San Francisco - Online social network Facebook has introduced Facebook Connect, which allows outside websites and applications to share data back and forth. The company launched the new feature with 24 partners, including Digg, Movable Type creators Six Apart and Citysearch. The feature allows, for instance, Facebook users to sign in to Digg with their Facebook account authentication, and to have news stories they select via Digg, or comments they leave on Movable Type blogs to show up in their Facebook news feeds.

San Diego - Sony (NYSE: SNE) announced on Thursday that its Reader Digital Book devices will be the first to support the EPUB format, an XML-based standard format from the International Digital Publishing Forum. Starting next month, PRS-505 model Reader devices will support EPUB, as will as Adobe eBooks and the BBeB formatted books offered at the Sony eBook Store. "The Reader is an open device and we will continue to explore formats that will provide the widest variety of content for Reader users," said Steve Haber, senior vice president of consumer product marketing for Sony Electronics. "This upgrade opens the door to a whole host of paid and free content from third-party eBook stores, web sites and even public libraries."

New York - Chrissie Hynde and veteran rock band the Pretenders will pre-release their forthcoming album as individual MP3s in the weeks leading up to its physical release on Sept. 23, Billboard reported. The first track from "Break Up the Concrete" is available for free download now on AOL's Spinner.com, while future tracks will be additionally posted on a range of different media partner sites.

San Francisco - AddictingGames, a unit of Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) MTV Networks, on Thursday announced that it will begin offering payments to developers of the 25 most-popular games on the site each financial quarter. The Game Performance Bonus Program will be available to all of the more than 1,000 third-party Flash-based game developers who have created titles for the site, which features more than 3,000 games. AddictingGames is part of MTV Networks' Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games Group, which has earmarked $100 million for investment in casual games.

Redwood City, Calif. - Electronic Arts said on Thursday that it will launch the 20th anniversary edition of its "Madden NFL" football game with Maddenpalooza, a music, sports and gaming fan festival to take place August 11 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The event will feature live musical performances by bands from past and current Madden soundtracks, including Good Charlotte. The game will officially launch on August 12.

Pawtucket, R.I. - Toymaker Hasbro (NYSE: HAS) has taken its previous demands a step further and today filed a copyright infringement suit against the makers of "Scrabulous," a knock-off version of its "Scrabble" board game that counts over 510,000 daily active users on Facebook.

Washington - A bipartisan group of senators on Thursday introduced the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008, a bill that would authorize the Attorney General to prosecute civil copyright infringement cases, and also includes measures to strengthen both civil and criminal copyright laws and beef up law enforcement resources to fight intellectual property crimes.

Redmond, Wash. - Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) has announced a deal that will expand its relationship with online social network Facebook, in which the company invested $240 million for a 1.6% stake last October, and will now provide Web search and search advertising for the company beginning in the fall, The Wall Street Journal reported.

New York - NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) and News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox News Channel and Fox Television Stations have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Redlasso, an online service that offers clips of news broadcasts and other video and audio content to bloggers for republishing online, The Wall Street Journal reported.

San Francisco - MySpace (NYSE: NWS) will launch its music service joint venture with three of the four major record labels in September, CEO Chris DeWolfe told reporters at the Fortune Brainstorm conference yesterday, TechCrunch reported.

London - Six British Internet service providers have signed on to a voluntary code of conduct -- in the face of looming legislation -- that will see them send hundreds of thousands of letters to suspected illegal file-swappers and work with music and other rights holders "towards a significant reduction in illegal filesharing." U.K. ISPs Virgin Media, BSkyB, Carphone Warehouse, BT, Orange and Tiscali are party to the agreement, which came after negotiations facilitated by the U.K.'s Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), and also includes record label trade group the BPI, and the Motion Picture Association of America.

Vancouver, Canada - MovieSet, a site that offers behind-the-scenes video of films in production, has received a $1.5 million investment from the British Columbia Discovery Fund as part of a $5 million round of financing, led by Rho Canada.

Washington - Following more than a year of regulatory scrutiny, XM Satellite Radio's (NASD: XMSR) $3.9 billion merger with rival Sirius (NASD: SIRI) appears on the verge of completion following a deal between the companies and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to settle two-year-old compliance issues related to signal interference. According to the Associated Press, XM will pay the government $17.5 million and Sirius $2.2 million, with both companies taking steps to address any potentially non-compliant radios and fix scores of signal repeaters.