As you know, Microsoft is opening up stores in Arizona and California. The Microsoft store employees must be able to carry boxes that weigh up to 75 lbs. too. The Microsoft stores will be located strategically near Apple stores too. But Microsoft stores will have giant wall-sized screens. Microsoft stores will have “Answer Bars” too which is the equivalent of Apple’s Genius Bars.

Supposedly Microsoft is hiring away some top Apple Store managers and offering them significant raises. Microsoft is even telling these managers to bring their top sales people with them. Let the Apple-Microsoft retail wars begin.

More details to come as they emerge.

Thoora is a new service that is currently in private beta that aims to one up Google News and Techmeme. The service will take popular news articles shared on Twitter, blogs, and traditional media, and then arranges it in a tag cloud format. Instead of paying attention to the authority that a blog or news source has, it will focus on how unique the content is.

Thoora will find the links from news that had just been broken, assuming it is interesting and then feature those posts. Then users can find out how many people are linking to it. The categories will be broken down by Business, Lifestyle, Entertainment, etc.

The company was founded in March 2008 and is based in Toronto, Canada. Thoora has $4.1 million Canadian in funding from Rogers Corporation. The company is run by Mike Lee, Chul Lee, and Nyla Ahmad. Thoora indexes content from 4,500 mainstream media companies and 80 million blogs. Thoora demonstrated their product at the TechCrunch50 conference.

Jim Schinella is currently the SVP for Corporate Sponsorships at Yahoo! Schinella plans to remain at the company for the rest of the year but will be stepping down after. Schinella works out of the Yahoo! New York office and has worked on several major partnerships such as a Verizon deal. Schinella joined Yahoo! in 2003, left in 2005 after becoming Global VP of Business Development, and then returned in 2007. The announcement was made internally according to AllThingsD.

Lissn is a service that launched at the TechCrunch50 conference. Lissn is basically a fancy chat room. Lissn is a service that starts with someone starting a conversation. Anyone can join the conversation thread and the administrator can select whether contributors can publish their comments. On the homepage is the most popular Lissn conversations. Conversations are automatically converted to your language of preference using Google Translate APIs.

Contextual advertising appears as conversations are made. For example, if you are talking about a specific book, an ad will show where to buy the book on Amazon.com. This is how Lissn would make money. You can find out what conversations are taking place near you using the IP address detection.

Lissn launched this month and was founded by Myke Armstrong.

The University of Texas system has added Second Life to the curriculum across all 16 of their campuses. The U of T is experimenting with using Second Life to find out how to lower the cost of undergraduate interactions between faculty and students. The initiative was funded by The Transforming Undergraduate Education Program at the U of T.

Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life made the announcement on their blog. The University of Texas has 9 university campuses and several medical and health campuses. The University will collect data on how Second Life is used by students and faculty.

The last time I recall Second Life being used by a college is when Bryant & Stratton hosted their commencement ceremony on the virtual world.

Insttant is a company that is focusing on improving Twitter’s search engine by one-upping their features. Twitter’s search engine just has a text field for finding tags and a “top trends” listing. Insttant has created a way to monitor real-time news which can be leveraged by brands for advertising purposes.

When searching for content being tweeted about on Insttant, the service will display top headlines that are related to the keyword. Insttant started in March 2009. The company was a finalist at the TechCrunch50 conference. The company is run by Joe Langevin, Travis Person, and Theresa Langevin.

Vodafone and Warner Music Group has signed a deal that will allow the telecommunications company to sell music published by the major label. By signing Warner Music Group, Vodafone has gained the rights to sell music published by the four major music labels in the world. The four major companies include Universal Music Group, Sony Music, EMI Group, and Warner Music.

Warner Music Group artists include James Blunt, Seal, Fleetwood Mac, Shinedown, and Eric Clapton. The music provided by Warner Music Group will be DRM-free too. This means that the music bought between the Vodafone-Warner Music partnership can be copied to iPods too.

“The response to the DRM-free offering in all the markets where it has launched has been incredibly enthusiastic,” stated Vodafone Internet Services Director Pieter Knookin an interview with Reuters. “Our customers love … the flexibility that DRM-free on mobile gives them.”

Hark! is a browser plug-in that focuses on sharing content online using a web-based toolbar. Hark! is in real-time by having an integrated chat-room and instant messaging system that allows simultaneously connected users to share content.

The founders of Hark! acknowledged that there are plenty of link sharing services, but when it comes to sharing links from websites, there isn’t a solid way to pull it off. Twitter and e-mail is supposedly a hassle.

When you find content that is interesting, you can “flare” it on the Hark! plugin. This sends out a small notice to your Hark! friends that you found something noteworthy.

Chat software Meebo.com has already implemented similar technology. The Meebo web-based toolbar allows anyone using the Meebo service to share content in real-time too. Meebo also connects to multiple IM networks whereas convincing users to sign up for Hark! will be challenging. Hark! launched at the TechCrunch50 conference.