100. Tamagotchi – link

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Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) decided to take Jonathan Mann’s Bing jingle and teach it to a bunch of middle school students in Pennsylvania. Mann won a $500 content that Microsoft held for creating a song about Bing. TechCrunch’s MG Siegler criticized the song so Mann retaliated by making a song about the editor.

Mann sent the below video to TechCrunch with the e-mail message:

I literally cried a little bit when I saw this video. On the one hand I’m happy I was able to provide some kids with an excuse not to do school work for a few hours. On the other hand, not sure how I feel about these kids being indoctrinated into the cult of, well, whatever. It’s kinda creepy. But on the other-other hand, the kids do look damn happy. So…oh well?

Hopefully the students at Keith Valley Middle School get some sort of compensation for synchronized singing and dancing Microsoft services. Especially because the school cheerleading instructor spent about 12 days teaching 6th graders the dance.

Zazzle is an online retail company where users can customize apparel, mugs, postage, cards, etc. Zazzle is now being sued by Summit Entertainment, the company behind the licensing rights for the Twilight series. A lot of tweens have used Zazzle to make Twilight gear and this clearly did not make Summit happy whatsoever. This is why Summit is suing Zazzle.

While Zazzle themselves aren’t the ones that decide the design, they still are the ones that customize the goods. Summit claimed trademark violation and defamation.

In November 2008 Zazzle was sent a cease-and-desist letter, but the company continued to sell the items. Summit said that this is considered “willful” infringement. Summit is seeking punitive damages, injunction, and accounting damages.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has been having some success with Google Voice. The service has about 1.42 million users and 570,000 of them use it every single day. The numbers were revealed in an FCC document filed by Google and discovered by BusinessWeek.

The same document revealed Google’s plans to expand the Voice service abroad. Google Voice allows users to have a universal number that forwards to a person’s mobile phone, work phone, or home phone. Google Voice was developed through the acquisition of GrandCentral. Google supposedly payed close to $50 million for GrandCentral in July 2007.

OneRecovery is an addiction recovery social network that has raised $1.49 million in funding. The funding round was discovered in an SEC filing by SoCalTech. The $1.49 million round of funding was part of a $2.5 million fund-raising round. OneRecovery is led by David Metzler. Metzler is a former VC with Mission Ventures and also previously worked as an investment banker at CIBC World Markets. Metzler himself almost died from drugs and alcohol which is the reason why he started OneRecovery.

“We congratulate Enjoyor on its IPO and support the launch of the Growth Enterprise Market,” stated Intel Capital President and EVP Arvind Sodhani. “We see the emergence of a liquid and thriving domestic Chinese equity market such as GEM as critical and essential for growth and emergence of successful innovative technology companies in our portfolio like Enjoyor.”

Yesterday Enjoyor Technology Group went public on the China Growth Enterprise Market. Intel Capital’s investment was made about 8 months ago. Intel signed a 3 year business collaboration deal as part of the investment. Enjoyor is helping Intel push their Atom processors in the areas of digital health-care in China too.

Intel Capital put in about $7.5 billion in companies since 1991. The $7.5 billion were spread across about 1,000 companies in about 45 countries. Of those 1,000 companies, 168 have gone public and 212 have been acquired or merged.

Tesla Motors seems to be getting their way lately. A lawsuit has been dropped. The company made a profit this past July. The U.S. Department of Energy and Daimler both invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the company. On top of all this luck, the state of California decided to give Tesla a $28.8 million tax break.

The tax break was made by the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority. The break will save Tesla taxes on $320 million worth of equipment according to VentureBeat.

Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) and The University of Michigan are now working together on a project that involves bringing cloud systems to cars. The service would be an add-on to Microsoft and Ford’s partnership on the Sync system. Sync is an in-car communications and entertainment system. Sync allows you to command your car to perform certain tasks using your voice.

The project between The U of M and Ford has the code-name American Journey 2.0. This will give U of M students the opportunity to work with a development operating system that could possibly benefit future Ford customers. “Already with Sync we have proven that we can access information in the cloud,” stated Ford head of infotronics Venkatesh Prasad. The infotronics division at Ford is part of the Research & Advanced Engineering department. “This research gives us the opportunity to harness the power of student innovation to explore beyond those capabilities and develop what’s next. We want the students to get creative and develop ways to responsibly connect the car to communicate and share with the outside world.”

“What excites me about this project is that it gives our students the opportunity to unleash their creativity using cutting-edge technologies that connect the vehicle and the cloud,” added U of M associate professor Dr. Jason Flinn.

American Journey 2.0 will be divided into two phases. The first phase involves testing and attempting to break the system by running several applications. During the second phase, an in-vehicle connectivity platform will be built.

After the platform is done, a competition will be held. The judges of the competition include representatives from Microsoft, Ford, the U of M, Maker Faire, and several others. The winning application developers will install their software in a Ford Fiesta at the Maker Faire DIY convention.

The Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone is now available in China through the China Unicom telecommunications company. The problem with the iPhone in China is that there isn’t any built in WiFi. Apple did this in order to comply with a government regulation. In China the iPhone costs between 4,999 yuan ($730) to 6,999 yuan ($1,025).

Given the high price in China, it seems unlikely that the phone will be as big of a hit there as it was in America. That seems unfortunate considering that the iPhone is manufactured in Shenzhen. WiFi was banned by the Chinese government in order to replace it with WAPI technology. WAPI stands for WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure. WAPI was rejected by the ISO and was one of the reasons for a U.S. and China Trade dispute.

“We are talking with Apple and expect the problem to be solved by the end of this year,” stated Unicom spokesman Yi Difei. Do you think that this will hinder people in China from buying the device?

Greg Stroke entered his credit card into Xbox Live so that he does not have to enter it every time into system. One morning Stroke and his girlfriend woke up the next day and found a chewed up controller. It turns out that his dog chewed up the controller to the point that 5,000 Xbox points were purchased for $62.50. It turns out that Microsoft made it so easy to buy games that even a dog could do it. “I just wish they’d make it a little harder to purchase points,” said Stroke.

Twitter has launched a Lists feature for all users. This feature was available on TweetDeck for quite a bit of time but Twitter has rolled it into their own service. Twitter user Nick Kallen confirmed the news in a tweet. The service was only available to a set number of users but expanded to everyone today.

Not only can you create your own list, but you can also find out what lists you are on for different users. List descriptions will be added in the next few weeks according to TechCrunch.

This is good news for those who update Twitter from the web and log in regularly. Personally I stick to using TweetDeck for updating Twitter so I’m not sure how much I’ll use the Lists feature. But it is still an awesome feature to have nonetheless.

On October 26, 2009 Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) decided to shut down GeoCities. This took place about 10 years after Yahoo! bought GeoCities for $4.7 billion. GeoCities had gone public about one year before and was profitable. GeoCities had a bit of sentimental value for everyone that created a website in the 1990’s. I remember the first time I designed a website, I made it through GeoCities. It was around 1998 and it was South Park fan page when I was in 10th grade. Anyway GeoCities is no longer with us… or is it?

GeoCities has returned in the form of Reocities. A man named Jacques decided to download the content and websites. Then he republished the content on Reocities. About 600,000 GeoCities websites were rescued before shutting down and put on ReoCities. “On the 20th of October 2009, about a week before GeoCities was really going to close, someone else posted a link, pointing to some interesting pages. These were on an old GeoCities account, about to be erased. It wasn’t what I would call a masterpiece, and I didn’t agree with all of it, but it seemed like it was worth keeping,” wrote Jacques in a detailed post about how he pulled off the endeavor.

It is pretty fun to check out the top level “neighborhoods” listed on ReoCities and selecting random numbers. This way you can check out a piece of Internet history.

Bling Nation has just raised a $20 million Series B round of funding from Balderton Capital. The company develops payment systems for mobile phones. Since Bling Nation launched in 2007, the company has raised a total of $33 million in total funding. Bling Nation partners specifically with local banks for offering secure payment transactions.

Bank customers put a chip on their mobile phone that allows them to make a payment directly from their checking account to merchants or stores. Local merchants are also given card machines that scan the chips on the mobile devices. Bling Nation is being tested heavily in Colorado Springs and Woodland Park in Colorado. Bling makes revenue by taking a commission for each transaction. Merchants end up paying less in fees to Bling Nation than credit card purchases making it an appealing transaction option.

Bling Nation was founded by Meyer Malka ad Wenceslao Casares. In the last round of funding, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Meck and Camp Ventures participated. Bling Nation is based in Palo Alto, California.

TBWA is the company behind a bus billboard that snows when being sent a text message. TBWA was also the company behind the Taco Bell chihuahua. One of TBWA’s biggest clients is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), whose account was managed by Lee Clow.

Clow will be stepping down today from day-to-day activities but he definitely left his mark with Apple as he leaves the company. Clow was behind the concepts for the Apple “1984″ commercial that aired during the Super Bowl in January 1984, the Think Different campaign in 1997, the silhouette iPod dancers, and the recent Mac vs. PC ads. Duncan Milner will be filling in for Clow as he is an executive creative director at Apple and previously worked for TBWA.

However Clow will remain on board at TBWA as the chief creative officer of the Media Arts Lab. Media Arts Lab was created in 2006 specifically to serve Apple as an agency that creates culture rather than just commercials.

Back in March Facebook filed a lawsuit against Sanford “Spamford” Wallace, Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw over spam messages being sent on their social network. The claim was made under the CAN-SPAM Act which bans false and misleading marketing e-mails. The U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California ruled in favor of Facebook.

Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled that Wallace “willfully violated” a restraining order and a preliminary injunction that was issued in the case. “The record demonstrates that Wallace willfully violated the statutes in question with blatant disregard for the rights of Facebook and the thousands of Facebook users whose accounts were compromised by his conduct,” stated Fogel. The statement also ruled that Wallace no longer has the right to create a Facebook account.

Facebook’s lead counsel said that the social network does not expect to receive a majority of the reward, but the verdict of the case may serve as a deterrent for others who plan to spam the social network.

Back in May Wallace had to pay $234 million in a trial against MySpace. Wallace failed to turn over documents or show up in court on several counts when that case was taking place. Two years before that, Wallace had to pay $4 million as part of a lawsuit by the FTC and several other companies such as AOL. Last year Facebook was awarded $873 million from a Canadian man that was spamming the social network too.