The Wall Street Journal reported today that Time Magazine has signed up Unilever, Toyota, and Fidelity on a marketing campaign that involves the iPad.  Time will be charging those advertisers about $200,000 each for a single ad spot on Time’s iPad edition according to the WSJ source.

Wired is also rumored to be combining ad campaigns around print and the iPad.  Advertisers that buy about eight pages of ads in an issue of Wired will have the option to ad videos and other features in the iPad form of the magazine.  Now that we know how print publications with a large following plan to monetize through the iPad, it will be interesting to see how new media publication companies do it. [WSJ]

I used to be a Pontiac enthusiast myself.  I drove a blue 1995 Pontiac Grand Am in high school.  I removed the grill and sprayed with chrome paint too.  But I’ve got nothing on Dave Phipps.  He truly has “Pontiac Excitement” (Pontiac’s motto circa 2002).

Phipps took his 69′ Pontiac GTO, which he bought for $400 and replaced the wiring so it would work with his iPod Touch through a RedEye IR system.  He can start the car, rev the engine, open doors, control the radio, and raise/drop the top using his iPod.  That takes some serious skills.  [TUAW]

Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) hit a major milestone. Ford SYNC, the voice-activated car assistant built in to the dashboard of automobiles has hit 2 million users. Ford launched the first SYNC system in the fall of 2007 and it took about 10 months to hit the first 1 million. The Ford SYNC was built through a partnership with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). Ford SYNC was built on the Microsoft Windows Embedded Automotive software platform. SYNC lets drivers control devices such as mobile phones and digital media players within vehicles. Below is the full press release:

OK Go is no longer a part of EMI Publishing’s record label. There was a disagreement between the label and OK Go about videos being embedded. OK Go’s latest video “This Too Shall Pass” hit about 3.5 million views.

It appears that OK Go is enjoying the independence because they have just created a video called Business Meeting where the band is meeting “with the heads of their new label to discuss their options.” It turns out their new label heads are a couple of dogs with clothes on. This could be OK Go’s latest viral video.

Tumblr is attempting to make money through two methods.  The first method is by charging $9 fee to have your blog featured in a directory.  The newest way is by selling premium themes.  The themes are made by 7 different designers and the price ranges from $9-$49.  Tumblr has about 4 million users now.  Below are some screenshots of the premium themes. [TechCrunch]

Professor Peter Kelly, a director of public health said that there is a link between social networking and the rise of cases of syphilis within the Britain town of Teesside — especially amongst young women.  “I don’t get the names of people affected, just figures, and I saw that several of the people had met sexual partners through these sites,” stated Kelly. “Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex.” I have a study that I have going in my head too: People in Teesside are having more unprotected sex than before. [Telegraph UK]

GoDaddy.com Inc. plans to announce today that they will no longer allow domain names to be registered in China in response to new government rules that require applications to provide an extensive amount of personal data including photographs. GoDaddy believes that this requirement for domain name registration could put individuals at risk. GoDaddy.com is the second major company to cease doing online business in China this week, Google being the first.

“GoDaddy is the first company to publicly follow Google’s example in responding to the Chinese government’s censorship of the Internet by partially retreating from the Chinese market,” stated Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.). “Google fired a shot heard ’round the world, and now a second American company has answered the call to defend the rights of the Chinese people.” GoDaddy launched in 2000 and runs about 40 million registered domain names. [Washington Post]

The executive pages of Google.com appeared to be in Chinese this morning. Some journalists jumped the gun and assumed that it was a hack by the Chinese government, but it turns out that it was simply a bug from Google’s end. Google and the Chinese government are not on good terms right now because the search engine company decided to forward Google.cn to Google.hk and essentially pull operations out of the Asian country [More details]. “This is not a hack but rather a bug affecting the language displayed to some users, and we are working to fix it soon,” stated a Google spokesperson in an interview with The Guardian. [Guardian]