Port Washington, N.Y. - U.S. spending on video games dropped 23% in May, to $863 million, marking the third straight month of decline and the first month since August 2007 that total sales did not top $1 billion, according to data from market research firm NPD Group. Hardware sales fell 30%, to $303 million. [more..]

Washington - Following months of warnings and public service announcements from the government and broadcast industry, all U.S. over-the-air TV stations on Friday were scheduled to shut off their analog signals and begin broadcasting in digital format. [more..]

Redmond, Wash. - Nintendo of America announced on Friday that a federal judge in Los Angeles has dismissed a patent claim against the company brought by Guardian Media Technologies, which sued a host of companies for allegedly infringing its technology that sets parental controls on DVD players. [more..]

New York - Of the estimated 6.4 million iPhone owners in the U.S. as of April, roughly the same number are over 55 as are ages 13-24, according to Nielsen. [more..]

New York - Clear Channel Radio has partnered with artist management firm Front Line to launch a new series of artist-programmed Internet radio stations, Billboard reported. [more..]

Sunnyvale, Calif. - Four months after announcing the planned departure of its CFO, Yahoo has named Silicon Valley veteran Tim Morse to fill the role. [more..]

San Francisco - Streaming music service imeem raised $2.4 million from an undisclosed investor in April, and is in the process of trying to raise another $4 million, PaidContent reported, citing a regulatory filing. [more..]

London - In the wake of France's highest court's ruling that prevents cutting off a repeat copyright infringer's Internet access without a court order, international record label lobbying group IFPI believes that the French will instead appoint a special judge to rule on such cases, Billboard reported. [more..]

San Francisco - CBS-owned publishing house Simon & Schuster has announced plans to make 5,000 titles available for purchase and download through document-sharing website Scribd. [more..]

San Bruno, Calif. - Google's YouTube has integrated the Facebook Connect service, meaning that users can now automatically share their recently uploaded YouTube videos into their friends' feeds on Facebook. [more..]

Cupertino, Calif. - Apple said that its new Safari 4 Web browser was downloaded more than 11 million times in its first three days of release, including more than 6 million copies of its version for Windows. [more..]

Los Angeles - Digital entertainment studio EQAL, creators of the "lonelygirl15" series, has halted development and funding of its own series in favor of producing content for brand partners, PaidContent reports. [more..]

Los Angeles - A new service called BitBlinder aims to provide free, anonymized Web surfing and use of the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, TorrentFreak reports. [more..]