SciTECH

An artist's rendering shows the two Saturn-sized planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission, which also found a planet sized similarly to Earth.

Scientists working with NASA's Kepler satellite reported Thursday that they might have spotted a planet just 1.5 times the diameter of Earth around a Sun-like star 2,000 light-years away.

Eleven major companies including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Apple have been accused of infringing patents belonging to a company linked to Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft - sparking another debate online about the value of "patents" in cyberspace.

E-mail is a double-edged sword when it comes to productivity. The benefits of e-mail as a communications tool can easily be lost in the sea of nonsense that floods most inboxes, though--and that is after the spam is filtered out. Google is introducing a new experimental feature aimed at helping Gmail users sort it all out: Priority Inbox.

A new report from eMarketer documents the incredibly rapid growth in social networks over the last couple years, and predicts continuing growth at least into the middle years of this decade -- but also suggests that social networks may be approaching saturation in the U.S.

Zynga, the maker of popular social networking game FarmVille, has hired former MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta as its executive vice president of business operations.

The rule used to be that if you wanted a smart phone, you had to choose: work or play.

Are a few million free iPhone cases enough to get you fired from Apple?

A giant sheet of ice measuring 260 sq km (100 sq miles) has broken off a glacier in Greenland, according to researchers at a US university. The block of ice separated from the Petermann Glacier, on the north-west coast of Greenland.

The New York Times and other publications failed in their journalistic mission to tell the truth about the potential Google-Verizon deal. Here's what an agreement between the two could mean for net neutrality.

Barnes & Noble customers are about to see a lot more of the Nook.

In September, the chain will begin an aggressive promotion of its Nook e-readers by building 1,000-square-foot boutiques in all of its stores, with sample Nooks, demonstration tables, video screens and employees who will give customers advice and operating instructions.

Orientation for new employees of Zynga, the fast-growing maker of Facebook games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, can be a heady affair given the company's outsize ambitions -- all of which are embodied in Mark Pincus, Zynga's 44-year-old founder.

A further delay of the white iPhone 4 suggests it could arrive near Sept. 30, when the bumper giveaway ends and, conceivably, Apple has an improved antenna.

A perfect iPhone? There's no app for that. Apple Inc. will give free protective cases to buyers of its latest iPhone to prevent reception problems that occur when people cover a certain spot on the phone with a bare hand.

Time Warner Cable has partnered with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and granted $200,000 to support technology centers in five underserved Latino communities around the country.

In an effort to counter Apple's iPad-fueled momentum in the personal computing market, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his company plans to introduce a full range of Windows 7-based slate PCs "over the course of the next several months."