music labels about tacking a subscription service option onto iTunes, sources have said, while Google is said to be planning a YouTube subscription music service, according to media reports.

"There are some content creators that think they would benefit from a subscription revenue stream in addition to ads, so we're looking at that," a YouTube spokesperson said, but declined to comment on any specific negotiations.

Apple declined to comment.

Microsoft is already promoting its Xbox Music service. Their entry promises to catalyze an industry shake-up and propel music streaming further into the mainstream.

"ITunes was great but it needs a step forward," Iovine, chairman of Universal Music's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records, told the AllThingsD conference in February. "There is an ocean of music out there that people want."

MOBILE MUSIC LOVERS

Music streaming, or playing songs over the Internet, has in recent years begun to come into its own as listeners increasingly choose to stream songs from apps like Pandora via their smartphones, rather than buy and store individual tracks.

The ad-free subscription model, where consumers pay a flat fee for near-unlimited listening time, is relatively new and quickly gaining popularity.

Pandora, one of the pioneers, is now trying to convert users of its free ad-supported radio service into subscribers. It says mobile users account for more than two thirds of its music, up from just 5 percent of listener-hours three years earlier.

Subscription services are expected to have crossed the 10 per cent mark as a share of total digital music revenues in 2012 for the first time, according to a recent report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry worldwide.

Consumers spent $5.6 billion worldwide for digital music in 2012, an increase of 9 percent, offsetting the decline in CDs and other physical ways to provide music. That gave the industry its best growth since 1998, albeit a miniscule 0.3 percent, according to the IFPI.

Pure buyers "have to spend hundreds of dollars a month on music, which most people can't afford to do," Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek told Reuters in an interview last week at South-by-Southwest Interactive. "It's pretty obvious that the access model or the subscription model is a much better proposition for most people."

U.S. consumers will stream an estimated 100 billion tracks this year, says David Bakula, senior vice-president for client development and analytics for Nielsen Entertainment.

"The big question is who has the business model to make it work," said Bakula, a former executive at Universal Music, one of the four major music labels. "The first ones in the market may not be the winners."

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently met with Iovine and other Beats executives to find out more about that business. It is unclear if Apple will join Beats' Project Daisy.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Making money off music streaming is difficult. Leading players Pandora and Spotify, despite attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in financing and millions of subscribers, have never reported a cent of profit.

No less a personage than Steve Jobs himself was a skeptic.

"Never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it," the late Apple co-founder and online music visionary told Reuters in a 2007 interview. Apple's current executives have not publicly stated their views on streaming music.

Pandora, which went public in 2011, now has 67 million monthly listeners worldwide - a 41 percent jump from a year ago - together listening to more than 13 billion hours of music.

But its losses more than doubled to $38.1 million in the year to January 31, 2013, hurt by the high cost of standard streaming licenses that typically have a per-track royalty model. This has forced Pandora, which relies mainly on advertising for revenue, to cap free mobile listening at 40 hours per month.

It and other music services such as Clear Channel Communications' iHeartRadio are now urging lawmakers in the U.S. Congress to pass the "Internet Radio Fairness Act," which would set royalty rates for subscription music services using the same standard that has so far been applied to other forms of radio.

But a group of 125 musicians, including Billy Joel and Rihanna, are speaking up against it, arguing that the bill would cut by 85 percent the amount of money an artist receives when his or her songs are played over the Internet.

The issue of how recording labels and musicians will be paid is one of the biggest roadblocks to growth. Competition will almost certainly force a shakeout, with winners and losers.

That could accelerate once major technology companies like Amazon and Google flex their marketing muscles, not to mention Apple with its ability to leverage its enormous base of online music buyers. The California gadget giant is unlikely to cede its lead in selling music without a fight.

While streaming could undercut sales of music tracks, Apple has always maintained that if there is potential for cannibalization of its products, the gadget maker would rather be in charge than let others in on it.

Finally, Microsoft has a large audience of Windows and Xbox players to whom it can promote Xbox Music Pass, a $9.99 a month service it launched in October. The software giant has declined to talk about its future plans in this area.

Bring it on, says Ek from Spotify.

"It's rare that gigantic companies figure out a new way to do something peripheral," Ek said. "I don't believe the world will only be controlled by a Google or an Apple. It will be companies who are great at games like EA, at films like Netflix, or at music like Spotify."

(Additional reporting by Gerry Shih in San Francisco; Editing by Claudia Parsons)

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By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A computer hacker was sentenced on Monday to three years and five months in prison for stealing the personal data of about 120,000 Apple Inc iPad users, including big-city mayors, a TV network news anchor and a Hollywood movie mogul.

Andrew Auernheimer, 27, had been convicted in November by a Newark, New Jersey, jury of one count of conspiracy to access AT&T Inc servers without permission, and one count of identity theft.

The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton in Newark was at the high end of the 33- to 41-month range that the U.S. Department of Justice had sought.

Prosecutors had said prison time would help deter hackers from invading the privacy of innocent people on the Internet.

Among those affected by Auernheimer's activities were ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein, prosecutors said.

"When it became clear that he was in trouble, he concocted the fiction that he was trying to make the Internet more secure, and that all he did was walk in through an unlocked door," U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement. "The jury didn't buy it, and neither did the court in imposing sentence."

Auernheimer had sought probation. His lawyer had argued that no passwords were hacked, and that a long prison term was unjustified given that the government recently sought six months for a defendant in a case involving "far more intrusive facts."

The lawyer, Tor Ekeland, said his client would appeal. He said the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act doesn't clearly define what constitutes unauthorized access.

"If this is criminal, then tens of thousands of Americans are committing computer crimes every other day," Ekeland said in an interview. "There really was no harm."

Auernheimer was handcuffed at one point during the sentencing, the lawyer said. He said his client may have been "tweeting" on his phone, and the U.S. marshals took it away.

Ekeland is also a lawyer for Matthew Keys, a deputy social media editor at Thomson Reuters Corp who was suspended with pay on Friday.

Keys was indicted last week in California on federal charges of aiding the Anonymous hacking collective by giving a hacker access to Tribune Co computer systems in December 2010.

The alleged events occurred before Keys began working at the website Reuters.com. Ekeland on Friday said Keys "maintains his innocence" and "looks forward to contesting these baseless charges.

INTERNET TROLL

Prosecutors called Auernheimer a "well-known computer hacker and internet 'troll,'" who with co-defendant Daniel Spitler and the group Goatse Security tried to disrupt online content and services.

The two men were accused of using an "account slurper" designed to match email addresses with identifiers for iPad users, and of conducting a "brute force" attack to extract data about those users, who accessed the Internet through the AT&T servers.

This stolen information was then provided to the website Gawker, which published an article naming well-known people whose emails had been compromised, prosecutors said.

Spitler pleaded guilty in June 2011 to the same charges for which Auernheimer was convicted, and is awaiting sentencing.

Gawker was not charged in the case. In its original article, Gawker said Goatse obtained its data through a script on AT&T's website that was accessible to anyone on the Internet. Gawker also said in the article that it established the authenticity of the data through two people listed among the names. A Gawker spokesman on Monday declined to elaborate.

AT&T has partnered with Apple in the United States to provide wireless service on the iPad. After the hacking, it shut off the feature that allowed email addresses to be obtained.

The case is U.S. v. Auernheimer, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 11-00470.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Martha Graybow, Alden Bentley and Eric Walsh)

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By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A computer hacker was sentenced on Monday to three years and five months in prison for stealing the personal data of about 120,000 Apple Inc iPad users, including big-city mayors, a TV network news anchor and a Hollywood movie mogul.

Andrew Auernheimer, 27, had been convicted in November by a Newark, New Jersey, jury of one count of conspiracy to access AT&T Inc servers without permission, and one count of identity theft.

The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton in Newark was at the high end of the 33- to 41-month range that the U.S. Department of Justice had sought.

Prosecutors had said prison time would help deter hackers from invading the privacy of innocent people on the Internet.

Among those affected by Auernheimer's activities were ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein, prosecutors said.

"When it became clear that he was in trouble, he concocted the fiction that he was trying to make the Internet more secure, and that all he did was walk in through an unlocked door," U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement. "The jury didn't buy it, and neither did the court in imposing sentence."

Auernheimer had sought probation. His lawyer had argued that no passwords were hacked, and that a long prison term was unjustified given that the government recently sought six months for a defendant in a case involving "far more intrusive facts."

The lawyer, Tor Ekeland, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. He has said his client would appeal.

Ekeland is also a lawyer for Matthew Keys, a deputy social media editor at Thomson Reuters Corp who was suspended with pay on Friday.

Keys was indicted last week in California on federal charges of aiding the Anonymous hacking collective by giving a hacker access to Tribune Co computer systems in December 2010.

The alleged events occurred before Keys began working at the website Reuters.com. Ekeland on Friday said Keys "maintains his innocence" and "looks forward to contesting these baseless charges.

INTERNET TROLL

Prosecutors called Auernheimer a "well-known computer hacker and internet 'troll,'" who with co-defendant Daniel Spitler and the group Goatse Security tried to disrupt online content and services.

The two men were accused of using an "account slurper" designed to match email addresses with identifiers for iPad users, and of conducting a "brute force" attack to extract data about those users, who accessed the Internet through the AT&T servers.

This stolen information was then provided to the website Gawker, which published an article naming well-known people whose emails had been compromised, prosecutors said.

Spitler pleaded guilty in June 2011 to the same charges for which Auernheimer was convicted, and is awaiting sentencing.

Gawker was not charged in the case. In its original article, Gawker said Goatse obtained its data through a script on AT&T's website that was accessible to anyone on the Internet. Gawker also said in the article that it established the authenticity of the data through two people listed among the names. A Gawker spokesman on Monday declined to elaborate.

AT&T has partnered with Apple in the United States to provide wireless service on the iPad. After the hacking, it shut off the feature that allowed email addresses to be obtained.

The case is U.S. v. Auernheimer, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 11-00470.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Martha Graybow and Alden Bentley)

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LONDON (AP) British investigators have found hundreds more potential phone-hacking victims of Rupert Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid, a victim's lawyer said Monday.

Lawyer Hugh Tomlinson made the announcement at Britain's High Court during legal arguments related to the lawsuits against News of the World publisher News International. Tomlinson did not go into much detail, but hundreds of extra victims could translate into millions of extra damages for the UK newspaper company.

The phone hacking scandal has greatly damaged the reputation of the British tabloid press, which has been found to have hacked into the voicemails of celebrities, politicians, crime victims and others. Murdoch's company has already paid millions of pounds in settlements, and a national outcry forced British politicians to promise action to make the medial more responsible.

At a court hearing Monday, a lawyer said journalists at The Sun newspaper another Murdoch title harvested data from a lawmaker's stolen phone.

Lawyer David Sherborne said parliamentarian Siobhain McDonagh has accepted substantial but undisclosed damages from the newspaper after her cellphone was stolen from a parked car in 2010. Her text messages had later been accessed by The Sun, Sherborne said.

News International lawyer Dinah Rose acknowledged that The Sun was guilty of "serious misuse of her private information."

The revelations of new victims came only hours after British politicians announced they struck a last-minute deal over press regulation, unveiling a new code meant to curb the worst abuses of the country's scandal-tarred media.

The code follows days of heated debate over how to implement the recommendations of Lord Justice Brian Leveson, who held an inquiry that aimed to clean up a newspaper industry plunged into crisis by revelations of widespread phone hacking.

Victims' groups have lobbied for an independent watchdog whose powers are enshrined in law but media groups have said that threatens press freedom.

The deal struck early Monday appears to be a complicated compromise.

"I think we have got an agreement which protects the freedom of the press, that is incredibly important in a democracy, but also protects the rights of people not to have their lives turned upside down," senior opposition leader Harriet Harman told broadcaster ITV.

Unlike the U.K.'s widely discredited Press Complaints Commission, which barely bothered to investigate allegations of phone hacking before the scandal broke, the new regulator being proposed by politicians would be independent of the media and would have the power to force newspapers to print prominent apologies.

Submitting to the regulatory regime would be optional, but media groups staying outside the system could risk substantial fines if they get stories wrong.

And rather than being established through a new press law, which advocates of Britain's media have described as unacceptable, the regulatory body would be created through a Royal Charter, a kind of executive order whose history stretches back to medieval times. Adding to the complexity, a law would be passed to prevent ministers from tweaking the system after the fact.

Harman acknowledged that the charter was "quite a sort of complex and old-fashioned thing" but said it "kind of more or less ... has got legal basis."

Victims' group Hacked Off said Monday it believes the deal will go a long way toward preserving press freedom and protecting the public from fresh abuses. The groups said it remained concerned about how newspaper groups would be cajoled into joining.

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By Sayantani Ghosh and Sruthi Ramakrishnan

(Reuters) - Radio frequency chip makers are set to gain as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Apple Inc unveil ever more sophisticated smartphones and tablets to battle for the No. 1 spot in the global mobile devices market.

Investors and analysts say they like shares of RF Micro Devices Inc, Skyworks Solutions Inc and Avago Technologies Ltd - companies that make the chips that enable gadgets to send and receive data wirelessly.

Samsung unveiled its latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S4, in New York on Thursday. The S4 can stop and start videos when someone looks at the screen, flip between songs at the wave of a hand and record sound to accompany pictures.

As manufacturers improve and add new features to phones, which are increasingly used to stream music, video and games, they are boosting the RF chip technology used in the devices.

"The RF content in handsets continues to go up," said Stewart Stecker, a portfolio manager at AlphaOne Capital. "That's good from an immediate to longer-term perspective for the entire RF supply chain."

The importance of RF chips will increase as network operators deploy high-speed wireless technology known as 4G LTE (long-term evolution), analysts said.

LTE requires a much higher number of frequency bands, which increases the number of RF chips in a phone.

The global LTE market is expected to almost double this year, surpassing the $10 billion mark, according to a March 13 report from telecom market research firm Infonetics Research.

"As you add LTE - that's a whole other frequency - you need more radio, more RF equipment," said Northland Securities analyst Tom Sepenzis.

A Verizon customer, for example, using a Samsung Galaxy S4 while traveling the world, would need to be able to use the LTE network in the United States and other countries, said Sepenzis.

"That requires more complex amplifiers that can handle multiple frequencies, requires better antenna solutions, switching capability to handle all the different frequencies. That obviously favors the RF component manufacturers," he said.

DIVERSIFYING ORDERS

Within the RF chip supplier group, analysts said those that have diversified their client base by supplying to Samsung, Apple, and other smartphone vendors such as China's ZTE Corp are best placed to take advantage of demand.

After chipping away for years at Apple's market share, Samsung emerged as the No. 1 seller of smartphones last year, undercutting its main competitor with cheaper handsets and a wide range of products.

Samsung sold 64.5 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared with 43.5 million iPhones sold by Apple, data from market research company Gartner shows.

Greensboro, North Carolina-based RF Micro receives about a quarter of its revenue from Samsung, up from 10 percent a year ago, data compiled by analysts showed. Orders from Apple account for a fifth of sales, they said. RF Micro declined to comment.

Power amplifier maker Skyworks relies on Samsung and Apple for about a quarter each of its revenue, analysts said. Skyworks was not available for comment.

T. Rowe Price Global Technology fund portfolio manager Josh Spencer said he likes Avago Technologies Ltd.

"Avago has some very high-end filtering technology that you have to have in the smartphone antennas," Spencer said, adding that he was also considering buying RF Micro's stock.

Shares of RF Micro and Skyworks gained 15 percent and 21 percent respectively from the beginning of the year until February 21, when the upward trend was interrupted by Qualcomm Inc's unveiling of plans to make its own RF chip.

But both stocks recovered a day later after analysts said it was unlikely that Qualcomm would risk damaging integrated circuit partnerships to seek a profit opportunity of not more than $600 million.

Qualcomm has nearly half of the global market for "baseband" chips, which connect mobile phones to cellular networks, and therefore is also set to benefit from rapid LTE growth.

The S4 will use Samsung's application processor in some regions and Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, which have LTE features, in others.

"Qualcomm has such dominance in the baseband market that they have pricing leverage even against big customers," Spencer said.

(Editing by Robin Paxton)

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By Liana B. Baker

(Reuters) - Sheryl Sandberg's new book "Lean In" challenges men in the upper echelons of corporate America to take more women under their wing.

Sandberg is on a promotional blitz for the new book, which has been praised as an ambitious reboot of feminism and criticized as a manifesto directed to women from a privileged perch. On Tuesday, she said men need to amp up their mentoring of women, especially younger ones just starting out in their careers.

Noting that men hold 86 percent of the top jobs in corporate America, Sandberg said in a interview Tuesday that, "We want women to get into those jobs, but if we don't get older men to mentor and sponsor younger women, this will never happen."

Sandberg's book was born out of talks she gave starting in 2010 about how the world has scant female leaders in politics and corporations.

After studying at Harvard and working at the U.S. Treasury Department, Sandberg rose to the top of Silicon Valley, jumping from Google to Chief Operating Officer at Facebook while raising two children.

Sandberg acknowledged that there are stereotypes and double standards to tear down in mentoring relationships. An older man and a younger woman seen together at dinner or drinks looks like a date, while two men discussing business together looks perfectly normal, she said.

To underscore Sandberg's point, "Lean In" highlights a study published by the Center for Work-Life Policy and the Harvard Business Review that found men in high positions at companies were nervous meeting a younger woman one-on-one.

She also recounts an encounter with Larry Summers, who as U.S. Treasury Secretary served as her boss. Working on a speech together one night until 3 a.m. in South Africa, Sandberg had to make sure no one saw her step out of Summers' hotel room so late at night. Men, for example, never have to worry about that situation and it helps them move up faster in a corporate environment, she said.

"I want everyone to have the same policies for everyone and get explicit about them," Sandberg said.

Besides mentoring, she said male corporate executives need to be more cognizant of how women are perceived negatively once they start moving up. She calls this a "likeability gap" that holds women back from being ambitious. Managers should think twice before they give a performance review that calls a woman "aggressive," she said.

"As a woman gets more successful, everyone likes her less. This completely changes how women are portrayed in the office. What I believe is if you can make people aware of this bias that we all face - men and women alike - we can change it," she said in a separate television interview with Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Chrystia Freeland; Editing by Peter Lauria and L Gevirtz)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hackers breached the Twitter account of fast-food chain Burger King, posting the online equivalent of graffiti and sometimes making little sense.

Burger King Worldwide Inc suspended its Twitter account about an hour after it learned of the attack at 12:24 p.m. EST (5:24 p.m. British time) on Monday, company spokesman Bryson Thornton said in an email.

"It has come to our attention that the Twitter account of the BURGER KING brand has been hacked," the company said in a statement. "We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings."

Several tweets carried the logo of Burger King's larger rival McDonald's, but spelled the latter company's name incorrectly. Others sought to tarnish Burger King, the third-largest U.S. hamburger chain, and its employees.

"Just got sold to McDonalds," one tweet said, adding "FREDOM IS FAILURE".

(Reporting by Ilaina Jonas; Editing by Dale Hudson)

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Facebook is getting an unwelcome look at the shady side of the hacking culture that CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrates.

Intruders recently infiltrated the systems running the world's largest online social network but did not steal any sensitive information about Facebook's more than 1 billion users, according to a blog posting Friday by the company's security team.

The unsettling revelation is the latest breach to expose the digital cracks in a society and an economy that is storing an ever-growing volume of personal and business data online.

The news didn't seem to faze investors. Facebook Inc.'s stock dipped 10 cents to $28.22 in Friday's extended trading.

The main building at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters lists its address as 1 Hacker Way. From there, Facebook serves as the gatekeeper for billions of potentially embarrassing photos and messages that get posted each month.

This time, at least, that material didn't get swept up in the digital break-in that Facebook said it discovered last month. The company didn't say why it waited until the afternoon before a holiday weekend to inform its users about the hack.

It was a sophisticated attack that also hit other companies, according to Facebook, which didn't identify the targets.

"As part of our ongoing investigation, we are working continuously and closely with our own internal engineering teams, with security teams at other companies, and with law enforcement authorities to learn everything we can about the attack, and how to prevent similar incidents in the future," Facebook wrote on the blog.

Online short-messaging service Twitter acknowledged being hacked earlier this month. In that security breakdown, Twitter warned that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 of the more than 200 million accounts set up on its service.

Late last month, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal two of the three largest U.S. newspapers said they were hit by China-based hackers believed to be interested in monitoring media coverage of topics that the Chinese government deemed important.

Facebook didn't identify a suspected origin of its hacking incident, but provided a few details about how it apparently happened.

The security lapse was traced to a handful of employees who visited a mobile software developer's website that had been compromised, which led to malware being installed on the workers' laptops. The PCs were infected even though they were supposed to be protected by the latest anti-virus software and were equipped with other up-to-date protection.

Facebook linked part of the problem to a security hole in the Java software that triggered a safety alert from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last month. The government agency advised computer users to disable Java on their machines because of a weakness that could be exploited by hackers.

Oracle Corp., the owner of Java, has since issued a security patch that it says has fixed the problem. In its post, Facebook said it received the Java fix two weeks ago.

Facebook never mentioned the word "hack" in describing the breach. That, no doubt, was by design because hacking is a good thing in Zuckerberg's vernacular.

To most people, hacking conjures images of malevolent behavior by intruders listening to private voicemails and villains crippling websites or breaking into email accounts.

Zuckerberg provided his interpretation of the word in a manifesto titled "The Hacker Way" that he included in the documents that the company filed for its initial public offering of stock last year.

"The word 'hacker' has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers," Zuckerberg wrote. "In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done."

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