Linden Labs has acquired two virtual goods business within Second Life. The companies (OnRez and Xstreet SL) offer Web-based marketplaces that sell custom skins and kit for ingame avatars. For example, you buy a skin to make...

TechCrunch reports that Pandora Radio has started serving audio ads. Pandora, like Last.fm, provides a free, personalised stream of music over the web to your desktop (Pandora also offers an iPhone app, although the whole Pandora service...

Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported a leaked investor email from iPhone developer Tapulous. The company’s biggest success is a title called Tap Tap Revenge, a music game in the tradition of Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution....

Sega has confirmed that 30 employees will be let go from the North American division. GigaOm has further details. 30 more jobs added to the JobLossTracker.

MCV reports that Australian games distributor Red Ant has called in the administrators. It is not clear how many jobs have been lost or at risk. It joins UK distributors EUK and Pinnacle in the GameOverZone.

Today is the formal launch of Gamesbrief. It’s an exciting and terrifying moment. The site has been in beta for several weeks, and before that it was just my personal ramblings at www.nicholaslovell.com. Now it is on...

AMD has announced that it will reduce headcount by 1,100, of which 900 will be redundancies and 200 will come from “natural attrition”. It also sold its handheld chip unit to Qualcomm for $65 million. The chip...