News Byte
Tricia Duryee in Commerce on December 29, 2011 at 3:41 pm PT
In order to expand its offerings online, Lowe’s has acquired ATG Stores, a Kirkland, Wash.-based home improvement retailer that operates more than 500 Web sites, ranging from LightingUniverse.com to HandandPowerToolShop.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Lowe’s said the 12-year-old company will continue to maintain separate branding and independent merchandising.
Nitrozac and Snaggy in Voices on November 9, 2011 at 9:11 am PT
Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.
Kara Swisher in News on June 28, 2011 at 6:05 am PT
Here’s an internal memo just sent out by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, in which he buries the lede by noting the business partner of content czar Arianna Huffington, Jon Brod, will move to work on its local Patch effort and Mapquest mapping unit full time.
There’s also some branding streamlining, which is akin to moving the couch over near the window where it looks better.
John Paczkowski in News on February 10, 2011 at 3:30 am PT
Hewlett-Packard bought Palm for its technology and talent, not for its brand. So it’s hardly surprising that the Palm logo and name were nowhere to be found at HP’s big webOS event Wednesday. Not in the signage. Not in the videos or slides included in the onstage presentation and not on any of the new hardware on display. The TouchPad, Veer and Pre3 all sport silver HP logos and “HP” as a prefix, not Palm.
John Paczkowski in News on December 17, 2010 at 8:12 am PT
Companies often file trademarks on brands that they never end up using, so this trio of USPTO filings, made by Hewlett-Packard on December 10 isn’t exactly remarkable. But it is interesting in that the marks for which the company has applied–“Gyst,” “Myte,” and “Veer”–sound suspiciously like the names of Palm products.
Kathy Chen, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on July 27, 2010 at 5:00 am PT
Chinese companies have for years puzzled over how to break out of low-profit manufacturing for Western companies and expand into the U.S. market with their own brands. Jack Yang thinks he has the answer.
Kara Swisher in News on July 16, 2010 at 5:17 pm PT
Facebook expects to announce its 500-millionth user next week, and will mark the occasion with a new consumer marketing initiative called “Facebook Stories.”
Last week, BoomTown got wind of the effort–which will center on a variety of life stories from users about the impact of the social networking site on their lives–and asked Facebook about it. The company confirmed its impending launch and put Randi Zuckerberg on the horn to tell me the story behind “Stories.”
