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RIM Will Combat Lackluster PlayBook Sales With New Software and Pricing

Tricia Duryee in Mobile on September 15, 2011 at 3:28 pm PT

Poor sales performance of the BlackBerry PlayBook only managed to drag down the company’s second-quarter results, which came in at the low end of forecasts.

Zynga's Mark Pincus: "Amazon Built Shop. We Want to Build Play."

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on April 13, 2011 at 3:52 pm PT

Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus outlined the company’s social-gaming ambitions last night in a rare public appearance to celebrate the grand opening of the San Francisco company’s offices in Seattle. Here’s a look at how he thinks Zynga will become known as the “play” of the Internet, just as Amazon became the “shop.”

Gambling on the Pocket Casino

Ina Fried in Mobile on January 7, 2011 at 1:34 pm PT

I found one of the more interesting wireless devices not on the show floor, but on the casino floor at the Venetian. Called the Pocket Casino, it’s a handheld device a bit bigger than a smartphone that can be used for real gambling–poker, blackjack, slots, even football. $40 worth of real gambling ensued.

Yahoo's Stock Acts Like It's in Play–Because It Kind of Is, as Predators Circle

Kara Swisher in News on October 13, 2010 at 3:34 pm PT

Make no mistake–there are no definitive offers on the table to do a variety of takeover deals of Yahoo by either private equity moneybags or from big media giants such as News Corp. or smaller Web firms such as AOL. But that does not mean that major players are not circling Yahoo and assessing the situation aggressively, a fact reflected in the rise in the Internet giant’s stock price today based on the many rumors swirling around it. Yahoo shares were up almost six percent to close at $15.25, a high of late. The stock is up to $16.20 in after-hours trading.

The Motorola CLIQ: WINR or LOZR?

John Paczkowski in News on September 10, 2009 at 12:30 pm PT

Motorola has finally announced its bet-the-company Android handset. At GigaOM’s Mobilize 09 event in San Francisco this morning, Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-CEO and CEO of the company’s handset division, uncrated the CLIQ, a device it describes unremarkably as the “first phone with social skills.”

Mossberg Does Moby: Video and More!

Kara Swisher in News on August 11, 2009 at 1:43 am PT

Last night, onstage at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, my most excellent partner, Walt Mossberg, interviewed well-known techno musician Moby about music and entertainment in the digital age. The wide-ranging talk was part of an ongoing cultural festival series organized by The Wall Street Journal, called Summer Scoops Live. Here are some video clips of the event and more.

An Indie Label Sounds Off: Why We Don’t Love Grooveshark

Peter Kafka in Media on June 18, 2009 at 4:39 am PT

When a big music label sues a scrappy Web music start-up, most people tend to sympathize reflexively with the little guy. But not everyone. Here’s the case against Grooveshark–not from EMI, which has hauled them into court, but from an indie that by all rights ought to be working with Grooveshark: “The service is just ripping off the band.”

To Sell or Not to Sell–That Was the Question for Twitter (But Was Its Answer Right?)

Kara Swisher in News on November 25, 2008 at 3:51 am PT

There are two schools of thought about Twitter’s decision not to sell itself to Facebook, as it did not in the fail-whale of a deal that BoomTown reported on yesterday. Here’s my favorite quote from an Internet exec who thought the microblogging service’s decision to turn down $500 million in stock (and some cash) in the hot social-networking site was–how can I put this delicately?–stupid: “If Twitter turned down 500m in stock, they should go see a shrink.” But, others disagreed, with another big Web player noting: “Why should Twitter hitch itself to Facebook’s horse, when they don’t have too?”