San Francisco - Wired.com on Friday posted an interview with "Defiant" and "EBK," two members of a hacker group called "Kryogenics" that took control of Comcast's (NASD: CMCSA) homepage and Web-based e-mail service for over five hours on Thursday. The attack, which began around 11:00 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, left some of Comcast's 14 million subscribers without webmail access until 11:30 Thursday morning. The pair denied the attack was retaliation for Comcast's recently exposed throttling of file-sharing traffic, and said they warned the company before taking action. "Comcast is just a huge corporation, and we wanted to take them out, and we did," Defiant told Wired.com.

Hong Kong - Wireless carrier Hutchison Telecommunications has signed a deal to launch Apple's (NASD: AAPL) iPhone in Hong Kong and Macau, Reuters reported, citing Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. The newspaper also indicated that other Hong Kong carriers were expected to announce similar partnerships. Apple is expected to introduce its next-generation 3G iPhone next month.

New York - Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) plans to offer a new wireless cable modem that will bring Internet video to televisions and "allow you to network everything in your hose," according to comments made this week by CEO Glenn Britt, Reuters reported. "Within a relatively short time ... it's going to be very easy to get Internet TV on your big screen TV," Britt said, without providing further details or a launch date.

New York - Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) male-focused Spike TV cable network this week announced plans to launch a number of new original Web series as part of the re-launch of its website on Friday. The site features a new full episode player with comment, sharing and embedding capabilities for a number of Spike TV shows, and will offer original Web series including "The Crew," "James Rolfe -- Cinemassacre," "The MMA Girls" and a series that will be co-produced with Playboy.com.

New York - Publisher Simon & Schuster announced on Friday that it plans this year to make 5,000 additional titles available for the Kindle, Amazon's (NASD: AMZN) eBook reader device. The move will double the publisher's commitment to the service, which was launched in November and currently counts some 125,000 available titles.

San Francisco - Music-focused social network imeem said on Friday that it has partnered with Capitol/EMI to let its users stream the entire two-disc, 30-song special edition of "Radiohead: The Best Of," as well as every music video from "Radiohead: The Best Of DVD" for free prior to their North American release on June 3. The site, which claims 24 million unique monthly users, said fans will also be able to create and share custom Radiohead music and video playlists to embed on blogs or other social network profiles.

New York - Universal Music Group said this week that it has tapped Qualcomm (NASD: QCOM) to launch a number of direct-to-consumer mobile content and services, which will be made available through its artist Web and WAP sites, CD packaging, and its GetMusic.com portal. UMG will use Qualcomm's BrandXtend service to deliver ringtones, video ringtones, wallpapers, artist updates and more.

London - Major label EMI announced this week that it has licensed 25,000 tracks and music videos for download to consumers' portable devices from European airport kiosks operated by MEDIAnywhere. U.K.-based MEDIAnywhere's first kiosks have opened at Italy's Fiumicino airport; the company expects to open another 350 kiosks in 26 European airports within the next two years.

Los Angeles - The FBI is reportedly investigating MediaDefender, an anti-piracy firm often hired by record labels and movie studios, after the company allegedly initiated a denial of service attack last weekend against Revision3, a legitimate online TV network. In a blog post, Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback recounted the events, noting that the attack focused on the server the company uses to seed content on the BitTorrent file-sharing network -- which also happens to be used for illegal file-sharing.

New York - Media conglomerate News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) announced on Friday that it has completed the acquisition of a 30% stake in TV Riga, a Latvian Russian-language broadcaster, increasing its ownership to 100%.

Washington - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could require the winner of a planned wireless spectrum auction to offer free wireless Internet service across a large portion of the country, the Associated Press reported. The network would be required to reach 95% of the U.S. population within a decade.

San Francisco - Creative Commons, the less-restrictive copyright scheme developed by Lawrence Lessig, is looking to sell off its music remix community ccMixter, PaidContent reports.

Pompano Beach, Fla. - Onstream Media, a distributor of live and on-demand Internet video, announced on Friday that it has agreed to acquire Narrowstep, a provider of Internet TV and IPTV services.

San Francisco - Grockit, a San Francisco-based start-up developing a massively multiplayer learning game, announced on Friday that it has raised $8 million in its second round of financing, led by Integral Capital Partners with participation from Benchmark Capital.

Hoboken, N.J. - Pinch Media, a provider of free tools for developers creating applications for Apple's iPhone, has raised an undisclosed sum of seed funding, PEHub.com reported.

London - Apple (NASD: AAPL) is expected to soon begin selling movies from four major Hollywood studios from its iTunes Stores in the U.K. and Canada, which to this point had only sold music and TV shows, the Times Online reports. Pricing for the store was not provided, although the studios named were Paramount, Disney, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Lionsgate and MGM are also reported to be included in the launch.

Los Angeles - Former Disney head Michael Eisner's Vuguru digital content studio has debuted its newest Web series, "Foreign Body," which will comprise 50 episodes with a new installment offered daily. Silicon Alley Insider reports that "Foreign Body," which is a promotional prequel to an upcoming Robin Cook novel, cost $5,000 a minute, or $10,000 per episode to produce -- up dramatically from the $3,000 per 90 minutes the company spent on "Prom Queen."

Washington - Harman International Industries, a maker of audio and infotainment products sold under numerous brand names, said on Thursday that company founder Sidney Harman will retire as chairman. The Washington, D.C.-based company, which in January announced plans to relocate to Connecticut by year's end, said that Dinesh Paliwal, its president and CEO, will assume the additional role of chairman beginning July 1. Paliwal has been vice chairman for nearly a year. Harman, 89, co-founded the business that bears his name in 1953.