AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is suing Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) because of the “There’s a map for that” ads. The reason why AT&T is suing them is because of false advertising and deceptive trade practices. The Verizon “map” suggests that AT&T customers are out of touch.

AT&T said that they sent Verizon a notice asking them to stop running ads that their customers are out of touch in areas that do not have 3G services. Verizon removed the words “out of touch” from their ads and added “voice and data services outside 3G coverage areas.”

However AT&T customers still have voice and data services out of 3G areas but the data connection is slow. AT&T did not specify how much in damage they want in return and they are also asking for a restraining order from Verizon to keep running the ads.

Otherinbox is an e-mail organization company that is based in Austin, Texas. The company has just raised $2.3 million according to an SEC filing. Like Xobni, Otherinbox incorporates social networking features in e-mail services.

Otherinbox has about 100,000 users and is compatible with GMail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. OtherInbox’s email service can organize shipping information, payment reminders, and upcoming sales. These events are synced with your calendar too. The company launched in beta at the TechCrunch50 2008 conference.

Good news American Nintendo fans. The DSi XL will be headed your way at the beginning of 2010. The DSi XL device has a 4.2″ screen, stylus, large touch pen, and large battery (4-5 hour life on brightest setting, 13-17 hours on the low). No word on price yet.

Recently without notice Sprint decided to block tethering for smartphones on their network out of the blue. And Sprint customers are furious about the changes. I read comments that some people may quit the service just because of the change. It doesn’t matter if you are on the “Everything” plan or not, tethering will no longer work for you starting in 2010.

The changes were confirmed by Sprint executive David Owens. During a virtual chat on the Sprint website, Owens also revealed that Google Android OS updates will be added to the HTC Hero and the Samsung Moment. The price of Android phones will decrease “as we see volume across the industry” according to Owens.

The N-Gage is a mobile phone that was designed to be more user friendly for gaming. The mobile phone was based on the Series 60 line of Nokia products and was officially launched in October 2003. The device was intended to challenge the Game Boy Advance.

Around 2005 Nokia said that they are planning to add the same capabilities as the N-Gage to smartphones. The N-Gage did not actualy get an app store until February 2008. Now Nokia has announced that they are ending the N-Gage by the end of 2010. The launch price of the device when it launched was about $299. One of the reasons why the gaming/mobile device did not take off as much as Nokia anticipated was because the lack of a good number of games.

In total the company estimated to have shipped slightly over 2 million units. When the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS handheld consoles were released, it was even more bad news for the N-Gage. If you own an N-Gage what do you think of Nokia ceasing the development of the device?

Greylock Partners is tapping the business skills that Reid Hoffman has by making him an investing partner at the VC firm. Hoffman will work as the Chairman of LinkedIn at the same time. As part of the announcement that Greylock made, the company announced a $575 million round of funding. Currently Jeff Weiner is the CEO of LinkedIn.

In the past 6 six years, Hoffman has invested in Facebook, Digg, Flickr, Zynga and several other companies. “I definitely wear too many hats,” stated Hoffman as quoted by VentureBeat. “[Greylock and I] both wanted to make sure we had good, aligned interests. My interest was that I would continue to be massively focused on LinkedIn, and their interest was that I would help provide intelligence on the consumer Internet.”

Greylock is also an investor in LinkedIn. LinkedIn has over a $1 billion valuation based on their last rounds of funding. LinkedIn raised about $103 million in funding from Sequoia, Bain Capital, SAP Ventures, Goldman Sachs, McGraw Hill, Bessemer, Greylock, and the European Founders Fund. Hoffman worked at PayPal shortly before the acquisition and is considered one of the PayPal Mafia members.

Google’s web browser is growing by leaps and bounds. According to TechCrunch, the browser is now being used by over roughly 30 million people. In October, the browser grew at a faster pace than Firefox did. Granted Firefox has a lot more overall users but Chrome is still a new player in the web browser market. Google even has TV advertisement spots for the browser that is sometimes played on Hulu too.

The Chrome team also won a Founder’s Award for their efforts over at Google. This means that the team may get some additional stock options with Google. Overall Firefox has 330 million users and Google Chrome has about 3.58% market share. This means that Google Chrome is close to passing the market share of Apple Safari. If Google Chrome continues to grow at its current rate of 0.4% every month, it will pass Safari in February 2010.

In the third quarter of 2009, the smartphone mobile market soared like an eagle. About 290.5 million smartphones were sold in the quarter which is an increase of 5.6% from the year before. Between the five major telecommunications companies, all of them sold more phones in this quarter than the previous quarter. However Motorola slipped into 5th place behind Sony Ericsson this quarter. Samsung and LG broke new sales records this quarter too.

Samsung shipped over 60 million phones this quarter which is the highest they have ever done. Below is the break-down of the numbers provided by our friends over at UnwiredView:
* Nokia – 108.5 million units, 37.3% market share
* Samsung – 60.2 million units, 20.7% market share
* LG – 31.6 million units, 10.9% market share
* Sony Ericsson – 14.1 million units, 4.9% market share
* Motorola – 13.6 million units, 4.7% market share
* Others – 60.1 million units, 21.5% market share