Los Angeles - "American Idol" licensor FremantleMedia Enterprises said on Thursday that it has signed a deal to create an Idol-branded virtual world within Habbo.com, an online virtual world for teens that claims 3 million U.S. members. The agreement covers in-game merchandising and sponsorship for the American Idol brand, and will see Haboo introduce new virtual items and activities regularly as the TV season progresses.

New York - AT&T (NYSE: T) sent unsolicited text messages to some 2 million of its wireless customers, promoting the season premiere of "American Idol," prompting complaints from some customers, The New York Times reported. AT&T Wireless told The Times that those who received the texts were customers who had previously used texting to vote on a contestant of the show, or were "heavy texters." The Times noted that some recipients of the texts wrote in to complain that they fell into neither of those categories.

New York - "American Idol" winner David Cook saw a record 14 of his songs enter the Billboard Hot Digital Songs chart today, including the No. 1 "The Time of My Life," which sold 236,000 downloads.

Los Angeles - A 2006 album from current "American Idol" contestant David Cook that was the top-seller at Amazon.com's (NASD: AMZN) MP3 store over the weekend, besting even Mariah Carey's new album, has now been removed from the store, FoxNews.com reported. Whether the album was taken down by Cook himself or at the behest of someone else remains a mystery.

Cupertino, Calif. - Apple (NASD: AAPL) said on Tuesday that it will begin offering exclusive audio and video downloads of every performance from the top 24 semifinalists on Fox's "American Idol." Song versions will cost $0.99 each, while videos will sell for $1.99 each. Fans will also be able to subscribe to automatic downloads of performances from favorite contestants the day after they after their on-air broadcast.

Montreal - Interactive entertainment developer Ludia said Monday it has signed a deal with FremantleMedia Enterprises, licensor for the "American Idol" TV show, to create online games based on the series. Montreal-based Ludia said its game, set to launch in conjunction with the show's 2009 season, will feature performance, online community and social networking components.

The answer to that question, my American Idol-loving friends, is that Drew has been asked to appear in court on Sierra’s behalf by her lawyer, says TMZ.  The former Idol star is facing two misdemeanor charges – disorderly intoxication and obstructing justice – and two felonies – cocaine possession and felony battery.

As I wrote in last week's TIME column, predicting American Idol results based on search term data is not an easy feat, really more art than science. Last week based on search terms for the week ending 5/19/07, Blake Lewis led Jordin Sparks in overall search term volume, the basis for my prediction that Blake would win. The biggest challenge in making an idol prediction using search term data is that you can't factor the last performance and vote (on Tuesday evening, our search term data is weekly and updates on Monday for the previous Saturday).

For those of you waiting for our American Idol prediction, you can find it here in my Science of Search column for TIME. Our prediciton was also quoted in USAToday (see sidebar) alongside the read from Yahoo! Buzz Index.  I'm calling it a close race with advantage to Blake Lewis, while Yahoo! Buzz has the finale going to Jordin Sparks. So you might be wondering why Hitwise search data would predict a different winner than Yahoo! Check out the search term analysis for each finalist's name query: