Al Gore gets 10,387 more Apple options

Serving as a lightning rod for activist shareholders has its rewards

Photo: Apple Inc.

Al Gore took his lumps at Apple's (AAPL) shareholders meeting Thursday.

Sitting in the front row with the other outside directors, he had to bite his tongue as two pro-environment proposals were voted down and a gadfly named Shelton Ehrlich took the mic to call him a "laughingstock."

"The glaciers have not melted," Ehrlich said, referring to Gore's frequent MORE

Wal-Mart enters the battle of TV vs. the Internet

The retailing giant's purchase of a little startup has industry watchers wondering what happens next.

While everyone else was watching the Olympics on TV this week, TV and movie industry executives were watching a deal between Wal-mart and a little-known Silicon Valley startup.

That's because Wal-Mart said Monday it is buying Vudu, whose embedded technology enables viewers to buy or rent HD movies from a catalog of 16,000 titles via a broadband MORE

Does Facebook's Privacy Flub Matter?

Last Wednesday Los Angeles film production assistant Jaime Davila, 25, logged on to Facebook to discover more than a hundred new messages, none of which were for him. As the result of an embarrassing code glitch, the social networking website briefly misrouted messages to a small number of users. All of those messages were personal, and some were even salacious.

As word got out, Facebook's critics immediately raised privacy concerns. In MORE

Steve Jobs' chat with the iTunes winner

"Come on now, who is this?," says Georgia man who downloaded the 10 billionth song

Image: Apple Inc.

"He called me and said, 'This is Steve Jobs from Apple.' I said, 'Yeah right,' "

That's how Louie Sulcer's conversation with Apple's (AAPL) CEO began, according to the account he gave Rolling Stone:

"I have a son that loves to play tricks and he does that every now and then — calls me and MORE

Cheap bandwidth, hardware and programmers: Entrepreneurial crack?

By Theo Schlossnagle, CEO, OmniTI

In an era of cheap bandwidth, hardware, and programmers, executives have forgotten -- to their detriment -- how to prepare for the consequences of website failures.

Popular opinion holds that Web 2.0 is a surge of innovation heretofore unseen on the Internet.  Many, like Marc Andressen, argue that one of, if not the most, important contributors to this innovation is access to cheap bandwidth, programmers, hardware and MORE

Mister Softee's Revenge

Don't look now, but the year's most buzz-worthy tech company might be Microsoft.

Microsoft's comeback began with Bing search last year, and CEO Steve Ballmer plans to keep the momentum going. Photo: Jon Fortt.

Microsoft went around with a big, fat target on its forehead for a couple of decades. It was the tech giant we loved to hate. The company deserved the scorn; in the 1990s it crushed pipsqueaks Apple MORE

Android vs. Apple: The flyover states

Google phones may outsell iPhones in eight U.S. states. Can you guess which ones?

Click to enlarge. Source: Myxer

Here's a bit of geographical trivia that may have business consequences.

According to a Myxer BoomBox Report released Friday morning, smartphones running Google's (GOOG) Android operating system have closed the gap and may actually outsell Apple's (AAPL) iPhones in eight states U.S. states.

Unfortunately for the manufacturers of Android phones, the states where MORE

Apple: 3 paths to $325+ per share

A Morgan Stanley analyst offers one scenario where AAPL could hit $435 by 2012

Click to enlarge. Source: Morgan Stanley

In a report to clients issued Friday, Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty offered one of her patented risk-reward snapshots of Apple (AAPL), this one even more optimistic than the last, thanks to what she sees as two new catalysts:

The iPad launch in March. Huberty is anticipating unit sales of 6 million in MORE

Inside Apple's shareholders meeting

The press, as usual, was barred from bringing communication devices into the Apple (AAPL) shareholders meeting that began at 1 p.m. EST (10 a.m. PST) Thursday.

But, as often happens, word is leaking out despite the blackout thanks to iPhones in the hands of shareholders who shall go unnamed. We'll post their dispatches (all times EST) as they come in.

12:37 Just going in to mtg hall ... Said hello to [Roughly MORE

Bloom box debut: More IPO than CO2

The long-awaited unveiling may have another goal in mind: to fuel investors' appetite for a public offering.

By Paul Keegan, contributor

A Bloom Box in the process of being installed

It was an awesome spectacle as product launches go: Speeches by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Colin Powell, a panel of top executives from Google, eBay, Wal-Mart, FedEx, Coca-Cola, and Cox Enterprises, video messages from Diane Feinstein and Michael Bloomberg, a heart-tugging slide show MORE