Malina Joseph, editor of Elle US, will provide Stardoll with a fashion blog, style tips and video interviews with designers. The Stardoll site will also feature links to popular Elle blogs such as Street Chic and Fashion Spotlight as well as to the online-only spin-off Elle Girl.

Sweden-based Stardoll allows users to create a “MeDoll”, choosing a range of features including hairstyles, skin tones, lips, eye-colours and noses.They can dress and style their doll with clothes and accessories from the Stardoll shop, create a personal room for the doll and dress celebrity dolls online.

The company hit the headlines in August after Stardoll topped the list of the most popular websites for children in the UK. More than 30% of UK children under the age of 12 say Stardoll is their favourite online destination, making the site more popular than Lego, the Cartoon Network or BBC’s CBBC.

Stardoll is backed by Sequoia Capital, which also invests in Google and Yahoo!, and Index Ventures.

Technorati labels: Stardoll, content deal, Elle

The new ads will run in Adobe Flash games that run in a browser. Google has been testing the new formats over the past few months and launches today with about two dozen games, from partners like Konami, Playfish, Zynga, Demand Media, and games network Mochi Media.

Advertisers, like Esurance, Sprint, and Sony Pictures, can insert ads into games or videos for YouTube, while game developers can designate points in a game to make an “ad request.”

Google’s experimental advertising solutions may never be as profitable as the company’s lucrative search ad business (which brings in almost 40 percent of the annual $40 billion advertising earnings online), but that won’t stop the company from grabbing up a few extra dollars wherever it can.

Technorati labels: Google AdSense for Games

From Apple’s USD0.99-per-track fee, the firm pays an estimated USD0.70 per song to record companies. The record companies, in turn, pay USD0.09 to music publishers that own the copyrights of songs.

Apple is against the increase and has threatened to close down iTunes if the ruling goes in NMPA’s favour. The CRB’s decision is scheduled for Thursday. Phil Leigh, president of digital media analysis group Inside Digital Media, says there’s a 50-50 chance Apple will follow through on its threat. “I think Apple is serious about what they’re saying,” he told The Industry Standard. “They feel strongly that the price of USD1 a track is where things ought to be.”

Technorati labels: Apple, shut iTunes, royalty ruling

Seznam – which reportedly holds a 62% share of the Czech Republic’s search market next to Google’s 29% – has an asking price of USD850m. A deal between DST and Seznam would mark a major consolidation in the Eastern European internet market.

Other companies in the running to acquire Seznam are private equity firms Apax Partners and Warburg Pincus. Each firm has holdings in the technology and telecoms sectors but may be unable to complete a deal due to the credit crunch. Warburg owns, as part of its portfolio, Centrum.cz – the second largest Czech internet portal – while Apax has holdings in international sites such as Yell.com.

The DST approach comes just one week after it upped its stake in Russian news and blog portal Mail.ru. The Russian internet investment group paid USD300m to secure an extra 15% in Mail.ru. This pushed the company’s stake to a total of 50.6%, despite reportedly selling part of its holding to Alisher Usmanov, owner of the Kommersant publishing house, to finance the deal.

Technorati labels: Mail.ru, Czech search site, Seznam

This investment follows the recent announcement of a distribution deal with Comcast that will give HealthiNation access to about 11 million cable subscribers.The new proceeds will be used primarily for development in programming and advertising sales.

The company previously raised USD4.5m in Series A funding from MK Capital and a number of private investors in 2007.

Founded in 2005 by health executives Raj Amin and Tony Estrella, HealthiNation is an independent producer of videos on health-related topics.It distributes content via its website and through cable television networks.

Technorati labels: Health video site, HealthiNation

It is uncertain whether he will be replaced, as Nokia says it will review the CTO position. Iannucci will continue to serve as an adviser to the firm while a decision is made. Henry Tirri, the head of Nokia’s system research unit, will lead the NRC in the interim.

Iannucci joined Nokia in 2004 as head of the NRC’s computing architectures laboratory. He became SVP and head of the research centre in January 2005 and was appointed CTO three years later. Before joining Nokia, he held R&D management positions at Cosine Communications, Compaq and IBM.

Technorati labels: Nokia, CTO, Bob Iannucci

The site will be similar to Hulu, claims the sources, while other labels and partners may also be invited to contribute content. The move is a bid to increase online profits and gain higher revenues from videos, which were once purely promotional tools.

Universal, alongside the three other major labels, currently has a licensing deal with YouTube, which generates music video profit on an ad-sharing basis. While the new site is unlikely to replace this contract, which expires at the end of the year, it will reportedly offer higher-quality streams and will appeal to advertisers wary of placing ads near consumer content.

Universal’s YouTube channel is the most popular on the video-sharing site, with more than 2.6bn streams in the last year, reports Billboard. Universal expects to generate some USD100m from its music videos this year, mainly through existing digital deals, reports Silicon Valley Insider.

The new site is still at the planning stage and won’t launch until next year at the earliest, claim the reports.

Technorati labels: Universal Music, music video site

The new DS is expected to launch by the end of the year and cost less than JPY20,000 (USD189), compared to the current model’s JPY16,800 (USD159.8) price tag for. The new platform will reportedly feature improved wireless functions, suggesting that gamers may be able to use it for purposes other than gaming. This also means the device will compete directly with internet enabled, portable media player such as the iPod Touch and Nokia’s Tablets.

The move may also signal an effort to boost DS’s sales as rival PSP gains ground. While the DS still outsells rivals globally, Sony PSP led sales in Japan for the five consecutive months to July, according to games magazine publisher Enterbrain.

Technorati labels: nintedo, multimedia

The beta service, found at advertise.myspace.com, allows companies to target MySpace members according to gender, location, age and specific interests with ads that belong to one or more pre-defined categories. These are auto, books, fashion, health and fitness, miscellaneous, movies, music, sport, TV and video games.

Advertisers can then access stats showing how many networkers will potentially view the ad and set the length of the campaign accordingly. Users will not pay to list their ads but will only be charged when someone clicks on it. The price of a campaign could range from USD25 to USD10,000, estimates PC Magazine.

The service will complement MySpace’s overall ad business, which is outperforming the marketplace, the company claims. Earlier this month, MySpace COO, Peter Chernin, said: “The MySpace advertising business is above budget, above where we expected it to be.” However, he did not provide any figures.

According to eMarketer, the overall market for social network ads in the US will be worth USD1.6bn by the end of this year, up from USD920m in 2007.

The new ad service comes hot on the heels of MySpace Music, which officially launched in the US this week.The music service is a joint venture between MySpace and the four major labels – Universal, Warner, Sony BMG and EMI.

The new platform offers free ad-supported streaming of songs and music videos as well as tools for creating personalised online playlists. Users can also buy DRM-free tracks from the Amazon MP3 store and save them on the MySpace Music ‘cloud’.

The deal follows TBS decision in June to sell GameTap. Financial terms were not disclosed. Joystiq reports that TBS will retain a significant equity stake in GameTap and will continue to manage operations and provide migration and technical support until early 2009. Metaboli, which will retain the GameTap brand and its operations in Atlanta, will use GameTap to build a global online gaming service.

GameTap, which launched in 2005, offers more than 1,300 console, computer and arcade games and relies on subscriptions and ads to generate revenue. Earlier this year, the company sold off its editorial division to focus solely on the GameTap service.

Metaboli also offers a subscription service for gamers as well as games for sale. The company powers the websites of more than 50 so-called white label online gaming partners including MSN, Virgin and Atari.

Technorati labels: GameTap, Metaboli