Samsung announced earlier this week that they are launching the Intreprid on Sprint. The Intrepid has a QWERTY keyboard. The Intrepid uses the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system and has a customizable Today screen. The Intrepid has a 2.5-inch touchscreen display and a 3.2 megapixel camera. Other features include Bluetooth, social networking capabilities, WiFi and a 32GB microSD card expansion slot. The Intrepid will also have Sprint services Sprint NFL Mobile and Music Store applications built into the phone. The Intrepid will sell for $149.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and 2 year contract.

TA Associates is a private equity firm that has offices in Boston, Menlo Park, Mumbai and London. The company manages about $16 billion in capital. Recently the company bought 25% ownership in AVG Technologies, the company behind one of the most useful anti-virus software programs in the world. The 25% ownership cost TA $200 million.

The equity was purchased from AVG shareholders Enterprise Investors, Benson Oak Capital, and Intel Capital. AVG was founded in 1991 and has about 80 million users across 167 countries. In 2008, AVG had revenues of about $140 million. The investment in AVG will be used to fund expansion globally and add-on deals.

AVG and Yahoo! already have some sort of partnership where Yahoo.com is the default search for the AVG toolbar. Back in 2005, Intel and Enterprise invested $52 million in AVG whe n the company had about 25 million users.

Earlier today I wrote about one video company buying another in order to compete further with YouTube. To be honest, I had never heard of Motionbox or Viddyou, but one YouTube competitor I have heard of is DailyMotion. DailyMotion has just raised $22.1 million giving them a total of $65.6 million.

DailyMotion is based in France and specializes on both independent films along with user-generated movies. DailyMotion CEO Cedric Tornay said that the funding will be used to strengthen the balane sheet and fund the growth of the company. DailyMotion’s revenue is expected to grow about 50% this year and they are profitable.

That is Impressive for a website that spends tons of money on bandwidth and storage. YouTube reportedly costs Google $2 million per day to keep alive.

The investors in this round of funding includes Atlas Venture, AGF Private Equity, Advent Venture Partners, and Partech International.

Atari is designing a new game based on the TV show Project Runway for the Nintendo Wii. The game is expected to be released next year. Players will design fashion, outfit models, and use the Wii Balance Board controller for doing the catwalk. Project Runway is currently in its 6th season on the Lifetime channel. The show is hosted by Heidi Klum (pictured below).

Amie Street is a music website made for indie artists. The company has recently raised $3.9 million in Series B funding, led by Deep Fork Capital. This investment includes the conversion of a bridge note from Deep Fork. According to TechCrunch, three other undisclosed venture capital firms were involved in this round of funding.

This new round of funding will be used for new product development said CEO Joshua Boltuch. The company also recently made a licensing deal with Sony Music. There are over 1.5 million songs available for download on Amie Street as of right now. Amie Street’s first round of funding was provided by Amazon.com.

Amie Street initially has songs available for free and then the price increases in price when more people download them. About a year ago Amie Street acquired a music search engine called Songza.

Japanese-based robotics and instruments company Yamaha has invented a new singing robot called the HRP-4C. The HRP-4C looks very life-like and has a pleasant voice. The HRP-4C uses the Yamaha Vocaloid voice synthesis software. It is highly unlikely that this pop star will marry Kevin Federline and shave her head out of craziness.

Motionbox is a website that competes with YouTube and we all know how hard it must be to compete with the Google-owned video sharing website these days. In order to further compete with YouTube, Motionbox acquired Viddyou.

Motionbox has about $17.2 million in funding, $6 million of which was raised earlier this year. Motionbox was recommended by AOL after they shut down their own Video Uploads service which gave the service a major boost.

Viddyou users will be able to migrate their profile and videos over to Motionbox. When Viddyou launched in 2007, they branded themselves as a vlogging website. Ever since then Viddyou became a YouTube-like video sharing website.

Fresco Microchip is a Markham, Ontario based company that makes semiconductors for processing chips made for television sets. Fresco has just raised $10 million in venture capital funding from Celtic House Venture Partners and Ventures West.

“Fresco’s success is proof that the lowest cost appropriate solution always wins in the consumer electronics industry,” stated Fresco Microship CEO and President Lance Greggain. “We are pleased with the confidence and commitment to Fresco demonstrated by this latest investment from Canada’s leading venture capital firms.”

This is Fresco’s third major round of funding. The company raised $14.7 million in July 2005 and $14 million in January 2008.