Neil Patrick Harris (NPH) has joined Twitter [Twitter profile link]. Some of you know him as Doogie Howser M.D. and some of you know him as the car thief in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. NPH can also be spotted as Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother and as the main character on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, an Internet musical.

On NPH’s first day on Twitter, he has gained over 67,000 followers. The number of people that are following him on Twitter is skyrocketing. Currently NPH is following Mr. Teller of Penn and Teller, Nathan Fillon, Felicia Day, Dodd Vickers, and Chris Hardwick.

Just like any new Twitter user, he seems to be struggling with the 140 character limit. His last tweet from two hours ago said “Prfkt. Thx 4 L th advyc evry1. This s a way ezr way 2 cmuNik8. Un42n8ly, itz takn me 3 hrz 2 ryt, but itz much pre4d 2 gtn cut off lyk i u.” Give him a follow if you haven’t done so yet.

Harold “Dr. Andy” Hildebrand is credited for inventing auto-tune. Auto-tune is an audio plugin that is used to help correct the off-pitch vocals of a singer. Hildebrand used sound waves for locating oil reserves. Hildebrand discovered that these same sound waves can be used for music too.

One of the first users of vocal effects for auto-tune in entertainment was Cher’s producers. The song used was “Believe” by Cher. In 2005, T-Pain began using auto-tune for vocals in every single song he made. Soon many other artists started using auto-tune. Auto-tune became so overused that many parodies were made.

In the video above, there is an auto-tune parody added to a baby crying, a cat meowing, and Winston Churchill. Many unmusical things on the Internet had been given auto-tune. The report was put together by RocketBoom.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) founder Paul Allen has been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma which is a cancer of the white blood cells. This is 26 years after Allen fought Hodgkin’s disease which is another type of white blood cell cancer.

Jody Allen, Paul’s sister, sent an e-mail to employees at private asset management company Vulcan Inc. She is the CEO of the company and it was founded by Paul Allen. Below is the e-mail that was sent out by Jody:

To employees of Vulcan and affiliates:

I want to let you know that Paul was recently diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

He received the diagnosis early this month and has begun chemotherapy. Doctors say he has diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a relatively common form of lymphoma.

This is tough news for Paul and the family. But for those who know Paul’s story, you know he beat Hodgkin’s a little more than 25 years ago and he is optimistic he can beat this, too.

Paul is feeling OK and remains upbeat. He continues to work and he has no plans to change his role at Vulcan. His health comes first, though, and we’ll be sure that nothing intrudes on that.

We would ask you to respect Paul’s privacy and not discuss this outside of the office.

If you have any questions, please ask your EC member.

Thank you in advance for what I know will be all your good thoughts for Paul.

Jody

Bill Gates also issued a statement regarding Allen’s diagnosis:
“Melinda and I have Paul and his family in our thoughts and prayers. Paul is among my closest friends, and I know to him be a strong and resilient individual.”

AT&T has added the BlackBerry Curve 8520 to their line of smartphones just in time for the holiday season. The phone will be selling for $99.99 after a $100 mail in rebate in the next few days. The mail-in rebate is not a check, but it acts as a $100 AT&T promotion card. The specs of the 8520 include 512 MHz processor, 256MB flash memory, and a 2 megapixel camera.

Millenial Media is a mobile ad network that competes with AdMob. AdMob was recently acquired by Google for $750 million in stock. Millenial Media is based in Baltimore, Maryland and raised $16 million in Series C for New Enterprise Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, and Charles River Ventures.

Millenial will use the funding to help push the company past profitability, grow overseas, hire additional talent, and build more technology. Given that Google already spent a ton of money on a mobile ad network it seems uncertain what Millenial’s exit strategy will be.

Canon will be buying Océ, the biggest European printer company for $1.09 billion according to an announcement that the two companies made on Monday. Canon will be buying the company based on $12.88 per share. This is a 70% premium than Océ’s stock price on Friday.

“The printing industry currently is in a period of consolidation,” stated the two companies, “driven by the undeniable fact that scale is increasingly important, especially in R&D and manufacturing.”

New Moon (aka The Twilight Saga: New Moon or Twilight 2) is a film that will be released this Friday as a romantic fantasy film. Summit Entertainment is the production company behind the movie. New Moon will be starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner. The budget of the movie is about $50-$70 million, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they surpass that number in revenues in the opening weekend.

Just out of curiosity I wanted to find out how well the trailer was doing on YouTube and I was astonished. I searched for New Moon trailer on YouTube and sorted the results by View Count. Then I added up all views that are related to New Moon whether it is a trailer or a fan made video. The total in the first two pages were over 100 million views.

That is a massive fan base for the movie. Considering that this count is the first two pages of YouTube, I can’t even imagine the total count of all New Moon videos from other sources too.

Last month Shazam was discovered to be raising a new round of funding from the iFund. And since then Shazam announced a new paid application that is available for download.

The concept behind Shazam is covered by a patent owned by Digimarc according to Bruce Davis, Chairman and CEO of Digimarc.

Digimarc has had patents since 1995 that relate to technology where a device can identify audio and visual content and immediately link it to an associated Internet service. Davis said that they tried to settle with Shazam out of court, but little progress has been made. So a complaint has been filed.

Shazam will have to defend themselves from Digimarc in the U.S. District for the District of Oregon with the Civil Action number 3:09-cv-1355-KI.