It looks like the local market is heating up even more, with MSNBC.com announcing the acquisition of Chicago-based EveryBlock.

Sources said MSNBC.com–a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal–paid several million dollars for the “hyper-local” information site, which is up and running in 15 cities, including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Boston.

In June, Time Warner online unit AOL paid about $10 million to buy Patch Media, a platform that does deeply localized coverage of communities on a range of topics.

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Adding the final leg of its new strategy to reinvigorate AOL, the Time Warner online unit said it was buying two small local start-ups, Patch Media and Going.

Each acquisition–which focus on hyperlocal community news (Patch) and events (Going)–is small, about $10 million.

Ironically, local has previously been a big arena for AOL, which launched its Digital City unit with great fanfare more than a decade ago. AOL still runs Digital City, as well as its CityGuide listing offering.

But, in a move that will surely be scrutinized, Patch is a company whose principal investor has been AOL’s new CEO Tim Armstrong. AOL declined to say how much he had invested in the company, but sources said it was less than $5 million.

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Several years ago, my longtime friend and colleague Amy Dickinson suddenly became, well, Ann Landers.

Well, not exactly Ann herself, as that would be weird–but she took over the famous syndicated advice column in the Chicago Tribune, which changed the name to “Ask Amy.”

So, BoomTown did just that on my recent visit to Chicago, interviewing Dickinson about what questions she gets about the Internet from readers.

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BoomTown is winging it across the country for a Dow Jones event in Chicago–we do our part for the mother ship here at All Things Digital!–so there will not likely be posts today.

That is, unless Yahoo and Microsoft merge, buy Twitter and mount a cavalry attack on the Googleplex.

One can dream!

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Here are two very funny online videos, making the rounds of late.

The first is from “The Daily Show” earlier this week, in which Samantha Bee perfectly mocks products from iRobot–best known for the automatic vacuum called the Roomba–as killerbots.

In the second, local Chicago anchors from WGN News, Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange, do a very impressive Las Vegas-style routine during the commercial break. It is hard to look away.

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BoomTown has finally gotten used to the silly gee-gaws television networks use on election night, like touchscreen maps and drawing all over the screen and jump-up numbers.

But one used by cable network CNN last night–a hologram of a various people beamed into the studio to look like they were right there with Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper–was downright freaky.

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Both President-Elect Barack Obama and the man he beat in a historic election, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, gave the kinds of speeches at the end of the last night that make one proud to be part of a country where stark differences still mean grace can prevail when it’s all over.

But don’t take my word for it–the Internet makes it possible to consider them again and again.

They are a shining example of–as Obama quoted our greatest president (in my estimation, at least), Abraham Lincoln last night–of how such a contest should end: “We are not enemies, but friends, though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

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Today, the news was the worst possible for Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Hudson, an impossibly talented and obviously lovely singer and actress, and her sister, after the body of her seven-year-old nephew was found after an intense search of the Chicago area.

Hudson used her MySpace page to encourage fans to help in the now tragically-ended search for the boy, and news stories broke all day long. Her mother and brother were also found murdered in their home several days ago.

No surprise, Internet video is popping up all over, many in the form of condolences to Hudson in the form of songs and music mashups.

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