Google is introducing ad-supported video clips from YouTube — what it calls “video units” — to its AdSense platform, one of many steps in a strategy designed to glean a return on its massive investment in the video-sharing Web site. Google is working with select YouTube content partners, including TV Guide Broadband, Expert Village, Mondo Media, Lonelygirl15, Extreme Elements and Ford Models to develop the video offerings. As with ads on YouTube, an AdSense video unit will run only after a user has clicked on a video play button.

The 2007 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to two scientists who discovered the technology that has made today’s tiny hard disk drives possible. Albert Fert of France and Peter Grünberg of Germany are the joint winners of the award for their independent discoveries of Giant Magnetoresistance, an effect in which very weak magnetic changes give rise to major differences in electrical resistance. GMR is considered one of the first real applications of the field of nanotechnology, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which granted the award.

NBC Universal will purchase Oxygen Media, the operator of a cable channel aimed at women, for $925 million, a move that dovetails with its 2006 purchase of the iVillage online network for $600 million. The acquisition gives NBC a cable channel that reaches 74 million homes and offers advertisers a focused demographic, with more than 40 percent of the channel’s audience made up of women between 18 and 49. Perhaps just as key is the fit with the iVillage family of Web sites.

As it prepares to meet its customers’ growing demands for wireless multimedia services, AT&T’s board of directors approved the acquisition of 700 MHz spectrum licenses from Aloha Partners. The purchase will cost the nation’s largest wireless carrier about $2.5 billion. The purchase will give AT&T licenses covering 196 million people in 281 markets, including 72 of the top 100, and all of the top 10, markets in the United States. It will add 12 MHz of spectrum to AT&T’s holdings.

For some time, newspapers have tried to either keep things the same or forcibly invent new delivery mechanisms and technologies for their product. Instead, the reverse is happening, and the iPod touch and iPhone, with the Internet in the user’s pocket, have created the moment in time when the legacy newspaper is irrelevant, according to a New York journalism professor. Professor Jeff Jarvis, who wrote a compelling essay on Monday for The Guardian, quoted Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, “When you have a Web browser in your pocket, a printed newspaper is redundant.”

Sony’s PlayStation 3 price shakeout spread to its home territory in Japan Tuesday with a price cut on its 20 GB and 60 GB PS3 models, the company announced. In addition, Sony Computer Entertainment Japan said it will make the latest 40 GB model available to Japanese gamers. The announcement comes less than a week after Sony Computer Entertainment Europe disclosed new pricing in Europe, the UK, Ireland, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia, and the new 40 GB model. Sony’s new DualShock 3 Wireless Controller will also make its bow in Japan this holiday season.

British regulators on Monday banned a toned-down version of the violent video game “Manhunt 2,” saying the changes didn’t go far enough to alter the game’s “bleakness and callousness of tone.” The game’s maker called the decision “a setback for video games.” In June, Take-Two Interactive suspended plans to distribute the game — because it was rejected by the Entertainment Software Rating Board in the United States and by regulators in Europe — but finally agreed, two months later, to release the revised version.

A big power company accused of spreading smog and acid rain across a dozen states agreed Tuesday to pay at least $4.6 billion to cut chemical emissions in what the government called the nation’s largest environmental settlement. The agreement with American Electric Power ends an eight-year legal battle over reducing smokestack pollution that drifted across Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, chewing away at mountain ranges, bays and national landmarks. AEP, based on Columbus, Ohio, maintains it never violated Clean Air Act rules to curb emissions.

Skype hardware maker Ipevo announced on Tuesday the U.S. launch of the Solo, a desktop Skype phone that makes phone calls over the Internet without being tethered to a computer. Ipevo officials hope the stand-alone device will catch the fancy of users who shy away from computers. The always-on phone, however, requires a broadband Internet connection. The Solo is embedded with Skype software so users can place phone calls to anywhere in the world from any available wired broadband connection.

IBM and Google disclosed on an initiative the two technology heavyweights hope will help computer science students and researchers learn more about and gain experience in what has come to be known as “cloud computing.” Ultimately, the goal is to create a new generation of software developers able to write software that will fully take advantage of the capabilities of parallel computing. Google is “excited to partner with IBM to provide resources which will better equip students and researchers to address today’s developing computational challenges,” said the company’s CEO Eric Schmidt.

The ability for a consumer to unlock a phone and use it on any wireless service provider network may get a serious shot in the arm if a California man and his class action lawsuit attorney have their way. Timothy Smith, represented by attorney Damian Fernandez, has filed a suit against Apple in Santa Clara County Superior Court. The catalyst for the lawsuit is Apple’s recent iPhone software update, which turned Smith’s iPhone into a so-called iBrick. AT&T is the exclusive carrier of the Apple iPhone.

At first blush, the recent Podcast and New Media Expo held in Ontario, Calif., might have looked a bit frivolous — there was a guy with bright blue hair, a woman in a burlesque getup posing for pictures, and someone in a pickle suit handing out promotional buttons — but doesn’t every trade show have its share of weirdness? Podcasting is anything but a joke to the more than 2,000 who turned out at the 2007 Podcast and New Media Expo. In fact, the show itself is no joke, either. It will move its venue to Las Vegas next year.