Tokyo - Nintendo said on Tuesday that it has filed suit against five Japanese companies, accusing them of importing and selling equipment that allows users to play pirated games on Nintendo DS handheld game devices, Reuters reported.

Rome - Italian police have shut down what is believed to be the largest BitTorrent tracker file-sharing hub in Italy, Colombo-BT.org, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a record label trade group.

Mountain View, Calif. - Anvato, a developer of video content protection and contextual advertising technology, on Tuesday introduced a service uses computer vision algorithms to allow video content owners to monitor video distribution sites for copyright infringements. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said its technology "emulates human vision by identifying scenes, objects and movements inside the video," and works even in cases of transcoding, resolution loss, geometric distortion, video editing, mash-ups, or if the audio track is different.

Minneapolis - Consumer electronics and media retailer Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) announced on Tuesday that it will begin selling musical instruments and recording equipment at up to 85 of its U.S. stores, as well as from its website. The inventory will include more than 1,000 products at both entry-level and professional price points. Best Buy previously conducted what it called a successful pilot of its musical instruments store-within-a-store concept in seven stores in Southern California and Minneapolis.

London - Palringo on Tuesday introduced a rich-messaging application for Apple's (NASD: AAPL) iPhone that integrates with a range of instant messaging services, including AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, iChat and Windows Live Messenger. The application lets users send voice, picture or text-based messages from the phone.

Tempe, Ariz. - Limelight Networks (NASD: LLNW), a provider of content delivery network services, announced on Tuesday that it will provide live and on-demand video streaming services to NBCOlympics.com on MSN for its 2008 Beijing Olympics coverage. The deal includes around 2,200 hours of live streaming and 3,000 hours of highlights.

London - British Sky Broadcasting said on Tuesday that it will incorporate social media tools from Pluck across its websites, including Sky.com and SkyNews.com. The new functionality will enable multimedia blogs and discussion forums, and cross-site user profiling. Pluck provides similar services to publishers including Gannett, Reuters and WashingtonPost.com.

New York - Digital music retailer AmieStreet.com said on Tuesday rock band the Walkmen have made their new album available for download exclusively on its site for $5 as part of AmieStreet's Download To Make A Difference campaign benefitting the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The band's latest effort "You & Me" will be available only on AmieStreet for the next three weeks.

San Diego - RoyaltyShare, a service that provides labels and musicians with distribution of their tracks to a range of digital music services, announced that it has signed new deals to expand its offering to include Amie Street, Hot Topic's ShockHound, PassAlong Networks, Puretracks and Spiral Frog. RoyaltyShare also provides labels automatic calculation of royalties owed to all parties on each song.

New York - Music discovery and social media firm uPlayMe announced on Tuesday that it has named Dan Pelson, former senior vice president of global consumers marketing at Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG), as its new CEO. Warner Music also made an investment in uPlayMe, which offers an application that tracks the music and videos users play and then makes recommendations and allows people to connect based on similar tastes.

Arlington, Va. - PBS said that it has launched its new presidential election site, called Vote 2008. The site features a variety of news stories, video, online tools and user comments from public television and public radio sites across the nation. It also includes several social media widgets, a video player, a blog and an interactive election map produced in conjunction with National Public Radio (NPR).

Chicago - Video game accessories maker SteelSeries said on Tuesday that it has acquired fellow gaming peripherals maker Ideazon for an undisclosed sum. SteelSeries supports more than 200 professional gaming teams and over 1,200 events globally. Chicago-based Ideazon develops a game-branded line of PC peripherals. The new combined company will be headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Singapore - Garena, a Singapore-based company that hosts online game tournaments, has raised $2 million in angel funding from investors including Skype co-founder Tovio Annus and the government of Singapore, Alarm Clock reported.

Washington - U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) last week introduced a bill that would prohibit the sale rental of M-rated video games to minors, as well as ban the sale of games that do not have age-based content ratings, GamePolitics reported.

New York - Returns on venture capital investments nationally declined 7.6% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007 for an overall return of 13.3% in the first quarter of 2008, according to newly released data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

Sunnyvale, Calif. - HP (NYSE: HPQ), Intel (NASD: INTC) and Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) said on Tuesday that they have partnered to create an open source test bed aimed at advancing cloud computing research and education.

Los Angeles - "Scrabulous," the popular Web knock-off version of Hasbro's (NYSE: HAS) official "Scrabble" that was recently targeted with a copyright infringement lawsuit, has been removed from the U.S. and Canadian versions of online social network Facebook. "In response to a legal request from Hasbro, the copyright and trademark holder for Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada, the developers of Scrabulous have suspended their application in the U.S. and Canada until further notice," a Facebook representative told CNET News.com.