Redmond, Wash. - Microsoft's (NASD: MSFT) MSN and independent media company BermanBraun on Thursday announced the beta launch of their new celebrity and entertainment news site, Wonderwall. The site "utilizes horizontal scrolling that emulates the feeling of flipping through a favorite magazine," the companies said. Alex Bragg, founding editor of VH1's "Best Week Ever" blog, was named lead editor at Wonderwall.

New York - The Bono-backed (RED) charity for AIDS in Africa plans to launch a subscription-based digital music service on Monday that will offer exclusive tracks from artists including U2, Coldplay, Jay-Z, Elton John and Death Cab for Cutie, among others. The $5 per month (RED)Wire service will each week deliver one exclusive song from a major artist; one track from a lesser-know artist; a multimedia element; and a feature on how proceeds from the service are helping in Africa.

Los Angeles - Control Room, a producer and distributor of concert webcasts and other entertainment content, announced on Wednesday that it will offer a range of free performances from the Virgin Mobile Festival on the website of partner MSN. The packages will be available on-demand for the next four months, and include sets from Iggy & The Stooges, Bloc Party, Gogol Bordello and Andrew Bird.

Hollywood - CBS (NYSE: CBS) Television Distribution said on Tuesday that its "Entertainment Tonight" program will become a provider of entertainment and celebrity content on Microsoft's (NASD: MSFT) MSN portal. Beginning in the fall, ET will have a branded presence on the MSN Entertainment home page, and provide content across television, music and movie sections. ET anchors will also produce a "daily mini-newscast" for MSN.

Tempe, Ariz. - Limelight Networks (NASD: LLNW), a provider of content delivery network services, announced on Tuesday that it will provide live and on-demand video streaming services to NBCOlympics.com on MSN for its 2008 Beijing Olympics coverage. The deal includes around 2,200 hours of live streaming and 3,000 hours of highlights.

San Francisco - Four months after officially launching its community-driven online sports network, San Francisco-based Bleacher Report said on Friday that it has forged a new partnership with Fox Sports. Through the agreement, Fox Sports will feature original Bleacher Report content on its FoxSports.com site, alongside content from its own writers. More than 4,000 writers have contributed a total of 30,000 original stories to Bleacher Report since September.

Los Angeles - Microsoft's (NASD: MSFT) MSN has signed a deal with production company BermanBraun to create an entertainment news-focused destination site within MSN, set to launch in early 2009.

CES 2008: Bill Gates delivered his last keynote as Chairman of Microsoft at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. While he treated the audience to a hilarious celebrity-filled farewell video and played Guitar Hero on stage with Guns’n Roses star Slash, he did not make any really ground-breaking new announcements (as DMW’s readers predicted.) Gates’ keynote underscored the fact that Microsoft is still far from a digital entertainment company (but at least they are working on it.)

Redmond, Wash. - Microsoft's MSN said on Wednesday that it will now host entertainment industry news and opinion content from Variety.com. In addition to daily entertainment news, MSN will now feature columns and blogs from Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, as well as journalists Anne Thompson and Cynthia Littleton.

East Rutherford, N.J. - Microsoft said that its live webcasts of the Live Earth concerts this weekend served up over 10 million streams, marking the most simultaneous viewers for any online concert ever.

Washington - The Associated Press said this week that 85 more radio and 15 new television stations have added its Online Video Network and MSN player to their websites. The AP said that its network that airs video news reports now reaches 61 million unique visitors through over 1,800 affiliates.

How have sources of traffic to Shopping and Classifieds websites changed over the past year? In May 2007, the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds category received 24.95% of its upstream visits from search engines. This number increased by only 0.7% since May 2006, but the balance of search engines sending traffic has changed in favor of Google.

Redmond, Wash. - Microsoft has reopened its Soapbox video-sharing site, after ceasing new registrations for the service while it installed filters to block the uploading of copyrighted content. "We are also now conducting proactive filtering of all uploaded content, using technology from Audible Magic," reads a post on the Soapbox blog. "Audible Magic bases their filtering on the video's audio track and their database is being updated constantly. By using this technology, we see this as an important step to ensure the viability and success of Soapbox over the long run."

Redmond, Wash. - As part of the upcoming Live Earth climate crisis concert series, a new song from recording artist Madonna has been placed for free download on Microsoft's LiveEarth.MSN.com site, which will also stream the concert series live on July 7. MSN said it will donate 25 cents for each of the first million downloads of "Hey You" -- a song written specifically for the Live Earth event -- to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

New York - Mindshare Entertainment announced on Tuesday that it will produce an original Web series on motherhood, starring Leah Remini of "The King of Queens," that will incorporate storylines generated by moms. Debuting on May 11 on MSN, the five-episode "In the Motherhood" series will be directed by Peter Lauer. The webisodes will also be viewable on the websites of Sprint and Suave, the series' two sponsors, and promoted on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and in People magazine.