Santa Monica, Calif. - French media conglomerate Vivendi announced on Monday a deal with video game publisher Activision, to combine its Vivendi Games unit with Activision to form a new company called Activision Blizzard, in a deal valued at $18.9 billion. [more..]

Los Angeles - NBC has followed though on its threat to pull all of its TV shows from Apple's iTunes Store, after the companies were unable to negotiate a new contract and the current one expired over the weekend. [more..]

San Francisco - Six Apart, a provider of blogging software and services and operator of the LiveJournal network of blogs, has announced a sale of LiveJournal to Russian media firm SUP. [more..]

Dulles, Va. - AOL on Monday officially shuttered its online video store, and will instead offer users the opportunity to purchase or rent videos from online retail giant Amazon.com's Unbox video store. [more..]

San Francisco - Some 35% of U.S. "tweens," defined as kids aged 8-12, own a mobile phone, and 5% access the Internet over their phones each month, according to a new study from The Nielsen Company. [more..]

San Francisco - Consorte Media, a provider of online marketing services for the Hispanic market, announced on Monday that it has raised $7 million in its second round of venture capital financing, led by new investor Sutter Hill Ventures. [more..]

New York - Clickable, a Web-based service for creating and managing online advertising campaigns, on Monday announced that it has raised $6 million in its first round of venture capital, led by Pequot Ventures and Union Square Ventures. [more..]

New York - ECirkit, the developer of a social network for extreme lifestyle aficionados, on Monday announced its beta launch and $1.9 million in angel funding. [more..]

So much has been written about what’s wrong with Beacon — blatant privacy violation, lack of blanket opt-out, failure to make it opt-in, gathering data from non-Facebook users — but I haven’t seen much about WHY they got it so wrong, blogs Scott Karp. [more..]

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Senator Barack Obama has taken his fight to the internet, creating a website called Hillary Attacks, which, as its name might suggest, serves the purpose of acknowledging, and then dismantling, oncoming barbs from Senator Clinton.

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An anonymous reader tipped Bob Lefsetz, author of The Lefsetz Letter, yesterday about an interesting development in the live music world: “Zeppelin just confirmed for Bonnaroo. They can't officially announce until after the London gig so pass it on! Also Metallica is confirmed on the bill too!” [more..]

New York - Following an outcry over violations of user privacy, Coca-Cola has decided not to use online social network Facebook's Beacon service -- which alerts friends to purchases made at partner retail sites -- at least for the time being, The New York Times' Bits blog reports. [more..]

Alviso, Calif. - TiVo announced on Monday that it has partnered with online photo-hosting services Photobuck and Picasa Web Albums, to allow TiVo subscribers to access their own photos and those of friends via their broadband-connected TiVo boxes. [more..]

Irvine, Calif. - Consumer electronics maker COWON America on Monday shipped its Q5W line of portable media players with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS capability to retailers. [more..]

New York - News Corporation's The New York Post on Monday announced the launch of PageSix.com, an outgrowth of the Page Six gossip column in the paper, which will feature breaking entertainment and celebrity news, videos and photos. [more..]

Espoo, Finland - Nokia on Monday announced the launch of its Nokia Internet Radio service, a free music discovery application for Nokia mobile phones. [more..]

Seattle - Social music discovery service iLike announced on Monday a promotional partnership with independent label Eleven Seven Music, whose artists will post original content such as music videos, tour diaries and video messages on iLike.com and iLike's Facebook application. [more..]

Espoo, Finland - Nokia, THQ Wireless, Lucasfilm and LucasArts announced on Monday plans to offer "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" for Nokia's N-Gage mobile gaming platform in 2008. [more..]

Bethesda, Md. - Kajeet, a pay-as-you-go mobile phone service for kids, announced on Monday that it has added Electronic Arts mobile games to its offering. [more..]