Studios set a deadline on actors' contract
If the union does not accept the final contract offer by Aug. 15, any proposed wage increases would not be retroactive, the studios said.

The 'fake' Steve Jobs is giving up parody blog
Daniel Lyons, the former Forbes magazine journalist who wrote the blog for the last two years, is moving on with his professional life and creative pursuits.

Bloomberg will revamp its financial news operations
The restructuring is intended to play up its growing assets in television, radio and Internet content. The company will now be divided into three main units: news, data and financial products.

Music instruments for the gadget freak
Nearly a hundred years later, electronic whizzes are creating other clever electronic instruments, some designed for the musically inclined gadget freak to play at home with considerably more ease.

Redstone says no to anointing his daughter
In an interview, Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom and CBS, said that his daughter was no longer the company's heir apparent.

Interpublic shakes up media operations
The move is another sign of the growing importance of deciding where marketers place advertising, how much they pay and how they apportion ads between traditional and digital media.

WPP makes hostile bid for TNS
The takeover battle intensified Wednesday for the British market research company Taylor Nelson Sofres, with a hostile bid by WPP Group, the global advertising company, forcing GfK, the preferred merger partner, to consider a higher bid.

Bringing Bangladesh into the Internet age
A group of Bangladeshi expatriates have developed a plan to bring affordable Internet access to their homeland through a blend of high-end wireless technology and what the company calls social entrepreneurship.

A cartoonlike way to chat from Google
Lively, an online tool, allows people to embody a cartoonish online avatar and have text-based conversations with friends and other Internet users in virtual chat rooms.

A private dance? 4 million Web fans say no
"Dancing," which more than four million people have viewed on YouTube, is the online equivalent of a platinum hit, seeping from one computer to the next like a virus.