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Finally! Admission of wrongdoing! After years as Blockbuster's largest shareholder, Carl Icahn, who at one point amassed some 17 million shares of the now-bankrupt company, has called Blockbuster "the worst investment I ever made." In a candid piece written for the Harvard Business Review, Icahn opens up about the rental giant's struggles and failures in an ever-changing industry. "[Blockbuster] failed because of too much debt and changes in the industry.

Sprint has just revealed it's integrating Google 's Voice digital telephony protocol into its cell phone network offering.

The long-awaited New York Times digital subscriptions paywall has been revealed and, at first glance, it seems to be exactly how Apple would like it to be. Print purists will be pleased it's more expensive than the paper edition.

Last week, Mozilla VP of products Jay Sullivan indicated that HTML5 would eventually replace Adobe Flash. Along with Mozilla Firefox, every browser maker out there seems to be jumping on the bandwagon of HTML5, a term that has become the most overused buzzword in the tech industry. But HTML5 is more than just the "trend de jour," says Ryan Gavin, senior director of Internet Explorer

Greetings from Austin, Texas. I’m at the annual South By SouthWest (SXSW) Interactive festival. I’m writing a follow up story about the Small Business Web which I described last March after SXSW 2010 as “a group of software companies whose programs are connected to each other via a set of communication channels

Tokyo Electric Co.

The ongoing disaster in Japan is an unprecedented human tragedy.

As applications for the 2011 Inc. 500 | 5000 pour into our offices, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of the companies that are vying to appear on our ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. (For more information and to apply, go to http://www.inc.com/inc5000apply/2011/ .) One that caught our eye was Cotati, California-based KG Technologies .

"What's the short code for American Idol?" asks Joseph Gillespie, CEO of mobile marketing company Zoove, referring to the show's text-message voting system. "It's the largest use-case in history, but no one can remember it because the number doesn't make any sense." How brands connect to consumers is a huge headache for marketers--not just Idol fans--who've now tried almost every trick in the book to get your attention. SMS messages ("Text YES to 45938993"), QR codes, Facebook profiles, website addresses--you can't find an advertisement today that doesn't feature at least one of these marketing tactics

The Boston startup plans to disrupt Groupon and Foursquare by making a game that combines the genius of both, and imagines how the benefits of games can extend beyond business. Thousands of SXSW -goers packed like dominoes onto the escalators of the Austin Convention Center on Saturday, waiting to hear Seth Priebatsch, the 22-year-old founder and "chief ninja" of Scvngr , proclaim the future of location-based apps

U.S.

The extent of the damage at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear facility is still unknown, but comparisons to Chernobyl were inevitable as soon as fuel rods became exposed and an explosion rocked the site .

%excerpt% See the original post: 7 Tips for Networking at SXSW

Apple has some hot products on sale, and its designs push many an envelope. But are its decisions skewing the PC industry somewhat

Warner Bros. announced Tuesday that it will offer movies directly for rent or purchase through Facebook, becoming the first Hollywood studio to introduce a video-on-demand service on the world's largest social network. So far, only one title is available for rent--Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight--but Warner says it will roll out more films in the coming months.