In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willie Wonka sends out five Golden Tickets inside candy bars. The winners get an invitation to the mysterious chocolate factory. Alex Ostrovsky received a Golden Ticket of sorts this week from Apple after he downloaded the one-billionth song on iTunes. His reward? Apple gave him a 20-inch-screen iMac, 10 iPods and a $10,000 iTunes gift card. Apple will also create a scholarship in Ostrovsky's name at the Juilliard School of Music.

You have to love the RIM-NTP soap opera. Every day brings a new, fascinating twist, including a strange public negotiating foray by RIM co-CEO Jim Balsille (left) yesterday at a RBC conference in which he expressed a willingness to pay NTP a royalty of 5.7% of all Blackberry sales in the U.S. over the next seven years - a far cry from the 0.5% "offer" he made in a Wall St. Journal editorial last December. If the latest offer jump-starts a settlement, then today's court hearing starring Judge James Spencer may be a mute point. That said, it's still important to understand what Judge Spencer could do today. His options include:
1. Enforce an injunction that would stop Blackberry service in the U.S., even though the U.S. government has deemed it to be an essential service
2. Take into consideration the U.S. Patent Office's recent rejections of NTP's patents and dismiss NTP's lawsuit (extremely unlikely), or
3. Not make a decision from the bench today so he can give himself a few more weeks to determine the facts (a move that would disappoint the 100s of journalists camping out at his court room in Richmond, Va.
Another crucial point is despite the media frenzy hyping the fact Blackberry service in the U.S. will not stopping working today. At the very least, it will take to implement an injuction, as RIM has an opportunity to appeal the decision.
If you want to get deeper into this corporate soap opera, CNet has a selection of stories breaking out each part of the dispute, Russell Shaw interviews eight Blackberry "experts" about the injunction, while Blackberry Cool advises Blackberry users to stay calm.
Update: According to VentureWire, Good Technology Inc., which makes mobile e-mail software, has raised $20-million in a Series E round - perhaps taking advantage of the interest in Blackberry alternatives.
Update II: As expected - except by the media outlets such as MSNBC, which spent all morning warning about a Blackberry Doom scenario - Judge Spencer did not make a decision today. It appears he is encouraging the two sides to settle - otherwise he will impose an "imperfect" injunction. This strikes me as a pragmatic approach. Rather than doing something rash, he is hoping RIM and NTP comes to their senses before it's too late.