Verizon has dropped the price of the Samsung Galaxy Tab from $600 to $500, putting a pretty significant price gap between the tablet and even the cheapest iPad with 3G access, which retails for $630.

Furthermore, all new Verizon Galaxy Tabs will come with a $60 Samsung MediaHub voucher, giving owners a chance to rent a large amount of movies through the service for free.

Other carriers have been offering the voucher with purchases for the better part of a month.

If you purchased a Tab within the last two weeks, you can bring in the receipt and receive a $100 refund, as well, says the company.

Samsung's tablet runs on Android 2.2, has a 1GHz processor, a 7-inch multi-touch screen and dual cameras.

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The Wikipedia Foundation, parent of online encyclopedia Wikipedia has said this weekend that they have raised $16 million, allowing the service to remain ad-free for another year.

Founder Jimmy Wales said the fundraiser was the "shortest" in the company's history, lasting just over 50 days.

Over 500,000 individuals made donations, doubling on 2009's count.

Donors from 140 countries donated an average of $22, and $13.7 million of the donations came via the Internet. The rest came from direct checks.

All the money will go to paying off Wikipedia's ever-increasing infrastructure costs, staffing, program support and grants.

Concluded Wales (via PCM):

This outpouring of support by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people from all walks of life is a testament to the spirit of the Wikimedia movement. Wikipedia is a public resource created and maintained by hundreds of thousands of volunteers, relied on by over 400 million people and paid for by half a million donors. It's truly user-created, supported and maintained.

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According to the Financial Times, social networking giant Facebook tried to purchase microblogging site Twitter in 2008 for $500 million, but was rejected.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says he wanted the service to become "a viable business" rather than have it taken over by a larger company.

"We've created something that people are finding value in," added Stone. "But we haven't yet created a business out of this, and we really wanted to do that."

In 2008, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered $500 million in private Facebook shares for the company but Twitter founders Stone, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey each agreed that Facebook offered nothing that they wanted.

The microblogging site has 175 million registered users. 95 million tweets are sent daily.

Twitter has been valued at over $3 billion in recent fund-raising sessions despite never making one cent of profit.

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Goldman Sachs has invested $450 million in social networking giant Facebook, valuing the site at $50 billion.

The investment values the company higher than Time Warner, eBay and Yahoo.

Says angel investor Chris Sacca (via NYT):

"When you think back to the early days of Google, they were kind of ignored by Wall Street investors, until it was time to go public. This time, the Street is smartening up. They realize there are true growth businesses out here. Facebook has become a real business, and investors are coming out here and saying, 'We want a piece of it.'"

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long resisted going public, but many recent reports have suggested an IPO (initial public offering) for the company could be coming in 2012.

As part of the deal, Goldman has invested $450 million, and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies has invested another $50 million. DST now has over $400 million invested.

Goldman also has the right to sell up to $75 million worth of their stake to DST.

When DST first invested, however, their stake valued the company at $10 billion, meaning their investment is already worth five times what they paid for it, in just a short number of years.

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Sony has filed a patent infringement complaint against LG this week with the U.S. ITC (International Trade Commission), claiming many of the company's mobile phones and modems infringe on Sony's proprietary tech.

One of the patents relates to pictures associated with phone numbers. Most phones give the option for owners to add pictures of friends and family that will show up when that person calls.

According to Bloomberg, "Sony also said LG infringes on patented technology for encoding and transmitting audio in ways that adjust to available bandwidth capacity; delaying the start of audio recording for a set amount of time so that the recording doesn't pick up inadvertent noises; and technology for using the images streaming through a device's camera as a real-time viewfinder, then switching to saving better-quality files when the user decides to snap a picture."

Some of the other patents relate to how bandwidth is distributed and how network capacity is best used by modems.

Sony claims that Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson license the patented technology, which LG did not pay for.

ITC cases sometimes take up to a decade to resolve, so it is not likely that LG products will be blocked in the U.S. anytime soon.

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Vizio, the top LCD maker in the United States, will make a move into the smartphone and tablet markets, say multiple reports.

The HDTV maker teased their latest moves during a short commercial played during the Rose Bowl, yesterday.

Reports state the company will reveal the products before the CES event later this week, perhaps even as early as a press conference tomorrow.

The Vizio "Via" smartphone will run on Android 2.2, have a 4-inch screen, and dual-cameras.

Vizio's tablet will have an 8-inch HD screen, Wi-Fi, run on Android 2.2, and include dual-cameras, as well.

Both devices will sell through Wal-Mart and Costco.

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Barnes & Noble has followed Amazon's recent Kindle announcement by claiming that the Nook e-reader is their best-selling item, ever, just like the Kindle is for Amazon.

The Nook sells for $149, and the company recently released the Nook Color for $250.

Over the holiday season, the Nook Color was the best-selling gift, adds the company.

Furthermore, the company says digital books have begun to outsell physical book purchases, with 1 million digital books being sold on Christmas Day, alone.

Amazon made a similar announcement in July.

Neither company has released concrete sales figures on their e-reader devices.

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