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Russian online media company SUP acquired blogging and community site LiveJournal from Six Apart on Monday, giving the company ownership of Russia’s most popular blogging site.

SUP and Six Apart first partnered in October 2006 to launch the Russian version of LiveJournal, which accounts for 28 percent of LiveJournal’s audience.

LiveJournal competes with blog hosting services such as Blogger, acquired by Google in 2003; Wordpress, and another service owned by Six Apart called TypePad.

It’s the second time LiveJournal has changed hands: In 2005, Six Apart purchased it from founder Brad Fitzpatrick. Six Apart said that during its stewardship of the site the number of accounts grew from 5 million to 14 million.

Although not on the scale of MySpace’s acquisition by News Corp., the deal shows the continuing interest of online media companies for services based on social networking and user-generated content.

SUP has established a new U.S. company, LiveJournal Inc., to operate LiveJournal, based in San Francisco, it said Monday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Six Apart will continue to represent LiveJournal for advertising and sponsorship for at least the next 12 months, the company said.

In future, Six Apart will focus on core products Moveable Type, Vox, and TypePad, it said. On Sunday, the company announced it is hiring staff to work at TypePad.

It will also continue investing in open source platform technologies such as Memcached, Mogile, Perlbal and OpenID, developed by LiveJournal and now used by other sites including Craigslist and Facebook.

Charles Martinet, the man whose voice will forever be associated with plumbing, multi-billion dollar video game franchises and “Mama Mia!”, is writing an autobiography. In the autobiography, Martinet will talk about what it feels like to be the guy behind “woohooo!” Martinet is aiming the book at a 2008 release, and hopes to talk about a view of Nintendo from the inside. The main thing inspiring Martinet to writing this book is the feedback he gets for his voice talents. And really, if someone said you were the “the voice of my childhood”, wouldn’t you want to live up to that?

Samsung Electronics and Toshiba announced today that they have signed a cross-license deal to produce, market and sell memory with the specifications and trademarks of Samsung’s OneNAND and Toshiba’s LBA-NAND memory chips. The arrangement is expected to result in increased availability of premium-performance OneNAND and LBA-NAND flash devices worldwide. Under the terms of the agreement, Samsung will license product specifications of its integrated OneNAND and Flex-OneNAND “fusion” memory chips to Toshiba, while Toshiba will license product specifications of its single-package LBA-NAND and mobileLBA-NAND flash chips to Samsung. Both companies will develop and market products that are compatible with the respective original-source technology. Samsung and Toshiba each plan to release products next year based on the respectively licensed product specifications, according to the companies.

A yearlong download promotion planned between Pepsi and Amazon, Billboard has learned, is among several developments forcing further consideration by Warner Music Group (WMG) and Sony BMG Music Entertainment to follow EMI and Universal Music Group’s lead in distributing music in the MP3 format, which forgoes restrictive digital rights management technology.News of the Pepsi promotion, which is expected to be announced February 3 during the Super Bowl, coincides with Wal-Mart’s ultimatum that major labels supply walmart.com with their music in MP3, sources said.

Labels said they have been watching the success of an MP3 test that Universal Music Group (UMG) began in August. The major label continues to allow the sale of 85 percent of its current catalog as MP3s. Sources said UMG is on the verge of permanently embracing that digital format. But a source close to the testing insisted that the decision is still up in the air while the company awaits conclusive results from the trial, which are due in mid-January.

Meanwhile, Disney’s Hollywood Records has joined the list of major-distributed labels testing MP3 at Amazon and walmart.com. The company has supplied 30 to 40 titles from its mammoth catalog in the MP3 format. A check of those sites shows the latest albums from Atreyu and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals on the Hollywood label available in the MP3 format, though they are not available at iTunes.

EMI began selling its music in MP3 format in June. WMG and Sony BMG Music Entertainment both declined to comment, but have continued to publicly maintain their separate stances in favor of using digital rights management for downloads.

Sources said Sony BMG is considering an MP3 test. The company initially was steadfast against MP3 and wouldn’t allow its independent distributor, RED Distribution, to engage in negotiations on behalf of its labels with Amazon when the merchant was trying to set up its MP3 download store. But Sony BMG management relented and let RED become involved in those negotiations. The parent company, however, refused to supply Amazon with its catalog in the MP3 format.

Soon Adobe’s popular document format will include functionality to support advertising, thanks to a new partnership with Yahoo. The two companies are framing the service as a way to allow publishers to offer their content on an ad-supported basis. This could also accelerate the adoption of PDF as a way to deliver paper content to subscribers in electronic form. Ads within the PDFs would appear in a side panel and would only be viewable by those using Adobe’s readers, as to “not disrupt the viewing experience.” Ads would be dynamically matched to the content within the PDF, Adobe said. “By partnering with Yahoo on this innovative advertising service, we are creating opportunities for publishers to build new businesses around unique content that previously was just given away or not available to a mass online audience,” Adobe corporate development chief Rob Tarkoff said. The offering would be in beta for several months, and would be open initially only to US English-language publishers.

Samsung Electronics has announced that it has developed the world’s fastest memory, a GDDR5 (series five, graphics double-data-rate memory) chip that can transfer data at six gigabits per second (Gbps). Samsung’s GDDR5, which will be introduced at a density of 512 Mb (16Mb x 32) chips, is capable of transmitting moving images and associated data at 24 gigabytes per second (GBps). The new Samsung graphics memory operates at 1.5 volts, representing an approximate 20% improvement in power consumption over today’s most popular graphics chip, the GDDR3. Samples of Samsung’s new GDDR5 chip have been delivered to major graphic processor companies last month and mass production is expected in the first half of 2008. Samsung expects that GDDR5 memory chips will become standard in the top performing segment of the market by capturing more than 50% of the high-end PC graphics market by 2010.

Microsoft on Friday launched Service Pack 1 for Windows Exchange Server 2007. Features include additions to the Exchange management console, Outlook web access and disaster recovery.

Disaster recovery features already in Windows Exchange Server 2007 include Local Continuous Replication and Cluster Continuous Replication. SP1 introduces Standby Continuous Replication, which allows replication between geographically dispersed areas. Data created in one place can be copied to other areas so that, in the event of failure or disaster, data from the other areas can be recovered automatically.

However, replication will not happen automatically. “Restore after failure will be a manual process,” said Microsoft’s Mark Deakin, product manager for unified communications. “It has to be manual because it is two separate pieces of data.”

Another new feature in the Exchange Server 2007 SP1 is a closer tie with Office Communications Server, with the ability to move voice mail between the two and control a greater variety of mobile devices. “There are lots more mobile devices you can connect as well,” said Deakin.

Forefront Security for Exchange Server is now included, as is support for multiple scanning engines from more security firms. These can be implemented in a single module, Microsoft said.

Microsoft claims it has more than 3,000 companies as customers, representing more than a million seats now working with Exchange Server 2007. More than 270,000 people tested out the beta of SP1, the company said.

Soccer may not be the most popular sport in the US–but don’t tell that to millions of minivan-driving suburban mothers. Chances are, the kids they are constantly hauling back and forth to practice would love this soccer ball remote. Not only will it handle your TV, DVD and satellite controls, it is also a full-size, functional ball. So you can kick it around, do headers and let the TV channels fall where they may. I just hope you are a fan of English soccer. Available for around $41.

It looks like a Dynamism product listing has revealed about when the 8GB Asus Eee PC will be hitting store shelves and for just how much damage to your bank account. Listed for $499 as expected, the tiny laptop featuring 8GB of flash storage and 1GB of RAM will be shipping in mid to late December. So yes, it’s still in Christmas gift territory for those interested. It’s also confirmed here that, as Asus debunked already, the 8GB model will not feature a larger screen than its predecessors. So is the 8GB model still enticing? If you don’t want to void your warranty by adding extra RAM, then yes. But with its abundance of USB ports, the possibilities of extra storage aren’t quite as tempting as some extra horsepower under the hood. Is it worth saving $100 on the 4GB model?

LG has officially today announced the release of the first Blu-Ray/HD DVD Super-multi DVD burner capable of writing at 6x on Blu-Ray media. The new GGW-H20L is the successor of the currently available GGW-H10N Super-multi Blue Blu-Ray /HD DVD combo drive. Basic specifications include a SATA interface, support for Lightscribe, 6x burning for BD-R media using the CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) writing strategy, 3x HD DVD-ROM reading (15GB and 30GB), 16x writing for DVD+/-R media and 40x for CD-R. Another strong advantage of the new drive is the support for 4x BD-R DL (50GB) burning, which means that you will be able to write approximately 46 GB of data in less than 50 minutes. Currently, LG is the only ODD maker that offers drives compatible with both Blu-Ray and HD DVD formats. The new GGW-H20L drive will be available in the Korean market first and LG has not confirmed yet confirmed its availability overseas any time soon. It will sell for W490,000 (U.S. $526), almost the half price of the company’s previous Super-multi model. HLDS also plans to release a Blu-Ray/HD DVD ROM drive (GGC-H20L) with Lightscribe, keeping up with the demand for more affordable drives for entertainment PCs.