The single most clever motion picture I’ve seen this year wasn’t Avatar —it was Logorama , an animated short fitting 2500 logos into a highly entertaining parody of corporate/consumer culture. (Watch it. You’ll thank me when it wins an Oscar.) After viewing Logorama in the theater a few months ago (thanks, Chicago Film Festival), I was struck by three resurfacing thoughts. 1. It’s beautifully animated.

Facebook and AOL have linked their instant messaging platforms. After downloading the beta software, AIM users can click a ” Facebook Connect ” button to set up Facebook chat. They’ll then have access to their Facebook friends on their buddy list. It’s a quick right jab back at Google, whose announcement of Buzz yesterday heralded a clear intent to encroach on Facebook’s social networking playground. Adding AIM users gives Facebook instant traction in the instant messaging space that they haven’t been able to find yet on their own. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the long term, but clearly Facebook wants to get a jump start on nipping Buzz in the bud.

Oh, AOL, American Online, Aol. Whatever the fuck you call yourself now. Does your new bland logo—the one to which you switched today, with the annoying punctuation—come with a floppy disk? No?

After telling its investors that $200 million has been put aside to jettison a third of its payroll, AOL is looking for 2,500 staff to take voluntary redundancies—jump now, or be pushed later. It’s all designed to shave about $300 million off its annual 1.8 billion operating expenses. Instant messaging client, ICQ, is also up for sale, and Mapquest could be next. As always, we’re surprised that AOL still even exists. [ Business Insider ]

Ranking the highest according to a sample of 20,000 credit scores and their corresponding email addresses are BellSouth and Comcast, with Gmail trailing right behind. Reasonable enough, but what’s AOL doing anywhere but at the bottom? [ Mashable ]

As our hearing impaired readers are no doubt aware, AT&T has been offering its Instant Messaging Relay service since early this year, allowing folks to use AIM to communicate through an operator over the telephone in a manner similar to TDD devices. Now the company has announced an upgrade to the service that will allow real-time communication between callers. Instead of waiting for the relay operator to input long strings of text, users receive the messages word by word as they’re typed. “To hearing users, this may sound like a trivial enhancement,” said Claude Stout, Executive Director of TDI. “But for many callers with hearing or speech disabilities, this creates a wireless and online communications experience that is much closer to what hearing people encounter when talking with others on the phone.” Except, you know, with more emoticons and LOLs.

AOL tried to squeeze a little over $100 in fees from a customer for upgrades he hadn’t asked for, hadn’t approved, hadn’t used and of which he hadn’t even been notified. Unluckily for AOL, that customer is a professional writer. Current Wall Street Journal writer Jason Zweig used to work for a Time-Warner-owned magazine, and when Time Warner merged with AOL, he and his colleagues all received free AOL email accounts. Zweig gave his to his wife, who used it up until last year. But recently, Zweig started receiving phone calls from AOL’s customer service reps in India, saying he owed $103.60 for an upgrade he knew nothing about. Turns out the terms of agreement he signed years ago may (or may not) have included a section allowing AOL to upgrade his service and charge him for it

There are two versions of the AIM app in the App Store right now. The free one, with ads, and the $2.99 one, with no ads. They both have push notifications . The app does what was touted this year at the iPhone 3.0 event : display notifications when the app is closed, show you how many outstanding messages you have and basically keep you “connected” to the AIM service even when you’re not actively using the app. The free version is here and the pay version is here

AOL and Time Warner will split into two distinct entities by the end of the year. What AOL will do out in the cold without Time Warner’s blanket, only time will tell. [ NYT ]

We’re here! Apple’s about to unveil the iPhone 3.0 OS, and Brian Lam and I are going to be covering it live . LIVE. And don’t forget to play pizza bingo while you follow the keynote . Archive Below: 7:06 AM ON MAR 17 2009 Jason Chen: One of the benefits of having these keynotes in Cupertino instead of SF (for me) is the fact that I don’t have to wake up at 5 AM. Wee. 8:38 AM ON MAR 17 2009 Jason Chen: 8:41 AM ON MAR 17 2009 Jason Chen: We’re here! The weather’s surprisingly mild, so we’re not like freezing cattle outside waiting to be let in