Wow. This is hands down one of the best game trailers I’ve seen. I just had to share it. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be released on November 10.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) decided to take Jonathan Mann’s Bing jingle and teach it to a bunch of middle school students in Pennsylvania. Mann won a $500 content that Microsoft held for creating a song about Bing. TechCrunch’s MG Siegler criticized the song so Mann retaliated by making a song about the editor.

Mann sent the below video to TechCrunch with the e-mail message:

I literally cried a little bit when I saw this video. On the one hand I’m happy I was able to provide some kids with an excuse not to do school work for a few hours. On the other hand, not sure how I feel about these kids being indoctrinated into the cult of, well, whatever. It’s kinda creepy. But on the other-other hand, the kids do look damn happy. So…oh well?

Hopefully the students at Keith Valley Middle School get some sort of compensation for synchronized singing and dancing Microsoft services. Especially because the school cheerleading instructor spent about 12 days teaching 6th graders the dance.

Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) and The University of Michigan are now working together on a project that involves bringing cloud systems to cars. The service would be an add-on to Microsoft and Ford’s partnership on the Sync system. Sync is an in-car communications and entertainment system. Sync allows you to command your car to perform certain tasks using your voice.

The project between The U of M and Ford has the code-name American Journey 2.0. This will give U of M students the opportunity to work with a development operating system that could possibly benefit future Ford customers. “Already with Sync we have proven that we can access information in the cloud,” stated Ford head of infotronics Venkatesh Prasad. The infotronics division at Ford is part of the Research & Advanced Engineering department. “This research gives us the opportunity to harness the power of student innovation to explore beyond those capabilities and develop what’s next. We want the students to get creative and develop ways to responsibly connect the car to communicate and share with the outside world.”

“What excites me about this project is that it gives our students the opportunity to unleash their creativity using cutting-edge technologies that connect the vehicle and the cloud,” added U of M associate professor Dr. Jason Flinn.

American Journey 2.0 will be divided into two phases. The first phase involves testing and attempting to break the system by running several applications. During the second phase, an in-vehicle connectivity platform will be built.

After the platform is done, a competition will be held. The judges of the competition include representatives from Microsoft, Ford, the U of M, Maker Faire, and several others. The winning application developers will install their software in a Ford Fiesta at the Maker Faire DIY convention.

In this picture Linus Torvalds is giving Windows 7 a thumbs up in Japan. Torvalds is the man behind open source Linux operating system. Why is he doing this? Perhaps Torvalds wants to keep it classy unlike the Apple CEO when he flipped off the IBM building. Sometimes these pictures come back to haunt you many years later. Another theory is that Linus is pointing out that only one copy has been sold off the shelf.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has made a deal with Twitter and Facebook. The deal is non-exclusive. Facebook and Twitter will both integrate real-time feeds of status updates and tweets into the Bing search engine service. Twitter hit about 5 billion tweets yesterday and Facebook has the most number of status updates than any other service. Facebook sends out an estimated 40 million status updates per day.

Microsoft Bing’s market share will benefit from this deal as real-time news is becoming a preference for people. Traditional news agencies are suffering from this and are cutting staff and newspaper circulation. Google will have to step it up if they want to retain their customer base.

Facebook users will be allowed to decide whether they want their status updates to be public or not. The financial details of the deal are undisclosed, but it is expected that the Redmond-based software company will be paying both Facebook and Twitter millions of dollars along with revenue-sharing deals. Microsoft owns about 1.7% of Facebook through a venture capital deal and has an exclusive advertising partnership with the social network.

Every once in a while, Microsoft attempts to make viral videos in order to gain the attention of an existing product or service. In this case they decided to make a humorous video honoring rejected mobile applications for the Windows Marketplace. By putting this video together, Microsoft indirectly knocks on the Apple App Store application approval process. Take a look and let us know what you think about the video in the comments.

Many people have lost data as the result of a Danger Inc. server outage. Danger Inc. is the manufacturing company behind Sidekick devices and is a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). Two lawsuits have been filed at the federal court in Northern California this past Wednesday. The outage caused many Sidekick users to lose their address books, calendars, and contacts.

Microsoft and T-Mobile indicated last week that the data might be permanently lost. However on Monday night the companies announced that some people may be able to get their information back. One of the lawsuits claims that Microsoft and Danger did not take reasonable care of the data and indicated that the Sidekick was falsely advertised.

One of the prosecutors is Maureen Thompson. Thompson’s daughter is an aspiring model and songwriter that uses the phone to store personal and business contacts. She also used the phone for storing music lyrics that are not saved anywhere else. Thompson bought the phone because T-Mobile promised that the data would be protected no matter what.

“Further complicating the data loss is the fact that Sidekicks, unlike iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones, are not designed to sync locally with a user’s personal computer without additional software and hardware,” stated the filed lawsuit. “This means that most users were not able to backup their data locally, but were encouraged and required to rely on Microsoft/Danger.”

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has been airing commercials that feature a young Asian-American girl named Kylie to promote their new operating system called Windows 7. In the commercials, Kylie points out all the “happy words” that reviewers have been giving about Windows 7.

To get a further boost in publicity, Microsoft is hiring Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein to put on a variety show. MacFarlane is the creator of the animated series Family Guy. Borstein is one of the voice actresses for Family Guy, best known for playing Lois Griffin. The variety show will be aired on November 8 without commercials.

The deal was made between Microsoft, The Family Guy cast, and ad agency Crispin, Porter & Bogusky. Media agency Universal McCann brokered the deal. Crispin and MacFarlane worked together on a deal in the past for creating Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. The series was uploaded to YouTube and was sponsored by Burger King initially. The series is now being sponsored by Priceline.com.

The variety program sponsored by Microsoft will feature Family Guy musical performances, celebrity guest appearances, and Microsoft product placements. “You’ll see us deeply integrated into the content … you’ll hear a lot about how Windows 7 can help you simplify your PC — it’s simple, fast and easy to use,” stated Microsoft general manager of consumer engagement and advertising Gayle Troberman. “Think about metaphors and examples we might use, talking about how simple things are. We’ll be evoking the cast of ‘Family Guy’ in some interesting ways that integrate the product messages.”

Update: Below is a video sneak peek from Win741 of how Windows 7 will be used by Family Guy:

T-Mobile announced last night that they may have a chance to retrieve data that was lost on Sidekick devices. The data loss was originally caused by a server failure by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) subsidiary Danger Inc. “Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible,” stated a report by T-Mobile.

For those of you whose data is permanently lost, there will be a $100 customer appreciation card towards T-Mobile products or services. The customers that have lost data will be notified in the next 14 days whether that can be any retrieval. T-Mobile and Danger worked diligently throughout the work-day yesterday to retrieve the data.

During the Sidekick’s instability period, T-Mobile halted the sales of the device. While Danger and T-Mobile worked on restoring the servers, Sidekick users were encouraged not to take out the battery from the device or reset it.

Windows Mobile Marketplace opened for developers back in July and now the mobile store is officially open for business. Currently the only way to access the store is through the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. The Windows Mobile Marketplace opened one day ahead of schedule and there are about 20,000 Windows Mobile applications on the store as of right now.

Uniloc Corporation is a security and copy protection software company that filed a lawsuit against Microsoft worth about $388 million. Uniloc claimed that Microsoft was violating a patent held by the security company. Judge William Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island overturned a ruling by a jury that decided Microsoft did not have the rights to use their intellectual property.

“We are pleased that the court has vacated the jury verdict and entered judgment in favor of Microsoft,” reported Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz in a statement. This case has dragged on for about six years and went through several courts. Uniloc said that Microsoft used their patented technology for software activation. The patent in question is #5,490,216. Below is a process chart of how the patent works.

Uniloc CEO Brad Davis said that the company plans to appeal the case again. “We are disappointed by the decision the trial judge has made to overturn the jury’s unanimous verdict in Uniloc’s patent infringement case against Microsoft,” stated Davis in an interview with seattlepi.com. “We believe that the jury’s verdict in April was thoughtful, well reasoned and supported by the evidence presented. Since the patent status remains unchanged, Uniloc will continue to protect its intellectual property and appeal the Judge’s decision to override the jury’s verdict to the US Court of Appeals. We are confident that Uniloc will ultimately prevail.”

The zombie kid isn’t the only one that likes turtles. Microsoft does too. At least that is what the Project Pink phone prototypes indicate. Above are the first screenshots of the devices, called the Turtle and the Pure.

The Turtle and the Pure phones will be made by Sharp. Sharp was the company behind the Sidekick hardware, made by Danger. Danger is a telecommunications company that Microsoft bought a couple of years ago for $500 million. Rumor also has it that the Turtle and the Pure will have their own app store and will complement the Zune.

Microsoft Corporation is working on a new tablet booklet project called the Courier according to Gizmodo. The Apple tablet is a rumor, but Gizmodo insists that the Courier is very real.

The booklet has a dual 7 inch screen and is multitouch. The booklet is intended for writing and drawing with a stylus. The booklet is connected together through a hinge and has wireless signal and battery life indicators. The booklet has a camera on the back of the device.

J Allard, the Chief Experience Officer and Chief Technology Officer of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft Corporation is spearheading the project. Allard is also the man behind the Microsoft Zune and the Xbox consoles.

As you know, Microsoft is opening up stores in Arizona and California. The Microsoft store employees must be able to carry boxes that weigh up to 75 lbs. too. The Microsoft stores will be located strategically near Apple stores too. But Microsoft stores will have giant wall-sized screens. Microsoft stores will have “Answer Bars” too which is the equivalent of Apple’s Genius Bars.

Supposedly Microsoft is hiring away some top Apple Store managers and offering them significant raises. Microsoft is even telling these managers to bring their top sales people with them. Let the Apple-Microsoft retail wars begin.

More details to come as they emerge.

Debra Chrapaty was the head of the infrastructure business over at Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). According to AllThingsD sources, Chrapaty left the company to join Cisco Systems as the corporate VP of Global Foundation Services. Chrapaty was one of the very few women executives over at Microsoft. She worked at the software giant for 7 years.

When Chrapaty was working at Microsoft she was in charge of Microsoft Live, Cloud and Online Services worldwide. She also managed over 200 Microsoft portals. At Cisco, Chrapaty will be responsible for the collaboration software group.

Chrapaty will be filling in the shoes for Doug Dennerline, who recently left for Salesforce.com. Dennerline now works as the EVP of Sales for the Americas at Salesforce.com.

Chrapaty used to be the CTO of the National Basketball Association. She also worked at Organic, AllBusiness, and E*TRADE.