Facebook pops up in Target with gift cards for virtual goods

Facebook, which neither makes nor sells anything physical, takes a big step towards creating a unified online currency by selling gift cards in Target that work for Zynga, PopCap and other 3rd party games.

By Chadwick Matlin, contributor

Let's be honest. Come December 24th, there is always one person on your list -- a coworker, a mother-in-law -- for whom you always drummed up something else to do besides thinking about buying MORE

The valley's mess: why codes of conduct don't work

The Mark Hurd HP scandal showed it doesn't take a codebook to mete out punishment. So why do tech companies waste time and effort on misunderstood and duplicative codes that usually go ignored?

By Eleanor Bloxham, contributor

Corporations are supposed to be the antidote to government. Lean, profit-focused and self-empowered, they get the most done for the least cost. But in one huge yet overlooked way, they mimic the government's endless maze MORE

Florida tourism saved by social media. Really.

The state mounted a PR blitz to show beachgoers that Florida's surf had been spared an oily disaster. Presidential visits aside, it seems social media helped save summer tourism on the Gulf of Mexico

By Shelley DuBois, reporter

The BP (BP) Deepwater Horizon spill happened in the middle of nowhere in the Gulf of Mexico, but it also took place, as every event of global import now does, in the realm of MORE

Elevation's $100 million Pandora stake: jinx?

After years of stasis, Pandora is on the verge of being rewarded for recent growth with a fat check. But can Elevation Partners' Roger McNamee -- even with U2's Bono in the backseat -- pick a winner?

By Chadwick Matlin, contributor

Pandora, that online music station you likely have open in another tab right now, is on the verge of adopting a new sugardaddy. Elevation Partners, the venture capital firm most famous for its MORE

Pandora by the dashboard light

Whether hooked to a laptop or iPod, or mainlining the Internet, car radios are evolving, with big assists from music companies like Pandora, MOG, and Jelli

By Betsy Feldman and Benjamin Snyder, contributors

Radio – the word is likelier to conjure up FDR's fireside chats than the cutting edge of the Web, but the original broadcast warhorse has survived the Internet boom far better than other traditional media. Americans listen to the MORE

Five ways the big networks are monetizing online video

From a lá carte to all-you-can-eat, Internet video programming has many pricing options -- none of which are 'free'

By John Patrick Pullen, contributor

I'm blacked out. Again. Earlier this spring, I subscribed to MLB.TV, Major League Baseball's online video service, and was told I'd have access to every regular season game live or on demand, where available, on the device of my choice. For $119 that seemed like a fair deal, MORE

Electric car industry hitting the tipping point. For investors.

Venture capital firms are staking late stage electric car startups with huge cash to help them scale up and IPO

By Shelley DuBois, reporter

The age of the electric car is upon us, or so the numbers would suggest.

Companies in cleantech, especially those making cars, received over $400 million in funding in the second quarter of 2010, according to an Ernst & Young analysis based off of Dow Jones VentureSource data.

A company MORE

How Mafia Wars can fix the media

The online gaming industry sells $2 billion a year in virtual goods through micro-transactions. What if they sold newspapers?

By John Patrick Pullen, contributor

The Internet is an emporium of inequity. For example, in the massively popular social game Farmville, a little garden gnome will run you 13 Farmville Bucks, which converts, roughly, to $2.75 USD. Over on Kingdoms of Camelot, another successful game hosted on Facebook, the gauntlet of MORE

World Cup vuvuzela filter: the future of Internet TV?

A TV-on-your-PC company has created a way to block the locust noise from World Cup broadcasts. It's just the start of the personal-filterized future of TV.

By Paul Smalera, senior editor

In honor of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, YouTube recently added a "vuvuzela" button that would enable the plastic horn's trademark buzzing on just about any video available on the site. That's pretty funny, and if you're watching "OMG MORE

Why Adobe shouldn't give a $&*# about Apple

Despite Apple's public denouncement of Flash, its creator is about to have a banner year

By JP Mangalindan, reporter

Steve Jobs may have written his paean to the public, explaining why he feels it's time to leave Adobe's Flash to the dustbin of history, but the relegation seems premature. In fact, the record shows that consumers have been overlooking the lack of Flash support on Apple's mobile device for years. MORE