This Week in Tech 89

Talking urinal cakes, the XM Sirius Merger, and the top 25 web 2.0 startups dissected...

• Tumblr is an easy to use tumblelog service. Tumblelogs are very simple, lightweight weblogs. Check out Merlin's and Leo's.
• Dvorak hates Joost. On the other hand, Joost just signed a deal with Viacom.
• Comcast's unlimited Internet service isn't so unlimited.
• Google and CBS' video store was a failure, but Google and BBC are in talks.
• Google Apps is a series of Google applications that the company may be using in order to replace Microsoft Office for businesses and others.
• Microsoft has been sued for the Office Live name.
• Microsoft owes Alcatel-Lucent $1.5 billion over an mp3 patent infringement.
• Microsoft and at&t are also in a lawsuit about voice recognition software.
• Bill Gates clamps down on his daughter's computer usage.
• The cartoonist who does Toothpaste for Dinner recently wrote about Second Life.
• A 19-year old got a judge arrested by monitoring child pornography newsgroups for 16 hours a day.
• A gigantic asteroid may hit in 2036.
• Canon has lost its SED TV patent lawsuit.
• Business 2.0 has listed 25 startups to watch out for. Kevin Rose's Revision3 is #9.
• Filmloop was betrayed by its investors by combining it with another company in their portfolio.
• Jimmy Wales' favorite Wikia Wiki is the Muppets Wiki which contains over 13474 articles.
• Open Table will allow you to make restaurant reservations online.
• Odeo has been put up for sale so Ev can put more work into Twitter.
• Check out the worst commercial of all time: Eagle Man!
• Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is going to sue the owner of an IP address who posted defamatory comments on his Wikipedia entry.
• Puretracks, a Canadian music company, is going to begin selling DRM-free music.
• The RIAA has listed the top 25 piracy colleges in terms of number of lawsuits.
• New Mexico has purchased 500 talking urinal cakes in order to thwart drunk driving.
• The Pirate Bay has set up Oscar Torrents that will allow you to download all the nominated Oscar movies and vote for them.
• Bill Gates is saying that Vista sales are fantastic, but Ballmer is saying that Microsoft's sales forecasts are "overly aggressive."
• XM and Sirius have announced a merger.