Nestle-Khosla feud, Tencent, 20.com, Force10’s feast, and Montavista revisited

Here’s the latest roundup of tech stuff:

Nestle’s CEO needs to get head checked — Or at least, that’s what Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla caustically suggested in response to Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe’s comments at Davos. Brabeck-Letmathe (pictured left) said global warming doesn’t much matter, Al Gore deliberately omitted contradictory information from his movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” and the world would be better off using money it is spending to comply with the Kyoto Protocol to improve water supplies. “He should see his proctologist to find his head,” said Khosla, “and you can quote me.” (Via Fortune)

China’s Internet revolution lessons — Is all about entertainment, and mobile IM. That’s the lesson taught by China’s hottest Internet company, Tencent, and its 35-year-old co-founder, Ma Huateng. It’s also a lesson U.S. companies are slow to learn. Story in NYT. Its mobile instant-messaging service, “QQ,” has reached more than 100 million users, or nearly 80 percent of the market.

Jason Calacanis’s new start-up — The founder of media company Weblogs, now working as an Entrepreneur in Residence at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, is starting another company, apparently called 20.com. PaidContent has the scoop. It has backing from Sequoia, Mark Cuban (an investor in Weblogs) and reportedly another big unnamed media company. It wants to develop an “online talent network, possibly as video blogs, podcasts and others, with the owners/talent given equity into the new company, as well as revenue cut from the ad sales.” Calacanis also plans a joint conference with Techcrunch.

Microsoft’s new Vista operating system may corrupt iPod — Details here.

Update on MontaVista — We talked with MontaVista‘s chief executive Tom Kelly about the staff cuts we reported last week. He said fewer than ten people have been replaced, and the changes began when Kelly first took over the reins in June. The company’s Linux operating system has great promise, he said, but the company needed to market its product more aggressively, he added, and so he made several key hires. He brought on Rusty Harris to lead field operations, Larry Slotnick as head of engineering (from Palmsource) and Bill Seawick as chief marketing officer. Sales are up 40 percent over the previous year, Kelly told VentureBeat, driven by a strong fourth quarter– suggesting the strategy is working, he said.

San Carlos, Palo Alto going WiFi? — The latest cities getting close to signing up to the Silicon Valley-wide WiFi network. Details on their limited testing here.

The latest deals — Reminder to check out our Newswire. Today, we have stories on the bio-degradable clothes hanger company, Hanger Networks, and Akamai’s acquisition of Netli, among others.

Force10 Networks eats gobbles up more cash — The San Jose provider of 10-gigabit ethernet network and switching gear has raised $60 million more in its sixth round of capital. It had already raised about $53 million, bringing the latest round to $113 million. This brings the company’s total funding to more than $400 million, making it one of the most cash-absorbent companies around. Time to go public, already.

The Superbowl ads, ranked — Where else? On YouTube. Consensus seems to be the ads weren’t that great this year.