Washington - Nine consumer privacy organizations on Wednesday asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to create a list of consumers who do not want their online behavior tracked for advertising and other purposes, similar to the national "Do Not Call" list the FTC operates to prevent calls from telemarketers. [more..]

Mountain View, Calif. - Google is set to launch OpenSocial, a platform for developing social applications that can run across all social networks and websites. [more..]

Dulles, Va. - AOL on Wednesday launched a new program designed to better inform online consumers about behaviorally targeted advertising, a technology increasingly being used by AOL and other companies to serve the most relevant ads to Internet users. [more..]

New York - Some 13.7% of U.S. TV households are equipped with a high-definition television and HD tuner capable of receiving HD signals, while 11.3% also receive at least one HD network or station, according to a report released on Wednesday by The Nielsen Company. [more..]

Minneapolis - Electronics and media retail chain Best Buy announced on Wednesday that it has taken a minority equity stake in Mydeo, and launched a subscription-based video hosting service for its customers using the company's services. [more..]

New York - Over 59 million people, or 37.1% of all active U.S. Internet users, visited newspaper websites during the third quarter, an increase of 3.7% from the same period a year ago, according to a report from the Newspaper Association. [more..]

New York - Mobile advertising and search firm 4INFO announced on Wednesday that it has received an equity investment from Peacock Equity, GE/NBC Universal's investment fund. [more..]

Toronto - Video-sharing service mDialog has raised $3.15 million in first round funding from angel investors, VentureBeat reported. [more..]

Los Angeles - MobileStorm, a mobile marketing agency, announced that it has received an undisclosed sum of first round financing from venture capital firm eonBusiness. [more..]

Bill Tancer asks the question, can a collection of social networks tied together with a standard for application development challenge the fastest growing social network - Facebook? [more..]

Jay Baage blogs about Hulu.com, the joint venture between the media giants NBC Universal and News Corp.
[more..]

Facebook has a shot at being the first web company since Google to build a really big BUSINESS, not just a big user base. But Facebook has a number of vulnerabilities, which are worth pondering as we also ponder its huge potential, blogs Scott Karp.
[more..]

I noticed a few weeks ago that US Internet searches for "itunes" had overtaken searches for "free music downloads", blogs Heather Hopkins.
[more..]

TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello reports today that NBC is developing an episode of the hit comedy series "The Office" in which we meet several new characters who will be spun off into a new series. [more..]

Santa Monica, Calif. - Universal/Interscope Records artist Nine Inch Nails (aka Trent Reznor) on Wednesday announced plans to release a remix album version of his recent offering, "Year Zero," that will include a DVD-ROM containing all multi-track recordings -- allowing fans create their own remixe [more..]

Basking Ridge, N.J. - Verizon Wireless said on Wednesday that it will offer more than 70 live, ESPN-produced NBA basketball games on its V CAST Mobile TV service for mobile phones this season. [more..]

Tokyo - Sony Corp.'s Computer Entertainment unit announced on Wednesday that Folding@home, a joint project that allows PlayStation 3 computing power to be harnesses by Stanford University researchers, has been recognized by Guinness World Records as "the most powerful distributed computing network in the world." [more..]

Redwood City, Calif. - Zazzle, an on-demand retail platform, announced on Wednesday that it has signed a deal with Warner Music Group, which will allow artists to create Zazzle Galleries offering fans customized products based on their images, photos and artwork. [more..]

London - MySpace is among the sponsors putting up $2 million to fund production of a feature-length film, "Faintheart," which was chosen among MySpace submissions, and for which MySpace users are providing input on choices such as the director, cast, soundtrack and marketing initiatives, Reuters reported. [more..]

New York - MTV Networks announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with video-sharing site Metacafe on a contest that will challenge users to create their own virtual music video. [more..]

New York - The Orchard, a digital distributor of independent music, on Wednesday announced that it has signed new distribution deals with labels including Reader's Digest Music, MC Records and Gigantic Music. [more..]

Burlingame, Calif. - AOL said on Wednesday that it has launched its Truveo video search engine in eight countries, including France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan and the U.K. [more..]

North Hollywood, Calif. - Disney Online on Wednesday announced the launch of its massively multiplayer online game for PC and Mac, "Pirates of the Caribbean Online." [more..]