Peek is an e-mail only handheld that is trying to appeal to small businesses.  Now they are selling a 5 pack for $149.95.  Anyone that buys this device has to pay a $19.95 monthly fee.  The deal is going to expire on April 3.

[via Engadget]

The Golf Club Head Mouse will make you really want to get out of the office this summer and hit the courses.  This mouse was designed ergonomically and works with PS2 ports (wow, not USB?).  It makes a good gift for your friends or family that love playing golf.  The regular price was $25, now its $19.95.

Did I forget to mention, it comes with a golf ball mouse pad?

Douglas Bowman joined Google when it was about 7 years old, 3 years ago.  He worked at Google as a designer and was given the chance to assemble a team of Visual Designers.  Bowman said that he will be stepping down earlier this week and will announce what he plans to do in the future in the next part of his blog post.

Bowman was Google’s first visual designer and the problem was that none of the designers in the company had high positions in the company.

“When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions,” wrote Bowman.

Bowman recently debated over whether a border should be 3, 4, or 5 pixels wide and had to prove his case.  Bowman said he couldn’t operate in an environment where minuscule design decisions had to be constantly justified when there are many other exciting design problems out there to take on.

[via StopDesign]

Late last month, I wrote about how Microsoft was taking TomTom to court over an in-car navigation patent violation.  Obviously TomTom wasn’t too happy about having to deal with this litigation, but now they have decided to countersue Microsoft over patent violations as well.  TomTom claims that Microsoft is infringing on three of their in-car navigation patents.

The three patents that TomTom is claiming that Microsoft is infringing upon are “Generating a Maneuver at the Intersection Through A Turn Lane” (5,902,350), “Route Generation in a Vehicle Navigation System” (5,938,720), and “Quick Selection of Destinations in an Automobile Navigation System” (6,660,994).

Microsoft sued TomTom last month over patents that cover the Microsoft FAT32 filesystem.  Since TomTom uses Linux, this is believed to be the first time that Microsoft has targetted a Linux-based system with patent violation litigation.  Microsoft could use the File Allocation Table (FAT) patents to do some serious damage to Linux if they chose to.

Analysts believe that the lawsuits will likely cancel each other out and Microsoft and TomTom both won’t be affected.  A settlement has to take place first.

[via Ars]

The Motorola Stature i9 was made available for Boost Mobile users at the beginning of February, but now you Sprint-Nextel peeps can pick up and use this phone.  The i9 has Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) power and costs $199.99 after rebate.  Other features include 3.1 megapixel camera, GPS, Bluetooth, and a microSD memory slot.

[via EngadgetMobile]

“Playing with the yet-to-be-released new Digg search. Holy crap…Sammy kicked ass on this one. Filled with awesomeness,” stated Digg CEO Jay Adelson.  Adelson clearly is indicating that a new search engine is on the way.

Currently the Digg search engine filters out Digg story by Title, Description, URL, All Stories, Front Page Stories, Upcoming Stories, Best Match First, Newest First, Oldest First, and Sorts By Most Diggs.  Buried stories can be included or filtered out.

[via Adelson's Twitter]

TheFunded.com allows entrepreneurs to express their opinions and views of venture capitalists and venture capital companies.  TheFunded recently unleashed a list of venture capital firms that were banned from the leaderboards.

The top 13 suspiscious reviews were
1. Alsop Louie Partners,
2. Bay Partners,
3. Benchmark Capital,
4. Clearstore Venture Partners,
5. DFJ Mercury,
6. Flybridge Capital Partners,
7. GrandBanks Capital,
8. Greenhill SAVP,
9. Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers,
10. Milestone Venture Partners,
11. Partech International,
12. US Venture Partners (USVP),
13. VantagePoint Venture Partners

Adeo Ressi, founder of TheFunded said that the reasons for VCs to be added to the list is because of threatening TheFunded, pressuring CEOs to write positive reviews about their VC companies, and failing to make newer investments.

Companies on TheFunded’s blacklist will remain in the database but will be flagged.  Firsts that are on the list for not investing recently can submit proof of investment within the last 4 weeks.

[via VentureBeat]

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) has acquired Pure Digital Technologies Inc. for $590 million in stock.  Pure Digital is a company that makes digital cameras and video camcorders.  In addition to paying $590 million, Cisco will pay about $15 million in equity incentives to keep Pure Digital workers on board.

Pure Digital builds the Flip Video camcorder for $150-$230.  The Flip Video can record 60 minutes of video and can be plugged into USB drives.  These videos can be uploaded to YouTube.

Pure Digital started about 8 years ago and was powered by VC capital by Sequoia and Benchmark Capital.