Shares of Microsoft ( MSFT ) have been under pressure this morning, and one thing appearing to contribute to downturn are rumors the company would step in to purchase Nokia ( NOK ) for $19 billion, according to remarks by Eldar Murtazin , a blogger widely credited with scooping Microsoft’s deal with Nokia earlier this year. Murtazin’s blog appears not to have that claim today, but he is cited as stating such by Todd Haselton in a piece this morning on BoyGeniusReport . A Nokia spokesperson, however, tells The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Lawton a short while ago that, “These rumors are completely baseless.” Murtazin has speculated as recently as May 16th that the two companies were talking about a deal

Nokia ( NOK ) shares continue to fall this morning as the downgrades pour in following the company’s cut in its outlook yesterday.

via guestofaguest.com : This being an odd numbered year, about 300,000 art lovers are set to gather in Venice, Italy for the the 2011 Venice Biennale. The tremendous bi-annual (dur) contemporary art exhibition begins this week and we have the all the details on what to expect from this year’s event. MORE> >

Just, let him finish. I’m going to one-up Mark Twain in the quantity department and spin two yarns about jumping frogs, one which has been frequently told, the other not so much. Neither of them have anything to do with Samuel Clemens’ heralded short story, but both, metaphorically at least, describe our current investment markets and how to think about the future.

Performance update.

It’s official. Twitter has acquired internet advertising startup AdGrok , founder Matthew McEachen wrote in a blog post yesterday. AdGrok’s advertising platform simplifies the process of running internet marketing campaigns for small businesses that aren’t very familiar with the web.

Unless the Wilpons think they can come up with $200 million, in which case they’d better start sending Irving Picard a daily Edible Arrangement now . Einhorn has agreed in principle to purchase roughly 33 percent of the team for $200 million, which will infuse cash and keep the organization solvent in the immediate future.

And you thought LinkedIn ( LNKD ) was fantastically overpriced? The Financial Times’s April Dembosky yesterday wrote that Facebook investor and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel thinks LinkedIn’s underwriters, Morgan Stanley , Merrill Lynch , and JP Morgan drastically underpriced the company’s IPO two weeks ago, which seems plainly evident given the stock price today is at $85.80, 91% above the $45 IPO price the banks set

Inland Empire’s newly built state of the art $105-million Riverside Hillcrest High School can’t afford to hire staff or operate due to state budget cuts, will sit unused. [ LATimes ] Even more bad news for our sorry baseball franchise as two fires break out in Dodger Stadium over the holiday weekend. Starting to think the Dodgers may be cursed..

The Washington Post’s Michael Rosenwald this morning pens an interesting piece about how the federal government, under CIO Vivek Kundra , is letting more and more government workers choose their own gadgets of choice, rather than impose on them use of government-specified devices. Although a number of anecdotes come up in the piece about Apple’s ( AAPL ) iPhone and iPad , and Google’s ( GOOG ) Gmail, the article is titled, somewhat more pointedly, “Federal government loosens its grip on the BlackBerry ,” meaning, of course, the traditional use of Research in Motion ( RIMM ) messaging devices