Kelly Black

So, I hear the Feds have ordered convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick to keep a lid on the lecture circuit or risk a return to prison. He was cut loose from the big house at the turn of the millennium after a five-year stint behind bars. Under the terms of his probation, U.S. District Judge Mariana […]

TheStreet.com (TSCM) has taken far too long grasping one of the Web’s most basic concepts. Content may be king, but free content holds the keys to the kingdom. And the damage inflicted by its ill-advised subscription-based business model may be irreparable. Or as Tom and David Gardner would say, “Most unFoolish.” When brick-and-mortar snails started […]

It’s a striking image indelibly etched in Net investors’ minds. Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman parading in front of the Nasdaq market site wearing T-shirts and blue jeans, sporting Cheshire grins that could only belong to two twenty-something co-founders who just conquered an opening day record with their smash hit theglobe.com (TGLO). From $9 bucks […]

Drkoop (KOOP) was in the news again yesterday. There’s some good news and a bit of bad news for the online health care portal. The bad news is that the company announced it will miss first quarter revenue expectations and report a net loss worse than anticipated. The good news is that Koop’s share price […]

I came across an offline media journalist’s piece the other day that took a peek at my favorite search engine, Google. The columnist used a broad brushstroke to determine why the start-up is so wildly popular with its users. Tops on her list were the superior search results retrieved by Google. In fact, that was […]

M&A activity could use a little mouth-to-mouth right now, after limping into the holiday weekend last Friday. But Softie’s bearish antitrust ruling and an overheated CPI number are still a drag on the broader market, keeping a lid on rampant consolidation. Rather than pick through the bones, I’ll kick off the week with something light […]

Idealab!’s founder Bill Gross is a visionary. He’s also a dynamite businessman. So on the heels of Estee Lauder’s (EL) land grab of beauty e-tailer gloss.com, Gross hatched plans to up his minority stake in his own beauty supplies incubatee, Eve.com, to a controlling interest. In a twist, he’ll also take the reigns as chairman […]

I was browsing through yesterday’s USA Today and came upon a handful of interesting tidbits I’d like to share with readers. The first order of business had to do with smug investors who’ve refrained from buying Internet and technology stocks during the last year. Interviewee after interviewee pined about how s/he knew that the rampant […]

First off, thanks to all my readers who deluged my mailbox with feedback this week and last. I know many of you have portfolios bruised worse than a bowl full of rotten fruit, and it seems as if investors are headed for the hills. For those of you who feel like lifers parked in front […]

Is it just me, or is Main Street feeling a little grumpier of late? People I’m meeting out and about seem to be edgier, worried over their retirement funds and the like. And this last week alone, I’ve been dishing investment advice like a Pez dispenser. Even when I called to cancel a free trial […]

It’s crunch time for tech stocks. As if you didn’t know that already. Brokers are busy thumbing through rolodexes, delivering margin calls by the baker’s dozen. Panic has started to set in, and the Net high-flyers just can’t seem to catch a break. Okay. I’ll admit it. Yesterday, I went on a major Net stock […]

First it was the flower children from Blue Mountain Arts that scraped together a modest living developing playful e-greeting cards. But, one has to wonder how underachiever Excite@Home’s (ATHM) billion-dollar buyout affected the Dead Heads. As the founders’ son Jared Schuzt tells it, money hasn’t changed Mom and Pop much. But, I just can’t help […]