paidContent, a blog about "the economics of content", has said that it will be acquired by UK media company Guardian Media Group, owners of The Guardian and Guardian.co.uk. The Guardian Media Group itself is owned by the Scott Trust.

Its parent company, ContentNext Media, has said that it will remain as a independent business and also says that it is a major expansion for the Guardian Media Group’s US presence. It will also own paidContent’s UK equivalent, mocoNews.net and contentSutra.

Founded by Rafat Ali in 2002, it has offices in Santa Monica, California, and Manhattan, and also runs several conferences. In May, Conde Nast bought Ars Technica for $25 million, $5 million less than the ContentNext buyout. The full press release is below.

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TECHGEEK, starting today, is now officially allowing you to use your Wordpress.com, Yahoo, LiveJournal, AOL and Vox Accounts on TECHGEEK to comment on posts and for some of you to write on TECHGEEK with one ID.

Basically, this is done thanks to OpenID. OpenID allows you to use, for example, your LiveJournal account and lets you log in to many other sites that support it. One of the benefits is that all comments made using an OpenID-supported account are automatically approved, allowing you to have your say much faster and no longer needed to wait for approval.

However, those who have a TECHGEEK account already - you can link your account with your OpenID-supported account. But those who do not have a supported one, you cannot use your TECHGEEK one. We are working on how to make one with Wordpress, but it is going to take some time.

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Konami has decided to sue Viacom’s Harmonix studio claiming that their hit game, Rock Band, violates patents issued in 2002 and 2003 relating to simulated musical instruments, a music-game system and a "musical-rhythm matching game". It is also demanding cash compensation.

Read More over at TECHGEEK GamesArena.

The US Justice Department has ended its two-year criminal probe of backdated stock options at Apple, and have not filed charges against current and former executives, including Steve Jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Apple, along with other companies, have admitted that they backdated certain option grants, including two awarded to Jobs, in order to take advantage of more favourable prices for the grants. It is not illegal, so long it is disclosed, but many have failed to do so.

Jobs has maintained that he knew that the options were backdated, but he was not aware of the accounting implications. Both Apple and the Justice Department declined to comment.

It is not over yet, as Apple is in a shareholder lawsuit alleging that several executives committed securites fraud in failing to disclose the company’s practice of backdating.

Optus has confirmed that its retail stores are experiencing problems signing up customers to the iPhone because there are difficulties with the internal customer network - since many are signing up across the nation to get the phone.

As well, one store has confirmed that they have sold out of iPhones, the flagship store in Sydney. Gizmodo is also reporting that the store had only 500 handsets from the launch at midnight.