AOL has hired Allen & Company along with Morgan Stanley to try and find a buyer for ICQ. ICQ is an instant messaging software that competed with AOL Instant Messenger before being bought out. There are supposedly two non-U.S. based firms that already have an interest in buying out ICQ from AOL. The deal will most likely take place when AOL spins off from Time Warner in December.

AOL is seeking around $300 million for ICQ according to a source with AllThingsD. AOL bought ICQ for $287 million in 1998 with about $125 million in earnouts. Tel Aviv based firm Mirabilis was the company that originally developed ICQ.

ICQ has lost quite many users in the United States since they launched originally, but their service is still strong in countries such as Germany and Russia. AOL Instant Messenger still has a strong user base in the United States.

DirecTV Group Inc. (NASDAQ:DTV) has appointed Michael White as their new CEO. White previously worked at PepsiCo (NYSE:PEP) as the Vice Chairman. Interestingly White does not have much experience in the food and beverage industry so that makes the decision quite interesting for DirecTV. There is speculation that he will act as a “baby-sitter” for DirecTV until a take-over happens. AT&T and Verizon are both potential candidates for buying out DirecTV since they both partner with the satellite TV company.

DirecTV has 18 million subscribers and the company launched in 1994. The company is currently owned by The DirecTV Group which is a division of Liberty Media.

White will be taking the CEO position on January 1 and will be replacing Chase Carey. Carey will be leaving to join News Corp. as the COO and President. Shareholders and the DirecTV management team are currently discussing whether to spin off Liberty Media’s entertainment assets into a separate company. DirecTV used to be owned by News Corporation, but Liberty Media exchanged 16.3% of their stake in News Corp. and $625 million in exchange for DirecTV and three sports networks.

AT&T has hired Luke Wilson to point out the differences between their service and Verizon. AT&T tried to file a temporary restraining order against Verizon for playing the “there’s a map for that ads.” But AT&T lost the injunction. Instead AT&T is doing an eye-for-an-eye approach by pointing out the flaws of Verizon’s network. Above is one of the many videos I’m sure we’ll see over the holiday season where AT&T rips on Verizon.

Twitter Inc. is being sued by Cooper Notification, a subsidiary of Cooper Industries Plc. Cooper Notification is based in Sarasota, Florida and the reason that they are suing Twitter is because of patent infringement.

“Cooper has suffered, and will continue to suffer, and is entitled to be compensated” stated Cooper in a complaint to the federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. Cooper Notification sends security alerts to the community and employees.

Twitter is not the only company that Cooper is going after. Cooper Notification is also suing Rave Wireless Inc. and Everbridge Inc.

Steve Case is the co-founder, former CEO, and former Chairman of AOL. AOL will be spinning out of Time Warner soon and will be going IPO. Steve Case is a shareholder in Time Warner so he will benefit from the IPO. And on top of that another startup company started by Case is being bought out by the American Express Company (NYSE: AXP) for $300 million. Revolution Money is a PayPal competitor that allows merchants to process payments at lower fees than many other traditional credit card companies.

The full press release is after the jump:

American Express Company (NYSE: AXP) today announced it has agreed to acquire Revolution Money, a Revolution LLC company.

Revolution Money, launched by AOL Co-founder Steve Case’s Revolution LLC in 2007, provides secure payments through an internet based platform. No names or account numbers appear on Revolution cards and transactions are authorized by using a PIN number. The company’s online person-to-person payment accounts are FDIC insured and ideally suited for social and instant messaging networks. It also offers a prepaid card linked to those accounts that can be used for offline payments or to withdraw cash from ATMs throughout the United States.

“New payments products and platforms are evolving rapidly and it’s important for us to keep identifying Cutting Edge technologies that can extend our leadership beyond the traditional payments arena,” said Kenneth I. Chenault, chairman and chief executive officer of American Express. “While Revolution Money is a young and relatively small company, we believe it has big potential. This is a smart, nimble business. It’s run by an accomplished management team who have quickly developed some cutting edge e-payment offerings. Joining with American Express will help unlock their potential, while allowing us to deliver competitive online payment products more rapidly and efficiently.”

“Revolution Money has a lot of room to grow as it competes head-to-head with other online and person-to-person payment providers. We are committed to using our global brand recognition, marketing reach and network expertise to help reach a critical mass of customers,” said Mr. Chenault.

The transaction, which is subject to regulatory review, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2010. The purchase price is expected to be approximately $300 million. Upon closing, Revolution Money would operate as a subsidiary of American Express and be the first component of its recently formed Enterprise Growth organization. Enterprise Growth was formed to leverage American Express’ existing assets and capabilities to generate incremental fee revenue and to drive the company’s entry into new payment areas and related businesses.

Norwest Venture Partners is a technology venture capital firm that is based in Silicon Valley, California. Norwest has invested early in many technology companies such as Kayak, Arbortext, Rackspace, MyYearbook, Playdom, Sulekha.com, Ngmoco, and Yatra.com. The company raised a new round of funding at $1.2 billion. This is the eleventh fund raised in the history of the firm and is the largest. The new round of funding will be used for international expansion. Norwest already has offices in India and Israel. The company has invested in Chinese companies as well.

Google Image Swirl recently launched and it makes searching for images more fun. When you search for a monument or any other image and click on it, a tree form of other images show up. Google Image Swirl graduated from Google Labs. When searching for an image, twelve other thumbnails show up. You’ll see several different images at various angles. Image Swirl uses technology from Similar Images and Picasa Face Recognition to determine what other thumbnails come up. There are currently about 200,000 queries that are supported. The announcement was made by Google Product Manager Aparna Chennapragada and Google Researcher Yushi Jing.

Superfeedr is a website that can pull real-time data from Flickr and Twitter, then feed it into the standard ATOM format so that you can “parse one sort of feed no matter where it came from.” The company makes money by charging web developers for tracking over 1,000 feeds. Its a very niche service and I am not aware off-hand of anyone I know that would use this service.

Mark Cuban and Betaworks have recently invested in the company. Andrew Anker and David Recordon has joined the advisory board as well.

Facebook has been using a Java-based photo uploader for quite some time, but I have not been a fan of it since I started using a Mac. My Facebook photo uploader on my Mac Mozilla Firefox browser struggled a lot. Whenever I wanted to upload photos on Facebook, I either had to use Safari or the manual photo uploader. This is why I am feeling ecstatic that Facebook is changing their photo uploading service.

The new Facebook photo uploader can be activated [here]

The new uploader works with Mac OS, Ubuntu Linux, and Windows. The plugin installs within the browser or will need to be downloaded and installed. Below is a screenshot of how the new uploader works. Browsing folders are in a tree format. First you select the top folder, then you select the subfolder within the top folder in the next box, etc. After that thumbnails of the photos you would like to upload appear at the bottom. Select those and click upload. Voila!

The Walky Robot is a project designed by students at the Keio University in Japan. The students were able to make a toy robot acknowledge finger gestures on an iPhone. The robot also acknowledges the movements in accelerometer. Finger gestures can control the movement of the robot walking. Above is a video demo.