Joseph P. Kennedy III, the son of a former congressman and the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, said Sunday he had decided against running for the U.S. House from Massachusetts this year.

Since Facebook started on a college campus, it makes sense that they celebrate kegs. But did you know they actually have a Facebook application dedicated to the keg in their office? And they like to have fun with it.

While Keg Presence isn’t an official Facebook app, it was created and is maintained by Facebook employees. So what does it do? The app is a steady stream of information about what’s going on with the Facebook keg. For example, Keg Presence sends out notices to let users (other Facebook employees) know what type of beer is in the keg. And when the keg is empty, it posts pictures of BevMo, where Facebook employees apparently go to refill it.

Anyway, the application isn’t new, it has been around since sometime last year, but a humorous update from Keg Presence was recently brought to our attention. Announcing the “launch” of Keg Presence 2.0, one Facebook employee jokingly named it “Facebook Buzz”:

At Facebook we move fast and have already launched Keg Presence 2.0 which we have named Facebook Buzz.

80-some Facebook employees gave the update a thumbs up “like.”

This is of course in reference to Google Buzz, the recently launched social stream feature that now resides inside of Gmail. Following its launch, much was made of Buzz as a potential “_____ killer,” including, naturally, Facebook. The social network doesn’t seem too worried though if their response is a keg application.

Update: As former Facebooker Ryan Merket notes in the comments:

You forgot one key part of Keg Presence. Employees swipe their RFID badge when they get there, which snaps a photo of them pouring their beer and updates their Facebook status.

That’s just awesome. Viva la Facebook Buzz.

Earlier this week, news broke that the EU was opening an antitrust investigation into Google — and Microsoft’s fingerprints were all over it. One of the three companies filing complaints about Google is owned by Microsoft, while another is a member of a group that’s partially funded by them. Google promptly responded to the inquiry with a blog post called “Committed to competing fairly” that gave a brief overview of how its search rankings work.

Today, Microsoft has written a blog post that admits that it played a part in instigating the inquiry, stating that “complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors.” And it’s also accusing Google of “telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.”

Microsoft’s post, which was written by VP and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner, details some of the company’s recent discussions with the European Commission and US DOJ, which have revolved around the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal (which, in turn, led to talk about Google’s allegedly anticompetitive practices). Heiner also notes that Microsoft has been directing other “concerned companies” to competition law agencies.

Here are some of the more interesting passages:

As Google’s power has grown in recent years, we’ve increasingly heard complaints from a range of firms—large and small—about a wide variety of Google business practices. Some of the complaints just reflect aggressive business stances taken by Google. Some reflect the secrecy with which Google operates in many areas. Some appear to raise serious antitrust issues. As you might expect, many concerned companies have come to us and asked us for our reaction and even for advice. When their antitrust concerns appear to be substantial, we suggest that firms talk to the competition law agencies. (Complaining to Microsoft won’t do much good.)

Both search and online advertising are increasingly controlled by a single firm, Google. That can be a problem because Google’s business is helped along by significant network effects (just like the PC operating system business). Search engine algorithms “learn” by observing how users interact with search results. Google’s algorithms learn less common search terms better than others because many more people are conducting searches on these terms on Google.

These and other network effects make it hard for competing search engines to catch up. Microsoft’s well-received Bing search engine is addressing this challenge by offering innovations in areas that are less dependent on volume. But Bing needs to gain volume too, in order to increase the relevance of search results for less common search terms. That is why Microsoft and Yahoo! are combining their search volumes. And that is why we are concerned about Google business practices that tend to lock in publishers and advertisers and make it harder for Microsoft to gain search volume.

Don’t have $111,000 for Silicon Valley’s most prestigious auto brand? Tesla Motors, the oft-troubled but popular maker of plug-in hot rods, emailed with news of a new lease program.

“You could take immediate delivery of a new 2010 Tesla Roadster or Roadster Sport,” it says in my inbox, “with a three year, 30,000 mile contract and with monthly payments as low as $1,658. At the end of the term, you’ll be able to purchase the groundbreaking Roadster or pay a fee and walk away.”

Don’t forget to budget for insurance, sure to be high on a two-seater with 248 horsepower behind the driver’s head. The Tesla Roadster rockets from zero to 60 miles per hour in less than four seconds. Insurance actuaries hate that.

Not to brag, but I took a test ride in a prototype in 2006. The car feels safe despite its speed, thanks to a linear torque curve and a high PRM limit that prevents the usual gear-shifting jerkiness of gasoline-powered high-performance cars. The Tesla accelerates smoothly all the way from standstill to well beyond legal speed limits. In first gear.

If the price is still to high for you, hang on. The company plans to sell a $50,000 BMW-esque sedan next year.

Companies: Tesla Motors

Facebook status updates from Pages will start showing up in Google’s real-time search results today.

It’s the first time the search giant has indexed content from the world’s largest social network for real-time results. The company incorporated tweets last December, and then MySpace status updates earlier this month.

The key thing to remember though is that Google has much more limited access to Facebook’s real-time data than its competitor, Bing. Microsoft has deeper ties to the social network, as an investor in Facebook and as a search provider for the site. Microsoft has the ability to index public status updates while Google’s access is limited to updates from Pages, which are vehicles for marketing rather than personal content.

Tags: real time search

Companies: Facebook, Google

This is has not been confirmed by either party, but we’ve heard from multiple sources that European music startup Spotify has closed a venture investment from Founders Fund. Managing Partner Sean Parker, who was a cofounder of Napster and President of Facebook, led the round for Founders Fund, and we believe he may have take a board of directors seat.

We do not know the size of the investement; however, we believe it may have been a token amount to get Parker’s involvement in the company. The investment was likely done at the same €200 million valuation as the round Spotify raised in late 2009.

This is the first U.S. investor in Spotify, and the service is only available in some European countries. A U.S. launch has been broadly anticipated for months.

We’ve also heard this was a competitive round and a number of U.S. venture funds were interested. Parker, with his ties to Facebook and his experience in early P2P music sharing via Napster, is likely the winner for his strong strategic potential.

In January we reported that Spotify had been in talks with Google over integration with Android for their U.S. launch. When Spotify does launch in the U.S. (assuming it does), we expect them to have a large U.S. partner alongside them. Google, Facebook and Microsoft are all likely to be talking to them, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see one or more of them sign a partnership.

This is has not been confirmed by either party, but we’ve heard from multiple sources that European music startup Spotify has closed a venture investment from Founders Fund. Managing Partner Sean Parker, who was a cofounder of Napster and President of Facebook, led the round for Founders Fund, and we believe he may have take a board of directors seat.

We do not know the size of the investement; however, we believe it may have been a token amount to get Parker’s involvement in the company. The investment was likely done at the same €200 million valuation as the round Spotify raised in late 2009.

This is the first U.S. investor in Spotify, and the service is only available in some European countries. A U.S. launch has been broadly anticipated for months.

We’ve also heard this was a competitive round and a number of U.S. venture funds were interested. Parker, with his ties to Facebook and his experience in early P2P music sharing via Napster, is likely the winner for his strong strategic potential.

In January we reported that Spotify had been in talks with Google over integration with Android for their U.S. launch. When Spotify does launch in the U.S. (assuming it does), we expect them to have a large U.S. partner alongside them. Google, Facebook and Microsoft are all likely to be talking to them, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see one or more of them sign a partnership.

NTT Docomo wants TuneWiki to power Karaoke on Japan’s Mobiles

TuneWiki continues its fundraising success. Only a week after theon the $7 million series B led by Motorola Ventures, last week Japan’s NTT Docomo has announced an undisclosed round in the company led by NTT Docomo Capital, the giant’s US based investment arm.

In the official announcement, Rani Cohen, TuneWiki’s CEO said:

“With TuneWiki’s ability to translate and subtitle lyrics in more than 40 languages, we were looking for strategic partners to help us expand into new markets. Japan is one the most advanced markets in the world for Karaoke applications; and we believe that with the help of DOCOMO Capital, we can introduce lyrics to the majority of cell phone owners in Japan.”

Greenroad Gets $10 million from Al Gore and Sir Richard Branson to make roads safer

real-time reports and analysis on the driving events captured by the in-vehicle system

Israeli start-up GreenRoad Technologies raised a $10 million round led by Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and joined by previous investors Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Balderton Capital, Amadeus, and Branson’s Virgin Green Ventures. Per the company’s announcement, the proceeds will be allocated to accelerate the deployment of GreenRoad 360, Greenroad’s flagship commercial service. To date, GreenRoad has raised $48 million, including this round (see previous coverage on VC Cafe). GreenRoad is led by CEO Dan Steere and has a headcount of 90. More on Globes and Techcrunch.

Another Israeli start up in the road safety space is Road-Guard, provider of ‘driver attention solutions’. Road-Guard announced today that GreenDrive, an eco driving application aimed at saving fuel costs and reducing the car’s mileage per gallon, was selected as the grand prize winner at Nokia’s International competition during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week.

Motorola Buys BitBand

Motorola completed the previously announced acquisition of Israel’sBitBand, provider of cross platform video content delivery network (CDN) solutions, specializing in video on demand for IPTV. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

MySpace’s new slogan, and the theme of their new product strategy, will be “Discover and be Discovered,” we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. This will be their differentiating factor from Facebook, execs told employees at an all hands meeting last Thursday.

The meeting was called in the wake of the firing of CEO Owen Van Natta and the related promotions of Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn to co-presidents. The meeting, which was held in the courtyard of MySpace’s Los Angeles headquarters to accomodate 600 or employees, was also broadcast to other offices around the world.

The meeting began, say sources, with a discussion of the drama around the company over the last several weeks. Parent company News Corp’s Digital Chief Jon Miller apparently didn’t mince words, saying that Van Natta wasn’t moving fast enough and that there was too much conflict among the executive team. Hirschhorn also denied rumors that he ever considered leaving the company, which is contrary to the statements of about a dozen sources who’ve said the opposite to us.

Miller also reiterated News Corp.’s commitment to MySpace and outlined how the co-president structure will work. “They get along really well,” he reportedly said. Hirschhorn handles product vision, Jones handles execution.

More importantly, MySpace’s go forward vision was presented to employees, say our sources, and it was all about a single feature thrust that they’re calling “Discovery.”

The idea is to hit users over the head with new stuff when they come to MySpace. New people they should be meeting. Movie trailers they should watch. Games they may want to play (perhaps against other MySpace users), music they should listen to, articles they should read. Etc. The activity stream that MySpace recently launched will be the backbone of Discovery, but other MySpace products will feed into this as well.

If they get this right, the thinking goes, people will want to visit the site over and over again to see what new stuff they can do.

This is effectively a recommendation engine around new content, says one source, but MySpace doesn’t want people calling it that. Still, the idea is that an algorithm (and advertisers) will determine what stuff you might like (or tolerate, in the case of ads) based on what other users are liking.

The goal is to give users something to do on MySpace that’s somewhat different than Facebook. And get them to come back often.

The elite executives and creative professionals of the video game industry gathered at the Dice Summit in Las Vegas this week to talk about the art and business of video games. We posted videos and stories during the week about the various talks. Here’s the story in pictures from the summit and the Interactive Achievement Awards, which are the Oscars of the game industry.

For the fifth year in a row, comedian Jay Mohr hosted the Interactive Achievement Awards. He made a lot of jokes about the length of the awards, but his long monologue, laced with profanity, certainly stretched it out. The show will air on the Independent Film Channel.

Hosts of G4TV’s X-Play show Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb walked the red carpet before the award show and played to the paparazzi. Their show remains the most popular daily video game show on TV.

Doug Lowenstein retired from the top job at the Entertainment Software Association in 2006. But he returned to accept the Lifetime Achievement award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.
Randy Pitchford, co-founder of Gearbox Software, got a chance to tell the story of his development studio, which hit the big time this fall with Borderlands, an original game that is on its way to selling three million copies. On his desk, Pitchford keeps a framed dollar bill which was the first that his company earned and is a reminder that his company is in business to make money as well as great games.

Richard Garriott and his guest, Laetitia Pichot de Cayeux, walked to red carpet. After taking off to travel in space to the International Space Station, Garriott announced at Dice that he had co-founded a new company, Portalarium, to make a social game platform and publish games on Facebook. He considers it to be his third major move in games, after starting Origin Systems and making massively multiplayer online games like Ultima Online.

Mark Cerny of Cerny Games was inducted into the Interactive Achievement Hall of Fame for his decades-long career in games. He has helped make more than 30 games ranging from his first title, Marble Madness, to Ratchet & Clank.

Joseph Olin is the president of the AIAS and organizer of the Dice Summit. He foresees a big year in traditional hardcore games yet also believes that social games are beginning to change the industry as well (we’ll post an interview with him soon).

Mark Skaggs was creative director on FarmVille. He and other members of the Zynga team were on hand to collect the first-ever award for best social game.
The top guys on Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II game included writer Corey May (left) and creative director Patrice Desilets.
Greg Zeschuk of BioWare was on hand to give a toast to his company’s twin blockbusters, Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 2.
Jay Cohen is the president of development of Jerry Bruckheimer Games. He spent 13 years at Ubisoft but left to start Bruckheimer’s new game studio eight months ago. He said the company is knee-deep in research on its first games. You can expect them to have a definite Hollywood influence.
The team of thatgamecompany took home the prize for best casual game for their work on Flower, the dazzling PlayStation Network game where you play the wind in the dream of a flower in a decaying city. Accepting the award is Kellee Santiago. Creative director Jenova Chen is on the far left.
Last year, Jennifer MacLean became CEO of 38 Studios, whose founder is retired Red Sox baseball star Curt Schilling. They’re busy working on Copernicus, a massively multiplayer online game.
Brian Reynolds, chief designer at Zynga, offered tips on how to create hit social games, but he drew groans when he skipped a slide on how to make money doing so.

The team at Naughty Dog that made Uncharted 2: Among Thieves took home 10 awards, including Game of the Year. Richard Lemarchand, lead designer, on the  far left, gave a talk on how the company organizes itself in a way that pushes leadership down into the team members. There are no producers at Naughty Dog.
Rob Pardo, left, of Blizzard Entertainment poses at the opening night party with Chris Taylor, founder of Gas Powered Games. Taylor joked that the photo would be a nice contrast of a guy who makes a lot of money and a guy who doesn’t.
Rajesh Rao, chief executive of Dhruva Interactive, came all the way from India. His company has been making outsourced games for a wide variety of clients for many years. You’ll recognize Dhruva’s handiwork in the cars in the Forza Motorsport games.
Steve Wadsworth, head of Disney Interactive Media, gave the opening keynote at Dice. He talked about how Disney is making a big move into cross-platform games and, in a Q&A afterward, noted how he admired the Apple iPad and was making content for it.
Graham Hopper, head of Disney Interactive Studios, said that his teams are launching a bunch of cool games this year, ranging from the Split Second racing game to Tron Evolution and Epic Mickey.
Jesse Schell, a professor of game design at Carnegie Mellon University and head of Schell Games, gave the best talk at Dice as he talked about real-life games beyond Facebook.

John Schappert, chief operating officer at Electronic Arts, offered five tips on how to surmount the game industry’s challenges. Among them: don’t get too excited about the social gaming bubble.