San Francisco - The college-aged developer who created "Tris," a "Tetris" knock-off game for Apple's iPhone, is voluntarily removing the game from the App Store after Apple informed him of trademark and copyright claims it received from The Tetris Company, CNET News.com reported. "I'm a college student, and not an affluent one, and I simply do not have the time, energy, or resources to fight this battle right now," Tris developer Noah Witherspoon wrote on his blog. "I don't think this will be permanent; when I have the time and can find a good copyright lawyer, I'll be figuring out exactly what my position is and how I can make Tris available again."

Los Angeles - Hip-hop artist LL Cool J on Monday introduced Boomdizzle.com, a new joint venture with long-time label Def Jam that offers a promotional platform for aspiring music artists. The ongoing contest will see LL along with a panel of judges selecting a pack of finalists, from which users will vote on to see who gets to record a single with the artist.

New York - Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) mtvU on Tuesday announced the launch of mtvU Campus Daily Guides, an online resource for local events, restaurants and other areas of interest on 25 U.S. college campuses. Powered by Zvents, the guides will aggregate local content from over 250 sources, and also feature headlines from mtvU's College Media Network and ratings from RateMyProfessors.com. Users and local performers will also be able to add and promote their own events and activities.

London - Universal Music UK has introduced a new online store that will sell DRM-free movie soundtrack albums, Billboard reported. The Music From launches with 200 soundtracks in 320 Kbps MP3 format; Universal also reportedly plans to add soundtracks from other labels, as well as music from TV shows.

San Francisco - Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Harmonix game studio has partnered with on-demand 3D printing firm Z Corporation to offer players of its upcoming "Rock Band 2" the ability to order six-inch tall figurine versions of their customized musician avatars from the game, Wired.com reports. The $75 figurines will feature all of the customizations to body styles, faces, makeup options, hair styles and tattoos that users apply to their Rock Band avatars.

Minneapolis - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Photobucket image-hosting site announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with retail store chain Target (NYSE: TGT) to offer in-store printing of photographs. The service will allow Photobucket users to order prints for pickup in about an hour at most Target stores nationwide.

San Mateo, Calif. - Web video-on-demand service Jaman.com on Tuesday announced a deal with Lionsgate, to distribute a large collection of the film studio's titles on its service. A number of titles will be made available for free, ad-supported streaming, while premium feature-length movies from Lionsgate, including "Dogville," "Reservoir Dogs" and "Requiem for a Dream," will be available for download rental for between $2.99 and $3.99 each.

Beijing - Major record label EMI has filed suit against China-based music recommendation service Yobo.com, Pacific Epoch reports, citing the Beijing Times.

Nashville, Tenn. - StudioNow, an online network of video production professionals that offer their services to businesses, is expected to announce on Wednesday that it has secured $2 million in new private equity funding, from Clayton Associates and existing investors.

San Francisco - Apple's (NASD: AAPL) iTunes Store is now available once again in China, although the pro-Tibet album that was the reported cause of the store's being blocked by Chinese censors remains unavailable in the country, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Los Angeles - An estimated 2.9 million U.S. mobile subscribers received Sen. Barack Obama's text message announcing Sen. Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate, according to Nielsen Mobile. Nielsen said that despite being scooped on his choice by news outlets, Obama's text message "still ranks as one of the most important text messages ever sent," and "inflated the already enormous press attention paid to his VP pick and further established a list of supporters' most coveted form of contact: their cell phone numbers."

Reston, Va. - Some 23 years after its inception, the ".org" Internet domain now includes more than 7 million addresses, making it the third largest generic domain on the Web, after .com and .net, according to the organization that oversees the suffix.

Seattle - Online retail giant Amazon.com (NASD: AMZN) will acquire Shelfari, an online social network for avid readers, Shelfari said in a post on its blog.

San Francisco - Technorati, a blog search and advertising network that tracks over 100 million blogs, has acquired Blogcritics, a six-year-old blog aggregation network, CEO Richard Jalichandra announced on his blog.

Los Angeles - Regent Media, the owner of gay-focused cable network here! Networks, announced that it has completed its acquisition of gay media firm PlanetOut's (NASD: LGBT) publishing properties, including Out and The Advocate magazines.

If you havent read, ESPN has come out and said that they will be aggressively bidding for the retransmission rights for the next available Olympics, which will be in 2016. Notice I didnt say TV rights. The battle for the Olympics rights will be in spreadsheet projections done by ESPN, NBC and probably DirecTV (my guess, not based on any info), that will have to take in to account what revenues can be generated on TV advertising (traditional and interactive), through cable/satellite subscription revenues, an ever increasing market size for mobile video and advertising, and of course audio/video and text advertising of all types.

San Mateo, Calif. - Online advertising network Brand.net said on Tuesday that it has landed a $10 million second round of venture capital financing, led by Norwest Venture Partners and previous backer InterWest Partners.

Cambridge, Mass. - JumpTap, a provider of mobile search and advertising services, announced on Tuesday that it has raised over $26 million in its fourth round of funding, led by AllianceBernstein.

Foster City, Calif. - Qik, the provider of a live mobile video streaming platform, announced on Tuesday that it has received a "significant investment" from Netscape veterans Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who will also join the company's board of advisors.