Tricia Duryee in Commerce on April 6 at 3:34 pm PT
Casinos and some of their partners are seeing the benefits of letting players connect to games found in casinos before, during and after visits to Las Vegas.
Peter Kafka in Media on June 10, 2011 at 8:48 am PT
Twitter loves TV. And TV loves Twitter. But the relationship between the two is a funky one: Sometimes Twitter gets excited about TV shows that lots of people don’t care about. And sometimes TV’s most popular shows aren’t nearly as popular on the social messaging service.
Kara Swisher in News on April 25, 2011 at 12:58 am PT
BoomTown loves the spoof videos that late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel does–
Hello, Humpilates!–and this one featuring actor Christoph Waltz is another great one.
Waltz always plays scary dudes–usually, some version of a Nazi, if not one, in fact–in movies, and so making him a homicidal judge on the talent show “American Idol” is perfection.
Liz Gannes in Social on December 13, 2010 at 12:00 am PT
Although World Cup tweeting caused record high volume and infrastructure demands on Twitter, the most-discussed topic on Twitter this year was actually the Gulf oil spill, said the San Francisco-based company tonight.
Walt Mossberg in Personal Technology on December 1, 2010 at 6:02 pm PT
The revamped $99 Apple TV streams content from online, computers and portable devices, and allows you to rent TV shows and movies, but has a very limited selection of Internet video sources.
Voices
Scott Austin, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on November 22, 2010 at 4:58 pm PT
Very few entertainers have a better understanding of the grueling and sometimes ruthless nature of the audition process than Paula Abdul.
During the early part of her career in the 1980s she shuttled from one unsuccessful casting call to the next, often waiting hours in line like she did in her first audition with “The Gong Show,” only to get rejected for being too short.
Kara Swisher in News on October 19, 2010 at 1:00 pm PT
Today, the execs at kaChing, a social investing site, are ringing the closing bell at the Nasdaq–actually, it is more of a button-pushing–to herald in a complete shift for the Palo Alto, Calif., start-up.
That includes a new name for the year-old company–it is now officially called Wealthfront–which signals a focus on linking professional money managers to customers and a move away from the “American Idol” investor talent discovery approach that kaChing had been founded on.
News Byte
Beth Callaghan in News on September 23, 2010 at 3:52 pm PT
MySpace has a new content chief,
according to The Hollywood Reporter’s Andrew Wallenstein. As senior VP of entertainment and video, MySpace veteran Andy Marcus will take the lead on the company’s original content development and entertainment strategies. He’s already worked on leveraging the site’s new audition platform to secure strategic partnership with “American Idol,” and will also focus on developing a slate of original programming directly keyed into youth trends on the site. Marcus will report to David Donegan, senior VP of marketing.
Kara Swisher in News on May 27, 2010 at 12:46 am PT
BoomTown is not much of a fan of Bret Michaels, but it was still nice to see the singer and reality star in good form on “American Idol” last night after a spate of troubling health issues.
Michaels was hospitalized for a brain hemorrhage a month ago and just last week, was back in the hospital due to a “warning stroke.” Heart surgery is to come next.
Still, Michaels managed to belt out “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” the hit from his band, Poison, which he sang with finalist Casey James.
