Shaker is a virtual world startup based in Israel that has raised $15 million in a new round of funding. This round was led by Menlo Ventures’ Shervin Pishevar. Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund was already an investor in Shaker and they also participated in this round. Shaker was the champion at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference.

Michael Arrington has poached MG Siegler from AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL). Siegler was brought into AOL through the acquisition of TechCrunch, a tech blog founded by Arrington. TechCrunch was sold to AOL for roughly $25-$30 million. AOL is also an investor in CrunchFund. Siegler will become a general partner at CrunchFund. Siegler has been approached by numerous VC companies and other writing gigs since he became a top editor at TechCrunch. [Uncrunched]

AOL, Inc. has decided to let Michael Arrington loose. Michael Arrington was hired to AOL after the media company acquired technology blog TechCrunch.com. Erick Schonfeld will be replacing Arrington as the editor of TechCrunch. Below is the statement from AOL:

Michael Arrington is best known for being the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a technology blog that sold to AOL for roughly $30 million. Now Arrington is planning on starting a venture capital company with Patrick Gallagher of VantagePoint Venture Partners. Their plan is to raise roughly $20 million and fund companies that are a seed or early stages. The company’s limited partner will be AOL. Several people believe that this will cause a major conflict of interest for companies written on the TechCrunch blog, but the the writers on that blog disclose all investment information if Arrington holds equity in the companies being profiled.

Milk Inc. is a new company that was co-founded by Kevin Rose. Rose is the founder of Digg and co-founder of Revision3. Milk is essentially a company where several developers brainstorm technology and mobile ideas and works away at building them. If there isn’t any sudden traction, then the project gets shut down. Milk has raised $1.5 million in angel funding from well known investors. Investors include Mike Maples, Jr. (Floodgate), David Sze (Greylock Partners), Ron Conway, Dave Morin, Philip Rosedale, Evan Williams, Joshua Schachter, Ashton Kutcher, Michael Arrington, Philip Kaplan, Chris Sacca, Tony Hsieh, Gary Vaynerchuk, and several others. [VentureBeat]

Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis filed a lawsuit against TechCrunch in November 2010. Calacanis and Arrington are former partners on the TechCrunch50 events. Calacanis also wanted some proceeds from TechCrunch’s sale to AOL. One business day after Calacanis’ Launch Conference, he dropped the lawsuit against Arrington. [TechCrunch]

[Jason Calacanis, left - Michael Arrington, right]

Jason Calacanis, the founder of Mahalo.com and co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. has filed a lawsuit against his former TechCrunch50 conference partner Michael Arrington. Arrington recently sold his blog TechCrunch to AOL for an estimated $25-$40 million and Aol gained ownership of the conference as part of the deal. Before the acquisition Arrington kicked out Calacanis from TechCrunch50 and rebranded it as TechCrunch Disrupt. Below is a post that Arrington wrote and a post that Calacanis wrote about the situation so you can get both perspectives.

Chandrashekar Rathakrishnan, the founder of Fusion Garage announced that the joojoo will no longer be manufactured. The joojoo used to be known as the CrunchPad as the idea was conceived by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. The joojoo was a Linux-based tablet that would have WiFi and would be used mainly for surfing the web. Arrington formed a partnership with Fusion Garage, but it ended in a conflict. Arrington almost sued Fusion Garage as a result. Fusion Garage plans to manufacture a different kind of tablet with Android as the OS. [BoyGeniusReport]