Chicago - Wilco announced on Thursday that it will offer a live webcast of tonight's final performance of its five-night residency at Chicago's Riviera Theatre. The webcast is slated to begin streaming at 7:30 p.m. Central time, and will be available from a link below.

San Francisco - Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) has announced that it will make games for its Xbox 360 console developed by aspiring creators available for download via its Xbox Live service. The service will require that developers use Microsoft's XNA Game Studio software, available for a $99 annual subscription, or be a member of its XNA Creators Club. The game creation software will be made available to users beginning in the spring. Submissions will then be vetted by members of the amateur game creator community, and Microsoft will begin releasing the first user-created games in the fall.

New York - CBS Interactive (NYSE: CBS) announced on Thursday that it will begin offering free streaming episodes of classic TV shows online, including "Star Trek," "The Twilight Zone" and "Melrose Place," via its CBS Audience Network. In addition to CBS.com, the ad-supported shows will be available across more than 300 sites, including AOL, Microsoft, Comcast and Joost.

New York - Universal Music Group's Island Def Jam Music Group announced on Thursday that it partnered with mobile content firm Flycell to create its own mobile content distribution service. The $9.99 per month IDJ Mobile service will offer exclusive online and mobile content including ringtones, graphics, games and text services, as well as label news, artist mobile blogs and sweepstakes for prizes like VIP concert passes. Kanye West is the first featured artist on the service from the label group, whose other acts include Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Jay-Z, Ludacris and Melissa Etheridge. IDJ Mobile will be available to Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Virgin Mobile, Boost, Alltel, Cellular One, Metro PCS and Suncom subscribers.

San Francisco - A group of hardware and software creators, game developers and publishers on Thursday announced the formation of the PC Gaming Alliance, a non-profit whose stated purposed is to advance the PC as a worldwide gaming platform. Members include Acer/Gateway, Activision Publishing, AMD, Dell/Alienware, Epic Games, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia and Razer. Market research firm DFC Intelligence projects the PC game business will grow more than 80% over the next five years, with major increases in the number of PC gamers, revenue from digital distribution, and PC hardware sales.

San Francisco - Mobile media distributor SendMe announced on Thursday that digital music distributor IODA has signed on to offer its entire mobile catalog of independent music as ringtones through SendMeMobile.com.

San Francisco - Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) announced on Thursday that Epic Games will release "Gears of War 2," the follow-up to the 4.5 million-selling title for the Xbox 360, in November. The company also said that, before the launch of "Fable 2," a series of pub games will debut on Xbox Live that will feature elements that will carry over onto the Xbox 360 title when it is released.

San Francisco - Video game publisher and developer Valve's "Portal" took home the title of Game of the Year last night at the Game Developers Choice Awards, held during the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Los Angeles - Universal and Paramount (NYSE: VIA) have become the last of the major Hollywood movie studios to pledge support for Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Blu-ray next-generation DVD format, after Toshiba decided earlier this week to abandon its rival HD DVD format, ending a costly battle between the two companies to establish their respective format as the standard. "We are pleased that the industry is moving to a single high-definition format, as we believe it is in the best interest of the consumer," Paramount Home Entertainment told The Hollywood Reporter.

Mountain View, Calif. - Google (NASD: GOOG) on Thursday launched a beta test of AdSense for Video, the anticipated addition to its online advertising platform that will allow advertisers to insert ads into videos seen on a range of partner sites. The service will let advertisers overlay either text or video ads on a small section of the video player, with the ability to target ads based on video content and where the clip is hosted.

Los Angeles - Musicbrigade, a Sweden-based distributor of music video content, has ceased operations and gone into administration, according to a note on the company's website.

Los Angeles - Veteran media executive Dean Valentine on Thursday announced that he has raised an undisclosed sum of funding from Walden VC to launch his new venture, Comedy.com.

London - Publisher Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK) has announced plans to sell off its Reed Business Information (RBI) unit, whose holdings include Variety, New Scientist, Publishers Weekly and Broadcasting & Cable. "RBI is a well-managed high quality business as evidenced by the success of its online growth and the control of costs. Its advertising revenue model and the inherent cyclicality fit less well however with the subscription-based information and workflow solutions focus of Reed Elsevier's strategy," said Reed Elsevier CEO Sir Crispin Davis.

Brussels - The European Union has invested $20.5 million in a research project that is exploring the use of peer-to-peer technology for Internet television delivery across Europe. The P2P-Next project is using an open-source BitTorrent client called Tribler, which partners including the BBC and European Broadcasting Union plan to use to stream live TV.

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