Port Washington, N.Y. - U.S. video game sales slid for the six month in a row in August, down 16% from a year ago to $909 million, and are now down 14% year-to-date, according to sales data compiled by market research firm NPD Group. [more..]

Washington - In a bid to appease those worried its digital book archive would give the company a monopoly, Google said at a Congressional hearing this week that it would allow other booksellers to sell books covered under its proposed settlement on out-of-print but in-copyright works. [more..]

San Francisco - Twitter this week announced several changes to its Terms of Service, to reassure users that they ultimately "own" their tweets, and to "leave the door open for advertising," co-founder Biz Stone wrote on the company's blog. [more..]

San Francisco - Motorola this week introduced the Cliq, its first handset to run Google's Android mobile operating system, which will go on sale in the fall exclusively from carrier T-Mobile. [more..]

London - An "executive at a record label" was among those arrested in August in connection with raids conducted on the pre-release piracy group DV8, TorrentFreak reported, citing anonymous sources. [more..]

Espoo, Finland - Nokia announced on Friday that it has acquired certain assets of Plum Ventures, the developer of a cloud-based social media sharing and messaging service for private groups. [more..]

London - Zattikka, a developer and publisher of social games, announced this week that it has acquired Gimme5games, a publisher of online and mobile games. [more..]

Menlo Park, Calif. - Factery.net, an alternative search engine start-up, has raised $1.2 million in funding, PaidContent reported, citing a regulatory filing. [more..]

Redmond, Wash. - Smilebox, a provider of multimedia scrapbook services, announced on Friday that it has acquired Preclick, a provider of print-to-retail photo software for retailers including Walmart and Walgreens. [more..]

Palo Alto, Calif. - Facebook had some fun with technology news blog TechCrunch this week, planting the seeds for a fake story about a new "Fax This Photo" feature on the Facebook account of reporter Jason Kincaid. [more..]

Los Angeles - The surviving members of Nirvana this week voiced their displeasure at how Activision is integrating an avatar of the late Kurt Cobain into its "Guitar Hero 5" music video game, Billboard reported. [more..]

New York - Facebook is set to begin allowing users to "tag" their friends in their status updates, a feature already provided for photos, videos and notes, the Associated Press reported. [more..]

London - Ad-supported streaming music service Spotify has temporarily reverted to an invite-only sign-up system in the U.K., citing "huge demand" for the service there since launching a new mobile version for iPhone and Android. [more..]

Cupertino, Calif. - Apple's iTunes 9 software once again blocked the ability for Palm's Pre smartphone to sync with the music jukebox software to add songs, as do Apple's iPod and iPhone, All Things D reports. [more..]

Culver City, Calif. - Sony Pictures Animation on Friday announced a multi-year deal with Frederator Studios to develop animated feature films. [more..]

New York - CBS announced this week that its Last.fm social music discovery service will be used to "crowdsource" programming for new terrestrial HD radio channels in four top U.S. markets. [more..]

San Jose, Calif. - Yebol, an Internet search startup founded by a former engineer at Yahoo, said that it has launched its semantic search engine at Yebol.com. [more..]

New York - After resigning as CEO in June, Mike Volpi has additionally stepped down from his position as chairman of peer-to-peer streaming TV service Joost, Silicon Alley Insider reports. [more..]