Alterian has acquired Techrigy for $5 million. Techrigy is a three year old company that develops social media marketing and analysis tools for PR professionals. Techrigy was started by Aaron Newman and Jay Mari. Techrigy had not raised any VC funding so its founders just made a lot of money.

Techrigy’s SM2 software helps PR firms monitor and track what people are saying about products, brands, and clients online.

Alterian is a UK based integrated marketing provider.

You can see more info at the company’s announcement blog post.

Matthew Wartman of Ontario, Canada recently bought a Nikon D90 12.3 megapixel camera. Recently he created a time-lapse video using his D90 camera of Niagara Falls. Combine that with the song The Winner Is by Mychael Danna & DeVotchKa from the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack and you have a solid video. This is hands-down the most gorgeous time-lapse video I have seen so far.

[via LikeCool]

First we saw “developers, developers, developers.”  Then we saw “advertising, advertising, advertising.”  Today at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Steve Ballmer decided to up the ante in the terms he uses to repeat in triples.

“We are going to keep the same old Microsoft approach – long-term, tenacious and partner-centric,” stated Ballmer. “Long-term, long-term, long-term.”  Ballmer added: ”We don’t go home. We just keep coming and coming and coming. Tenacious, tenacious, tenacious.”

R&D: At the press conference today, Ballmer was as fired up about the company he runs as he ever has been.  When questioned about falling behind in search and cloud computing, Ballmer said that the company is spending $9.5 billion in R&D every year.

Bing: “If ever there was evidence for that, it is the Bing itself,” stated Ballmer. “Man, oh, man, have we taken a lot of abuse. But, man, we have a little mojo. We will just keep going and going and going.”

Chrome OS: Ballmer was asked to give his opinion about the upcoming Google Chrome OS too.  “First of all, I will be respectful,” said Ballmer. “Who knows what this thing is. To me, the Chrome OS thing is highly interesting (in) that it won’t happen for a year and a half and they already announced an operating system.”  Ballmer added that he does not understand why Google has two separate operating systems- Chrome and Android.

The EU: To avoid further scrutiny from the European Commission, Microsoft said that they are planning to ship Windows without IE in Europe.  The EU is investigating Microsoft to determine whether they are violating antitrust laws.

I’m A PC: Ballmer said that the I’m A PC ad campaign is working and the company doesn’t plan to stop running the ads.

In a blog post that FailBlog.org wrote on July 8, 2009 that is featured in the screenshot above is a screenshot from the Guiness World Records Limited website.  The website unintentionally is encouraging someone to break the record for “Most Individuals Killed In A Terrorist Attack.”  The “Break This Record” button appears as a default for every single Guiness World Record.  Its Fail Blog’s job to go scour the Internet and every day society to find these types of “fails.”

Guiness World Records Limited did not take kindly to Failblog pointing out their “fail” so they sent the website a takedown notice.  ”Use of the GUINESS WORLD RECORDS trademark without permission constitutes trademark infringement,” stated the letter sent to Fail Blog.  Below is a witty response that Fail Blog made as a result of the takedown notice.

Since we at FAIL Blog(TM) don’t have a legal defense department, we have complied with your request to remove the trademarked term and logo from the original image. We have used the “naughty bits filter” on the image to secure your naughty, naughty, trademark assertions. However, we have posted your email so that our audience can see why we had to remove the name of the failer from the image. I hope that this is the outcome you have expected as now NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW THAT GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS LIMITED HAS FAILED.

Ouch!  Maybe this embarrasing Fail Blog response will discourage people from sending Fail Blog takedown notices in the future. Fail Blog is part of the I Can Has Cheezburger network.

There are about 4 people that run the BreakingNews account on Twitter.  The account has about 805,000 followers and is often first at reporting breaking news stories before professional news agencies such as CNN.   BreakingNews was started by Michael van Poppel.

Poppel is not even 20 years old yet.  When Poppel was 17, he gained possession of an Osama bin Laden video and sold it to Reuters.  Now he runs one of the hottest accounts on Twitter and is preparing to launch an iPhone application around the service with push notifications that will cost about $1.99.  After there will be a monthly $0.99 charge.

BNO’s team has members in the U.S., Ireland, Mexico, and The Netherlands that monitor news agencies closely to determine what stories are worth “tweeting” about.

BNO is paying fees to the Associated Press and other news agencies and is paying for development of the iPhone application.  Therefore the monthly charge would help keep the business afloat.  I think that paying BNO is worth it assuming that $0.99 is chump change for you.  I’d rather spend the $0.99 to have constant news updates every month instead of a can of Pepsi.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Shortly after Research In Motion announced 2,000 applications available in App World, the company announced that they are actively working on building a community for BlackBerry users in the form of a social network called MyBlackBerry.com.

The social network will be free and is a place for discussing applications and sharing tricks and tips.  The social network will be in a forum or wiki format instead of the typical Facebook or MySpace social network design.

MyBlackBerry.com will be designed to look a certain way based on the device you are looking at the website from.  If you log in from a BlackBerry Tour, you will more likely be guided towards information tailored to the Tour.

Personally I’m surprised that BlackBerry is not designing an actual social network format.  Using wikis and forums seem to be pretty played out in mainstream media.  The only forums that I’ve seen that still exist are very niche.

[via InformationWeek]

Microsoft Mobile Platform Services Product Management Senior Director Todd Brix announced at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans that the Windows Marketplace is on schedule for launching in 29 countries on July 27th.  As part of the launch Microsoft will be announcing some sort of contest around the time of launch.

The applications that will be available on the Windows Marketplace will be compatible on Windows Mobile 6.0 and Windows Mobile 6.1 devices.  There are about 30 million devices running those operating systems in the market today.

Some of the categories in the Windows Marketplace platform includes Books, Business Center, Communication, Reference, Entertainment, Games, and Lifestyle.

More details to follow on launch day on Pulse 2.

[via Windows Team Blog]

Carol Bartz sent out her early Friday message early this week because she will be having knee surgery soon.  During the surgery she will be away from the office for about two weeks.  In the e-mail, Bartz is basically asking Yahoo! employees to stop sitting around and do something.  That seems like a blow to those in the company that are working hard.

And something just seems off about a CEO that will be away for two weeks but is telling employees to work harder.  Anyways, below is the full e-mail that was sent from Bartz:

Surprise! You’re getting my Friday message a bit early this week – I’ll be out for two weeks or so starting today for knee replacement surgery.

I’ve got lots to cover before I go under the knife, so let’s dive right in:

we’re going to take a new approach to my weekly emails. You’ll now hear from me every few weeks, but in-between will hear more from my staff. I’m not the only person with interesting things to say, and it’s important that you hear from others that are running the business. And when I say my staff, I mean all my staff. Even Judy. I’m sure she can’t wait to tell you what it’s like working for me day-in and day-out.

One last thing before I go. I’ve noticed that since the reorg, people seem like they’re waiting for something. I’m not sure if it’s a sugar-low or what, but we need to stop waiting and get moving. Good things do not come to those who wait, they come to those who make things happen.

Would you be motivated with an e-mail like this?

[via Valleywag]