Outside.in is a hyperlocal news aggregation company that has been attracting quite a bit of investment from multiple sources. In the company’s Series B round of funding, Union Square Ventures was the lead investor. Others that participated include TV news network CNN, Betaworks, Village Ventures, New York City Investment Fund, and Milestone Venture Partners.

This means Outside.in has raised over $12 million in total funding since the company launched in 2007. After the jump is the full press release from the company:

Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) said that they are planning to invest as much as $500 million on building hybrid vehicles, batteries for hybrids, and electric vehicles in the state of Michigan. As a result, Ford will create an additional 1,000 jobs. Currently Ford has about 213,000 employees domestically and overseas. Ford is asking the Michigan government for tax credit as part of the electric vehicle initiative. Through the $500 million investment, Ford will also bring back battery pack assembly manufacturing within their company rather than outsourcing the task to Delphi Corporation.

Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) will soon start selling a phone that is similar to the Droid in China. However the phone will be using China’s 3G standard and the China Mobile operating system. This means it will be based on the Android operating system, modified by China Mobile. The Droid uses the newest Google mobile operating system without much modification.

The 3G mobile standard used in China is called TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access). It will also have support for wireless LANs (not specifically WiFi). The MT710 will not have a slide out keyboard, it is purely touchscreen. The built in camera is 5 megapixels. The actual name that will be used for the device in China is the Motorola MT710 Zhiling. Zhiling means “intelligent” and “leader.” China Mobile currently has about 510 million subscribers.

Guam residents will soon be able to pick up an iPhone through GTA TeleGuam starting on December 11. The phones are able through pre-order starting today. Here is the price breakdown for Guam residents:
- 8GB iPhone 3G – $99.95
- 16GB iPhone 3G S – $199.95
- 32GB iPhone 3G S – $299.95

The phone will be selling online and at certain retail locations such as the Andersen Air Force Base. Guam iPhone users will have to sign up a new plan and contract to get the device at the aforementioned prices. The cheapest plan for having an iPhone on GTA TeleGuam starts at $69.90 per month for unlimited data and 500 minutes.

A 14 year old that supposedly runs a company called NWorksDev has created a project called 3G4. This is a project where a Nintendo 64 is emulated on an iPhone 3G S and iPod Touch 3G. Below is the video of a beta he put together using the game Super Mario 64. The 14 year old, who remains anonymous for now says that he is trying to overcome duplicate button registers, crashing, and delayed presses. He is also working on the L, R, and Z keys.

At the Keio University in Japan, two researchers have developed a microwave that entertains you with more than just your dinner spinning around on a plate and getting warmed up in the process. This microwave will actually pull a random video from YouTube that is the same time length as the time entered for warming up the food. The microwave has speakers so that you can hear the video too. The concept of this product was part of a research paper [PDF in Japanese] intended to make life more entertaining by mashing up web content and appliances. Its too bad this appliance is not for sale yet.

The movie about Facebook that is being directed by David Fincher and published by Columbia Pictures is slated to hit theaters on October 15, 2010. The movie was written by Aaron Sorkin and stars Jesse Eisenberg (pictured), Justin Timberlake, Joe Mazzello, and Andrew Garfield. Eisenberg will be playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake will be playing Napster co-founder and former Facebook advisor Sean Parker. Andrew Garfield is playing Eduardo Saverin, a Facebook co-founder who ended up quitting as a disagreement with Zuckerberg over money.

I haven’t yet read the book that the movie is based on, but I think it would be interesting if they also include the three people that Zuckerberg supposedly stole code from: Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra. Supposedly those three individuals made $65 million as part of a settlement with their company ConnectU and Facebook this past February.

Nokia Corporation is shutting down one of their flagship stores based in London, England. The store that is shutting down is located on Regent Street and has been open for less than 2 years. The reason for the shut down is because of weak foot traffic and out of preparation for a total retail revamp taking place next year. The rumored cost to opening up the Nokia retail store on the Regent Street location was about £4 million ($6.5 million). This is also a sign that Nokia isn’t doing as well in the U.K. as they hoped. Perhaps Apple and Google chipped away too much of their market share in the land of fish and chips.