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Reuters – Verizon Wireless, which this month angered customers with three separate data service problems, said on Thursday it will add a $2 fee for one-time telephone and online bill payments.

Appolicious – The holiday week has seen a freeze on adding new games to the iTunes App Store, but there are still plenty of great ones floating around. Leading this week’s charge is Terra Noctis, a side-scrolling platforming game that will remind players of the greats in the genre. Check it out, and four other quality titles, below.

Reuters – The Chinese government is working with domestic Internet search engines like Baidu Inc and Sohu.com and financial institutions to prevent phishing attacks on unsuspecting Chinese web users.

Digital Trends – Britain’s Ministry of Defense wants to update its solider training tech and is looking at Xbox games with an envious eye. Apparently, newer recruits who have grown up with the latest generation of gaming consoles tend to lose interest with the MoD’s unrealistic simulated training war games.

Digital Trends – Mentioned by Bloomberg earlier today, sales of the PlayStation Vita have fallen by nearly 80 percent during the week that ended on December 25 according to tracking firm Media Create. Sony sold approximately 325,000 Vita units on December 17 and 18, but only sold about 10,000 units a day during the following week. Sales of the PlayStation Portable beat sales of the PlayStation Vita by approximately 25,000 units. In addition, Nintendo saw massive sales of the 3DS during the same week and nearly sold half a million units. That pushes Nintendo over four million units sold for the entire year, a fact that Nintendo officials mentioned in a recent press release. 

Digital Trends – Perhaps an upcoming feature on the next version of the iPhone or iPad, Apple filed a patent today with the United States Patent and Trademark Office that outlines a method of face recognition for taking an iOS device out of sleep mode. Likely built into a future version of iOS, an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad would recognize that a user is in the vicinity after the user picks up the device and utilize the camera to scan the user’s face to turn on the device automatically. While security would be a concern to anyone that currently uses a password to lock their iOS device, Apple mentions that the software would isolate unique facial features in addition to specific skin tones to recognize a face. The software would memorize the attributes to the face, but the user may potentially have to reset the scan after any form of facial plastic surgery or something as simple as a sunburn.  

Reuters – Verizon Wireless, which this month angered customers with three separate data service problems, said on Thursday it will add a $2 fee for one-time telephone and online bill payments.

AP – Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd’s efforts to impress an HP event hostess included showing her his checking-account balance holding over $1 million, according to a letter detailing the sexual harassment allegations that led to his ouster.

Reuters – Former Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd made increasingly aggressive romantic advances over several years toward an independent contractor who later accused him of sexual harassment, according to claims in a letter from her lawyer obtained by Reuters.

Digital Trends – The current generation of gaming consoles have gone above and beyond being just devices to play video games. They have become entertainment systems in their own right, that can play DVDs (and blu-rays in the case of the PPS3), stream content online, and even act as media servers.