Bentonville, Ark. - Following similar recent announcements from Best Buy and Netflix, retail giant Wal-Mart announced on Friday that it will drop its HD DVD offerings in favor of the Blu-ray next-generation DVD format. [more..]

Brussels - The European Union has proposed extending copyright terms for musicians in its member countries from 50 to 95 years, with European Commissioner for internal market and services Charlie McCreevy arguing that otherwise, some older performers may lose royalties from their works before they are even dead. [more..]

McLean, Va. - Attempting to boost their sagging ad revenue, four of the nation's largest newspaper publishers -- including Gannett, Tribune, Hearst and The New York Times Co. -- said on Friday that they will team to launch their own online ad sales network. [more..]

Los Angeles - Confirming earlier rumors, video-sharing site Revver has been acquired by LiveUniverse, a company launched by former MySpace parent company Intermix Media's founder Brad Greenspan, according to reports from NewTeeVee and CNET News.com. [more..]

Hong Kong - The Motion Picture Association (MPA) announced on Friday that six of its member studios have filed civil copyright infringement complaints totaling $1 million against Xunlei, a popular file-sharing network in China that is partly owned by Google. [more..]

Port Washington, N.Y. - U.S. video game sales were $1.18 billion in January, a 6% drop from a year ago -- attributed primarily to an extra week of sales reporting last year -- with Sony's PlayStation 3 notably overtaking Microsoft's Xbox 360 for second place in hardware sales behind Nintendo's Wii. [more..]

El Segundo, Calif. - Nintendo is expected to lead the next-generation console race by the end of this year, with a total installed base of 30.2 million Wii's, versus 25.7 Microsoft Xbox 360's and 20.3 million PlayStation 3's, but the Sony console is expected to make significant gains and eventually overtake its two rivals by 2011, according to a report from market research firm iSuppli. [more..]

Norwood, Mass. - The Polaroid Corp. has announced that it plans to wind down its instant film business, a response to the ever-growing popularity of digital photography. [more..]

London - Live Nation, a concert promoter and owner of live event venues worldwide, announced on Friday that it will acquire a 65% controlling stake in Mirage Promotions, a Dubai-based concert promoter. [more..]

My husband asked if the Google users spend more online. Good question (he seems to think young people have no money)! I created the following Lifestyle Quadrant Analysis to compare the online audience of Google.com and Yahoo! Search and guess what I found, blogs Heather Hopkins. [more..]

Los Angeles - The Los Angeles Times yesterday announced that Russ Stanton, formerly the paper's innovation editor, has been promoted to editor. [more..]

New York - Video game publisher Take-Two Interactive has named Ben Feder as its CEO through 2012. [more..]

Santa Monica, Calif. - Activision has announced plans for the next iteration of its popular "Guitar Hero" franchise, which will be built around the music of platinum-selling rock band Aerosmith. [more..]