Kelly Black

Somebody call a doctor quick; the markets are in desperate need of a house call. The driving force behind the across-the-board weakness in tech stocks continue to be those darn earnings warnings. And folks, don’t let anyone fool you with kid gloves – the snowballing preannouncements we’re seeing this quarter are the worst we’ve seen […]

Shares of Corel rocketed 57% following news that Microsoft would pocket a 25% stake in the struggling Ottawa-based software developer. Redmond’s eight hundred pound gorilla will buy 24 million non-voting convertible preferred shares for nearly $135 million, or about five and a half bucks a pop. What was a substantial premium paid prior to the […]

There are vicious rumors swirling on Wall Street that Barbie may be forced to put both her Dream House and Corvette up for auction on eBay following news that parent, Mattel Inc. , has finally sold its hemorrhaging subsidiary, The Learning Co., to L.A.-based investment firm Gores Technology Group for next to nothing. Mattel acquired […]

Former CNN Moneyline host, Lou Dobbs, announced late last week that his SPACE.com brainchild would go where few Net start-ups have gone before – profitability. And to get there, the newcomer will apparently have to lighten its load to the tune of 22 layoffs, or about 20% of its workforce. According to official statements, the […]

Wondering what Apple execs were thinking when they saw priceline.com issue a modest earnings warning yesterday and its shares subsequently were cut in half as a result? Oh, to be a fly on the wall. This earnings season is quickly shaping up to be an all out bloodbath, and grumpy investors are by no means […]

First you see the lightning – then you hear the thunder. That about describes priceline.com’s utter meltdown following CBS’ 48 Hours investigative report late last week, capped off by an earnings warning bombshell from the name-your-own-price e-tailer yesterday. Shares were treated to a 42% haircut following the news, down $8 to close at $10 and […]

Kelly, Usually I enjoy your muckraking style, but this time you implied but failed to elucidate two important facts: 1.) After WIPO is done, the whole matter can be taken up in court, and yes, big companies have an advantage here too; and 2.) small companies with legitimate sites that predate the petitioner are winning […]

Edgar Online poked its head out from under the beleaguered online financial patch to announce plans to acquire InsiderTrader.com. While terms of the deal were sketchy, I crunched the numbers to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 and $3 million in EDGR stock. The site’s founder will also come aboard as VP of corporate […]

After months of cowering at the hand of legal saber-rattling from a lone attorney representing Metallica and Dr. Dre, university officials are fighting back, refusing to ban Napster on their respective college campuses. Finally flexing a little legal muscle, Duke, Stanford, and MIT all sent rebuttal letters to Howard King, the LA-based attorney representing an […]

The Wall Street Journal penned an entertaining piece yesterday entitled AOL’s loose cannon: Justin Frankel. Frankel is the twenty-something who cooked up the music company Nullsoft, which America Online acquired last year for $100 million in stock. He’s both irreverent and wildly popular amongst the open source community for his many side projects that include […]

It was a neat idea. But during lean times, ‘neat’ simply won’t pay the light bills. And Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX), a virtual exchange that allows users to swap make-believe stocks, was a stone’s throw away from finding a home in the dot-com boneyard. Just days before the Santa Monica-based start-up was prepared to shutter […]

Like a classic he said, she said, there seemed to be an awful lot of confusion amongst analysts and investors alike who were dissecting Amazon’s partnership with Yahoo! , which expired on Tuesday. Yahoo! may have successfully replaced the online bookseller with rival barnesandnoble.com , but make no mistake here – Amazon dumped Yahoo!. Under […]