Shazam started in 2002 as a mobile music discovery company. The company first gained an immense amount of popularity when launching an iPhone application. The Shazam application has been downloaded about 50 million times on the iPhone, Google Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, etc. Shazam has a database of over 8 million songs on their database which goes back to the 1950′s. Shazam is a private company that is based in London, England.

When you hear a song on the radio or on your laptop, you can Tag it using the Shazam application. Shazam will tell you the name of the song, give you a link to buy the music on Amazon or iTunes, and allow you to tweet what you are listening to.

The latest news with the company is that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has invested in them. Kleiner Perkins made the investment through their iFund financial arm which is intended for iPhone application developers. Shazam previously raised $12.3 million in funding from DN Capital and Acacia Capital.

Shazam is planning to launch a service that will connect with concert tickets for artists that have been tagged by the app. So far Shazam has been cash-flow positive.

Bloomberg LP has won the acquisition bid for BusinessWeek. Bloomberg is the the financial company built by current New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. The terms of the deal are not known, but it is rumored to be worth about $2-$5 million in cash and Bloomberg will be responsible for the liabilities of the news print company. These liabilities may include severance payments.

BusinessWeek employs about 400 people and several of these jobs will be cut. The parent company of BusinessWeek is McGraw-Hill. The news print business as a whole has been suffering as many readers have been turning to the Internet for real-time news. As part of the deal BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Steve Adler announced that benefits will be given to employees for about one year after the deal closes.

“The reporting and analytical resources of Bloomberg and BusinessWeek are unparalleled in their ability to deliver timely, distinctive and credible content to an influential and highly sought-after audience,” stated Bloomberg LP Chairman Peter Grauer. BusinessWeek is Bloomberg’s first major acquisition ever.

There are rumors starting to surface that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is not messing around anymore when shipping iPhone 3G S mobile devices. The new 3G S devices will have a bootrom that resists the 24kpwn exploit that is used by the Dev-Team for jailbreaking iPhone devices. MuscleNerd, a member of the DevTeam said that the bootrom update which is known as iBoot-359.3.2 would make jailbreaking new iPhones “impossible” for now.

Google Android is spreading at a viral pace on mobile phones and now its hitting a new market, netbooks. Acer has been able to port the operating system in a new netbook that they have put together called the AOD250-1613. The AOD250-1613 has a dual boot Windows XP/Android operating system and 10.1″ screen. The cost of the netbook is $349.99. Other features include a 1.66GHz Intel N280 processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 6-cell battery and a 9 hour runtime charge. Not bad for basic computing needs.

T-Mobile announced last night that they may have a chance to retrieve data that was lost on Sidekick devices. The data loss was originally caused by a server failure by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) subsidiary Danger Inc. “Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible,” stated a report by T-Mobile.

For those of you whose data is permanently lost, there will be a $100 customer appreciation card towards T-Mobile products or services. The customers that have lost data will be notified in the next 14 days whether that can be any retrieval. T-Mobile and Danger worked diligently throughout the work-day yesterday to retrieve the data.

During the Sidekick’s instability period, T-Mobile halted the sales of the device. While Danger and T-Mobile worked on restoring the servers, Sidekick users were encouraged not to take out the battery from the device or reset it.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced that Arthur Levinson is leaving their Board of Directors. Levinson is a Corporate Director at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and is a former Chairman and CEO of Genentech. I believe it is safe to say that Levinson’s departure has something to do with the FTC’s investigation of Google and Apple. Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt stepped down from the Apple Board of Directors this past August.

Levinson’s departure from Google is effective immediately which ends his 5.5 year tenure on the Board. Levinson will continue to serve on the Apple Board of Directors where he has worked for the last 9 years.

The FTC said that they were prepared to sue Google and Apple if they did not take care of their potential conflicts of interest. “Google, Apple, and Mr. Levinson should be commended for recognizing that overlapping board members between competing companies raise serious antitrust issues and for their willingness to resolve our concerns without the need for litigation,” stated FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz in an interview.

Music Intelligence Solutions is a company that believes that their software has what it takes to predict the next music hit. The Hot Song Science software listens to a song and gives it a rating on a 0-10 scale. The rating is based on an algorithm that listens to the rhythm, chord progression, lyrics, and length.

“[It's] a series of algorithms that we use to look at what’s the potential of a song to be sticky with a listener,” stated David Meredith, CEO of Music Intelligence in an interview with NPR. “To have those patterns in the music that would correspond with what human brain waves would find pleasing.”

Music Intelligence launched a website that complements the software called Uplaya this past summer too. On the website, the first two songs can be uploaded and analyzed for free. After that it costs $90 for 6 months.

Some artists believe it is a good way to get direct feedback on your music which is usually difficult to get from friends and family. Others feel like that computers should not be used when creatively coming up with a song. In my opinion: Hit Song Science should not be the only factor for deciding whether an artist should release a song or not. However I would embrace the software just as I would any other potential customer of your music.

Burst Media is an advertising network that acts as a broker for publishing websites. Pulse2 worked with Burst Media in the past, but eventually switched over to our partners such as Tribal Fusion and Kontera. Burst bought out Giant Realm for $2.1 million in cash and stock. This is a blow but not a complete loss to Giant Realm’s investors which put in about $9 million. Some of Giant Realm’s investors include Comcast, SoftBank Capital, The William Morris Agency, and the Edison Venture Fund.

Giant Realm focused on men’s interest websites with a focus on games and TV. It was intended to be a competitor of Glam Media, but it never took off as well as planned. The company had even hired a direct sales force in New York. The company will continue to operate as it was before under the Burst name.

“In a short period of time, Giant Realm has demonstrated its ability to succeed in building a top-notch entertainment network targeting the highly coveted male audience,” stated Burst Media CEO Jarvis Coffin in a press release. “This acquisition represents a tremendous opportunity for us to support vertical content providers and present advertisers with an effective platform for reaching their well-qualified, targeted audiences.”