Enabling cash-strapped consumers to Tweet away without the worry of long-term contracts, Sprint Nextel Corp. has agreed to acquire Virgin Mobile USA Inc. for about $483 million. Sprint will keep the Virgin Mobile name, while its chief executive, Dan Schulman, will continue to run the pre-paid business. The wireless company has struggled to keep its more lucrative contract subscribers, while hedging its bets with its Boost Mobile unit, which provides a cheaper service without contracts. Boost's $50 all-inclusive flat-rate plan launched early this year was reported very successful. Boost President Matt Carter will report …

B&N execs must have just finished Chris Anderson's Free: Offering Web surfers an urban (or suburban) oasis, Barnes & Noble bookstores nationwide plan to begin offering free Wi-Fi access. Since 2005, Barnes & Noble has offered AT&T access on a subscription-basis. On Tuesday, the two companies announced that AT&T Wi-Fi has gone complimentary. Users with laptops, Wi-Fi equipped smart-phones and other wireless devices can now surf the Web in stores without having to set up an account or pay. As a free service, Barnes & Noble is in a better position to market it burgeoning e-book library. …

Yawn. That's NPR and Daily Beast correspondent Kim Masterson's take on Monday's news that Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, is leaving to form a new production startup in partnership with Barry Diller's IAC. Listing a string of expensive flops at NBC -- My Own Worst Enemy, Kath & Kim -- the Daily Beast notes, "For some time now, he has been perceived as a short-timer," before going on to compare Silverman to the quintessential company man Jeff Gaspin, who has just been promoted to chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment. Former colleagues describe …

Google has partnered with Visible World, a New York-based technology company that uses software to create multiple versions of a given ad. Google will merge the software with its Google TV Ads, an automated auction-based system for buying TV ads by choosing which shows fit with a particular product or service. This combination enables advertisers to get the most from their existing creative, while providing differentiation based on program, time and context to drive and measure audience response. For the first time, advertisers will be able to automate multiple creative messages featuring a variety …

It takes a pretty big guy to admit when he's wrong. Last fall, Gawker Media Chief Nick Denton predicted a decline of up to 40% in advertising revenue. Now, he says he was wrong. At least when it comes to his company, Gawker Media. "The plunge has already been pretty terrifying for a range of companies from Yahoo and IAC to the newspapers," says Denton. "But I was wrong in one respect: a few premium internet brands, Gawker's among them, have withstood the advertising apocalypse." Call him self serving if you must (and you really must), but …

Part of a larger digital expansion, NPR is set to relaunch its Web site this week. Astonishingly, however -- in the video-obsessed world we live in -- the site will emphasize written reporting over video, or even audio. Under the new tagline "Always On," the expansion will include also several mobile applications set to launch later this summer, and is geared to raise NPR's journalism and journalistic output, and to make public radio more widely available. "We are a news content organization, not just a radio organization," Vivian Schiller, NPR's president and chief executive, tells The Times. …

Friendster is for sale. The pioneering, yet long stagnated social network is presently looking for a buyer, and has hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to find an interested party, TechCrunch reports. According to documents obtained by TechCrunch, Morgan Stanley is eyeing Asia for a possible suitor -- which makes sense, the industry blog notes, as nearly its entire user base is located in the Asian-Pacific region. In a fact sheet being sent to multiple potentially interested buyers, Friendster claims over 100 million registered users globally, are is expecting "robust" user growth over the next few years. Friendster …