1. Ending weeks of offline misery after high-profile hack attacks, Sony's PlayStation Store is back online. Sony's thanking everyone for "patience" and notes the Store has been topped up with a lot of content (there's even a handy list of the new gaming goodness). But the "welcome back" free offers, given to PSN users as an apology for the extended outage, isn't yet live--it's in final testing. Presumably so Sony doesn't expose itself with yet another security hole.

2. YouTube now lets you license your uploaded video under Creative Commons. Essentially this means you can choose to give permission for other folk to reuse, rework, adapt and republish your efforts--with attribution to you as an original source. It's important because it lets YouTube become a bigger channel for newly produced content, which helps keep it relevant and growing. YouTube's even pre-arranged some 10,000 clips from C-SPAN, Al-Jazeera, and more.

3. In a bill which music industry patrons hope will set a trend, Tennessee has a new law that makes it illegal to use someone else's login credentials to listen to music or watch streaming TV content from systems like Netflix or Rhapsody. The Web Entertainment Theft legislation, which seems draconian because it's valid even if you have permission, is directed at hackers who resell passwords in bulk, but sponsors acknowledge it applies to everyone--particularly college-goers.

4. Apple just updated its OS X to defeat a persistent and tricky malware attack called Mac Defender that may be the highest profile "hack" of Apple's OS yet--although strictly it needs user interaction to "infect" a machine. But within hours the illegal coders behind the attack adjusted their system to circumvent Apple's new security. Apple's now got a system for daily security updates, but it's a sign malware attackers are targeting the oft-overlooked Mac.

5. Shaq--yup, that Shaq--just announced his retirement from the NBA via Twitter. Specifically O'Neal used Tout, a social video sharing system to make it a truly 21st century retirement posting. No letter, no newspaper leak, no press conference, just a simple, honest self-published social networking status update.

( Source: Fast Company )