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Google has acquired the large advertising optimization platform for publishers AdMeld for $400 million in cash this week.

The company launched in 2007 with $30 million in venture capital.

Thanks to their initial investments, Foundry Group, Spark Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Time Warner Investments are set to make a large windfall.

CEO Michael Barrett was fired in 2008 from News Corp., after he failed to get MySpace to an unreasonable $1 billion revenue target.

MySpace has since continued its decline, losing $165 million last year alone.

Authorities in Spain have arrested three members of the hacking group Anonymous, each of which was allegedly part of the attack on the PlayStation Network where a file was found on the server with Anonymous' calling card.

The arrests follow a plot by the group to attack Spain’s Central Electoral Board website, among other Spanish sites.

Police have posted pictures of IRC chatlogs in which the suspects detail their plans of attack.

The authorities also note that those arrested "have the capacity to make decisions and direct attacks," and were actively involved in the attacks on the PSN, Egypt, Chile, Iran and Colombia.

This week's arrests come just days after NATO declared Anonymous a cyberthreat that would be "persecuted" and "infiltrated."

Anonymous responded in kind:

Do not make the mistake of believing you can behead a headless snake. If you slice off one head of Hydra, ten more heads will grow in its place. If you cut down one Anon, ten more will join us purely out of anger at your trampling of dissent.

(Pic of Spanish police with Anonymous 'V' masks via TNW)

Following weeks of speculation, HP has officially announced that the TouchPad tablet will launch on July 1st in the U.S.

The tablet will hit the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Canada within a week of the US launch.

HP is selling the 16GB model for $500 and the 32GB version for $600.

"What makes HP TouchPad a compelling alternative to competing products is webOS," added HP's Jon Rubinstein (via IW). "The platform's unmatched features and flexibility will continue to differentiate HP products from the rest of the market for both personal and professional use. This is only the beginning of what HP's scale can do with webOS."

TouchPads will have a 9.7-inch display with 1024x768 resolution, WebOS run a dual-core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor, Beats Audio technology, stereo speakers, a 1.3MP front-side camera, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.

HP's tablet will weigh 1.6 pounds and feature a gyro, accelerometer, and compass and full Flash support, just like Android.

According to a number of reports, an investor group has now become the front-runner in the bid for struggling social network MySpace.

News Corp, the current owner of the service, is looking to sell a majority stake by the end of the fiscal year, June 30th.

The group would take over full operational control and take an 80 percent ownership stake, leaving News Corp with the rest.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick added that he had been approached to join the investor group but has not made a decision.

Outside of the investor group, the small social networks Tagged and myYearbook have also expressed interest.

News Corp. threw away $580 million in 2005 to purchase MySpace and has swiftly seen traffic, revenues and profits plummet.

From 2010 to 2011 alone, MySpace traffic fell 48 percent to 35 million unique U.S. visitors. The company had an operating loss of $165 million last year.

AT&T has announced today that it will begin offering free Wi-Fi access in NYC parks, in a partnership with the city.

The Wi-Fi will now be available in 20 parks across the city, including popular areas like Central Park and Battery Park.

CEO Randall Stephenson and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg jointly announced the service earlier today.

The networks are free and the project will last for 5 years.

Citing a huge drop in sales from Nokia, Texas Instruments was forced to cut its revenue and earnings forecasts last night.

Outside of the mobile phone business, however, TI said all other sectors of their business were performing up to expectations.

TI warned that revenue from its wireless baseband chips were hurt thanks to Nokia, its biggest client, which continues to struggle and has fallen so far that it has become the source of takeover speculation.

The numbers will prove to be a temporary blip, regardless, as TI has already said it will phase out its baseband business by the end of next year.

While baseband was still a significant amount of overall revenue (6 percent), it was a steep fall from the 12 percent it represented last quarter.

Nintendo's Katsuya Eguchi has confirmed today that games for Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console will be on single-layer 25GB "proprietary" discs.

The PlayStation 3 uses Blu-ray discs, mainly single layer, but some games have been put on dual-layer 50GB discs.

When asked, Eguchi denied to comment on the expected 8GB of internal flash memory in the Wii U, but did confirm that external USB drives would be supported.

At E3, Nintendo did not show off the console itself, but instead displayed the incredible new controller, which features a touchscreen and streaming capabilities.

The large controller has a 6.2-inch touchscreen and can work as a standalone gaming device, as well. There are two circle pads, a regular d-pad, shoulder buttons, rumble, a camera/speaker/mic and gyroscope/accelerometer sensors.

The Wii U controller offers gamers a chance to use the second screen for many activities, including catching/pitching the ball in Wii Sports, or even playing hide-and-seek with other controllers.

Citigroup has confirmed that a security breach has given hackers access to basic info for 1 percent of its bank card customers.

The breach occurred in early May and was found by Citi through routine monitoring.

Citi Account Online was hacked, and 1 percent of card holders are affected, with their names, account numbers and email addresses compromised.

About 210,000 customers are affected, out of 21 million customers adds the bank.

More sensitive information, like birth dates, SSN and card security codes are locked down elsewhere and were not compromised.

It is unclear whether customers have seen an increase in phishing attacks since the breach.

Last week it was reported that Microsoft was set to drop $9 billion to purchase struggling phone maker Nokia.

Nokia denied that claim outright but there is a new rumor in town; giant mobile phone maker Samsung is looking to buy Nokia's phone business.

Samsung did not deny the latest rumor however, nor did Nokia, with both companies just declining comment "on rumor."

The new reaction is a far cry from Nokia's immediate dismissal of word that Microsoft was prepared to purchase the phone business of Nokia.

Nokia's share price has seen a brutal take down, falling 50 percent in the last 4 months to $6.30 and a full 85 percent from its peak in 2008, before the market collapsed. The stock was as high as $16 per share last year, however.

The company continues to see its market share fall, dropping 14 percent year-over-year alone from 36.1 percent to 31 percent as HTC, Apple and ZTE continue exponential growth.

According to multiple reports, Samsung's new flagship Galaxy S II smartphone will go on sale next month for major U.S. carriers.

The device was first unveiled at the MWC in February and is on sale in Europe and Asia.

It has been dubbed the world's thinnest phone.

Samsung's new "superphone" has a 4.27-inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen, Android 2.3.4, a 1.2GHz Samsung dual-core processor, an 8.49mm thin chassis (at lowest), an 8MP camera with autofocus and 1080p recording, NFC support, a 2MP front-side camera and HSPA+, WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0+HS.

Furthermore, the device will run on Samsung's updated TouchWiz UI and weighs just 4 ounces.

Samsung said there are already over 4 million pre-orders of the device, which should be a huge seller for the company.

Although unconfirmed, the latest rumor surfacing is that HP's TouchPad tablet will be released on June 22nd.

The date comes via Synnex, and IT equipment company, who has the tablet listed with a 6/22 date.

HP's base 16GB model will sell for $500 and the 32GB for $600.

The company has confirmed a "late June" launch so the date is certainly plausible.

TouchPads will have a 9.7-inch display with 1024x768 resolution, WebOS run a dual-core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor, Beats Audio technology, stereo speakers, a 1.3MP front-side camera, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.

HP's tablet will weigh 1.6 pounds and feature a gyro, accelerometer, and compass and full Flash support, just like Android.

Additionally, the tablet's virtual keypad will have a full number row, come with QuickOffice installed, Google Docs support, Dropbox, Box.net, VPN and wireless printing support.

Nintendo had arguably the best E3 keynote of the major gaming companies, unveiling the Wii U console and a plethora of Nintendo 3DS games, all of which should be released by the end of the year.

Nintendo 3DS

The gaming company confirmed the availability of the 3DS eShop and web browser. As a free gift to all gamers, the company is giving away Pokedex 3D and a 3D version of ExciteBike.

Pokedex 3D, which should excite Pokemon fans, let's you scan AR markers to add Pokemon, trade with friends and superimpose any Poke into your pictures.

Access to the Virtual Console is also available now, for $20, for GameBoy and GameBoy Color games.

Wii U

The highlight of the show, of course, was the launch of Project Cafe, for now on known as Wii U.

Nintendo did not show off the console itself, but instead displayed the incredible new controller, which features a touchscreen and streaming capabilities.

The large controller has a 6.2-inch touchscreen and can work as a standalone gaming device, as well. (Pic via ZD).

Viewsonic has unveiled its latest Android tablet, a $250 'budget' device dubbed the ViewBook 730.

Running Android 2.2 on an ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz processor, the tablet will be released later this month.

Smaller than most of Viewsonic's other tablets at 7-inches, the tablet has an 800x480 LCD LED backlit display, 8GB internal memory, a small VGA webcam, a mini-USB port, a mini-HDMI port and a microSD slot.

The ViewBook 730 also has RiteTouch, for writers who want to use a Stylus.

"We recognized a need for a tablet device that offers users an excellent multimedia experience with a very affordable value proposition," adds Michael Holstein, ViewSonic's vice president of business development. "From the pre-installed Amazon Kindle eReader to full Amazon app integration and Flash 10.1 support, our new ViewBook 730 enables consumers to do all the fun things that they want to do on a tablet without the added cost for features they don't need."

LulzSec, the hacking group that has hacked multiple Sony sites over the past week, is at it again, this time releasing source code from the Sony Computer Entertainment Developer Network.

Furthermore, the group released internal network maps of Sony BMG. In separate attacks from different groups, Sony Pictures Russia was taken down after an SQL injection and Sony Music Brazil was defaced.

Reads the confirmation post from the group (via Cnet):

Sony Ericsson has announced 20 new games for the Xperia Play gaming smartphone, including 10 that have been optimized for the device specifically.

There are currently 60 titles available for the Android device.

The biggest new game is probably Minecraft by Mojang.

Minecraft has 8 million registered users and the developer says 50,000 new users join each day.

List of the new Android games for the Play: