Active Channel, the health and fitness channel that features everything from instructional workouts to sporting events, has just released an app bringing a large bank of videos to help you get fit — for free. If you’re still feeling sluggish from the holidays, now might be a good time to dust off those cross-trainers and fire up Active Channel’s new app. To get started users can check out the latest videos or search through various categories including weight loss, muscle building and abs & six packs....

British actorSimon Peggclaimshis Twitter accounthas been hacked and used to spread malware to his 1.2 million followers, reports security firmSophos. The tweet in question asked Pegg’s twitter followers to download a screensaver of his latest movie “Paul”. Thousands of his followers did and many even thanked him after installing it. The actor’s account appears to have even retweeted many of the ‘thank you’s’, we can only assume the hacker stuck around and retweeted them....

Well here’s some news that I didn’t expect to wake up to. It seems that new media advertising powerhouseFederated Mediahas just finished an acquisition of Boulder-basedLijit, according to an email that we have received from Lijit’s PR folks. The acquisition turns Federated Media firmly into one of the largest companies in online advertising. Lijit was founded in 2006, only a year after Federated Media itself. We’re being told that Boulder will still be home to Lijit, and that it will run independently of Federated Media itself, so this appears to be a customer and technology acquisition....

Get ready to buy some shares. In this year alone, the global ad revenue from social networks is expected to reach $5.54 billion,eMarketerreports. A large chunk of that revenue, though just under half at $2.74 billion, is predicted to come from the US market. Growth has been booming in the US, and by 2013, non-US revenues are expected to make up 51.9% of the total, making total ad revenue numbers close to $10 billion worldwide, with $4....

Instagram is in the crosshairs of Congress. The social app’s chief, Adam Mosseri, is expected to testify before a Senate panel in the week of December 6. Mosseri will appear as partof a series of hearings about online safety for kids,The New York Times reports. The hearing will be led bySenator Richard Blumenthal, who heads the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection. “After bombshell reports aboutInstagram’stoxic impacts, we want to hear straight from the company’s leadership why it uses powerful algorithms that push poisonous content to children driving them downrabbit holes to dark places, and what it will do to make its platform safer,” Blumenthal said in a statement....