New York - Apple said in a regulatory filing on Friday that it has received a new request from the government for additional information and documents regarding its stock options granting practices. [more..]

New York - Media conglomerate Viacom on Friday asked Google's YouTube video-sharing site to remove over 100,000 copyrighted clips from Viacom properties including MTV, Comedy Central and BET. [more..]

Los Angeles - Microsoft is developing a new version of its Zune portable music and media player that doubles as a cell phone -- in direct competition to Apple's recently announced iPhone -- according to CrunchGear, a TechCrunch Network blog. [more..]

New York - Disney has seen its films downloaded over 1.3 million times since placing some of them for sale on Apple's iTunes Store in October, chief executive Bob Iger said in an interview on FT.com, the website of the Financial Times. [more..]

San Francisco - A YouTube user associated with the blog network Gawker Media (Gawker, Defamer, Gizmodo, Valleywag) has posted dozens of copyrighted videos to the video-sharing site that feature appended ads for Gawker blogs, CNET News.com reported on Friday. [more..]

New York - Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated magazine has announced that it will acquire FanNation.com, a provider of sports news and user-generated sports content, from Sports Technologies, Inc. (STI). [more..]

Reston, Va. - ComScore Networks, a provider of Internet audience measurement services, announced on Friday that it has partnered with Federated Media, which represents conversational media sites including Digg and BoingBoing, to create a new measurement system for blogs and community-driven sites. [more..]

Agoura Hills, Calif. - Video game publisher THQ announced on Friday that it has acquired Moorpark, Calif.-based game developer Mass Media, creators of the "Full Spectrum Warrior" franchise. [more..]

Alexandria, Va. - A jury in Alexandria, Va. on Friday entered its second day of deliberations in the fraud trial of two former executives of AOL, The Washington Post reported. [more..]

Washington - Amid criticism from certain members of the academic community, educational software firm Blackboard pledged on Thursday that it will not use its patents to block educational institutions from developing their own open source e-learning systems. [more..]

Los Altos, Calif. - FreeHand Systems, a maker of a computer tablet for displaying and publishing digitally delivered sheet music, said on Friday that it has raised an undisclosed amount in its second round of funding from Vision Opportunity Master Fund. [more..]

Seattle - Online retail giant Amazon.com announced on Friday that it received more pre-orders for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows," the final installment in author J.K. Rowling's series, in its first seven hours of availability than it did in the first two days of pre-order sales for the sixth book, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Seattle-based Amazon said it received a total of more than 1.5 million advance orders for the sixth book, which was released in July 2005 and figured as the largest, most successful product release in the company's history. [more..]

Secaucus, N.J. - Japan's Matsushita (Panasonic) announced on Friday that its North American subsidiary will establish a Panasonic Hollywood Blu-ray Testing Center. "Until now there has been no testing service available for content verification before disc replication although many in the motion picture industry expressed the need for a testing center to provide such services, especially in the Hollywood area," the company said. The center will offer content providers and authoring studios services including format verification service for the logical format of Blu-ray discs; playback testing service; and rental site service for format verification and playback testing. [more..]

Los Angeles - Motorola announced on Friday that it will debut its new MOTORIZR Z3 mobile phone at the 79th Annual Academy Awards, when it presents each of the top 25 nominees in the directing and four acting categories with the phone. The handsets will be housed in custom made boxes, and will come pre-loaded with 10 new songs from emerging artists. [more..]

Waltham, Mass. - PermissionTV, a developer of branded broadband TV channels for media companies, announced on Friday an agreement with Fox Interactive, to create a channel for the company's MyNetworkTV.com. Massachusetts-based PermissionTV will provide a Web-based video player, content publishing tools and content delivery services. [more..]

New York - Video game publisher Take-Two Interactive's 2K Sports label on Friday announced details for its 2nd Annual Pontiac Virtual NCAA Final 4 Tournament, which will pit players of its "College Hoops 2K7" title in a competition on Microsoft's Xbox Live online game service. The finals will be held in Atlanta, with the winner to take home a new 2007 Pontiac G5 GT. [more..]

Redwood City, Calif. - Electronic Arts said on Friday that it has signed a worldwide co-publishing deal with Pandemic Studios, for the studio's forthcoming "Mercenaries 2: World in Flames" title for PlayStation 3. Separately, Redwood City, Calif.-based EA announced the track listing for the in-game soundtrack to its "Def Jam: Icon" game collaboration with Universal Music Group's Def Jam Recordings. The game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 will feature a playlist of 29 tracks, from artists including The Game, Nas, Ghostface, Lil Jon, Ludacris and Method Man & Redman. A feature called My Soundtrack for the Xbox 360 version will also allow players to load any MP3 into the game. "Def Jam: Icon" is slated for release on March 6. [more..]