A vulnerability in a web-based graphics system led to a breach of The Wall Street Journal?s network by a hacker, the newspaper acknowledged late Tuesday.

The system was taken offline, and the intrusion did not affect customers or customers? data, according to a story published by the paper.

A hacker going by the handle ?w0rm? posted a screenshot on Twitter on Tuesday showing a database from the newspaper. W0rm offered to sell the data for 1 bitcoin, or about US$620.

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Unless you?re presenting a cure for insomnia, you want your PowerPoint slides to engage your audience without distracting them from the presenter (you). Too much text invites people to read rather than listen?if they don?t just tune out completely.

Fortunately, PowerPoint 2013 has some amazing new graphics features, as well as updates on older ones, that let you add customized eye candy to your slides. Here, we?ll show you how to create and format basic shapes and add some special effects.

Create and format shapes

Start by opening PowerPoint and choosing the Blank Presentation slide. One slide with two text boxes appears. Hold down the Ctrl key and click the top, then bottom text box, and press Delete. Now you have a blank canvas/slide.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg boldly claimed that Oculus Rift ?has the potential to be the most social platform ever? after acquiring the virtual reality company back in March. But Rift is still under development, and so far developers have been focused on making games for the headset, so it?s difficult to imagine what those social applications would look like.

When YouVisit, a 6-year-old company that builds virtual college campus tours, invited me to their New York office to check out Rift?s non-gaming potential, I had to see what they were working on.

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A California court has allowed a privacy class action suit against Google to continue, though only in part.

After evaluating each claim of each sub-class in the suit, Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal has allowed two claims of the ?Android Application Disclosure Subclass,? which includes all persons and entities in the U.S. that acquired an Android-powered device between Aug. 19, 2004 and the present, and downloaded at least one Android application through the Android Market or Google Play.

On March 1, 2012, Google introduced a single, unified policy that allows the company to comingle user data across accounts and disclose it to third-parties for advertising purposes.

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Apple faces in a state court in California a class action suit that its employees were not provided timely meal breaks, rest breaks and final paychecks, according to the lawyer for the employees.

The Superior Court of California for the County of San Diego certified the case as a class action in a suit filed by Apple?s retail and corporate employees, said Tyler J. Belong, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, on Tuesday.

Judge Ronald S. Prager appointed the plaintiffs and their counsel Hogue & Belong as class representatives and counsel on behalf of close to 21,000 employees.

Apple now faces claims of meal period, rest period and final pay violations affecting the current and former Apple employees, as a result of the ruling, Belong wrote in an email explaining the court decision.

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