With the news this week that the recession officially ended in June 2009, there’s a ton of commentary about how it still feels like we’re in recession. But from where I sit, it never felt much like a recession at all. Revenues tightened up and people didn’t get raises, but I don’t know any friends who lost apartments, few who lost jobs and few companies that went under, just because of… → Read More
It appears that there may be a recession proof industry after all. The Solar Energies Industry Association just released their annual report, and while coal and oil are “suffering”, solar is a growth industry. → Read More
The Media Democracy Survey tries to ascertain America’s entertainment habits. It comes out every year, and this year’s edition just went live. As you might image, the terrible economy played a major role in the way Americans went about their business this past year. In fact, it turns out that Americans now watch (well, watched in the past year) an average of 18 hours of TV per week, which is up… → Read More
It seems gamers are playing the likes of Guitar Hero and Wii Whatever more hours per week than ever before. Is that the recession’s fault? Maybe! Back in January, gamers were playing video games for an average of nearly 19 hours per week. In 2006, that number was just shy of 15 hours per week. → Read More
Would you still consider your TV to be a necessity, or has its functionality largely been replaced by other devices such as your computer? Well, the largest number of Americans since 1973 no longer see television as a necessity. Only 54 percent of Americans think TV is a necessity these days. Not surprisingly, young people are least likely to call TV a necessity. → Read More
Go ahead, walk around your local mall with this Sanwa throat microphone and see what happens. Created by Japan’s Sanwa, and modeled after similar throat microphones used by elite military forces around the world (supposedly), the mic wraps around your throat and is supposed to improve call clarity. → Read More
Here’s a simple question: has the recession negatively affected your gaming? That is, are you buying less games; renting more games in lieu of buying them; selling old titles to scrap up cash for new ones (or other items)? Because if you ask GameStop’s Bob McKenzie, who’s a senior vice president of merchandising, as VentureBeat did, he’d likely say “no.” Sales there haven’t plateaued or… → Read More
This isn’t exactly new, in the strictest definition of the word, but why let that stop us? A group of Sirius XM creditors, creditors whose money makes the company hum on a daily basis, have threatened to seek the ouster of chief executive officer Mel Karmazin if the company files for bankruptcy. (Remember: that could happen as early as tomorrow.) The WSJ notes, however, that the odds of this… → Read More
Hope you aren’t a Sirius XM shareholder. When word broke last night that the company had retained the services of some fancy bankruptcy lawyers—the worst, that bankruptcy could be filed “within days”—fans of the service, naturally, started to freak. There’s a few more details today that may be worth your time, such as the water cooler talk that this could all be a ploy by CEO Mel… → Read More
In the late 1990s, when I used to watch Fox Sports News in the morning before school, there used to me a commercial for the Wall Street Journal. Something about two kids, both alike in dignity, but one who was raised by a Wall Street Journal-reading family, and the other, ostensibly, by a pack of wolves; wolves don’t read too well. Naturally, the kid from the WSJ-reading family went on to become a… → Read More
The Microsoft-owned developers responsible for the Microsoft Flight Simulator series (and the upcoming Microsoft Train Simulator) have been hit pretty hard by all those job cuts. The worst reports suggest that everyone in connection with Flight Simulator was let go. Yikes. → Read More
The sales of new PCs — desktops and laptops and netbooks — has been on the rise every quarter since the second half of 2001. That’s a lot of quarters of continued growth, and the last five years have seen an average increase of 15%. But as we enter 2009 things are starting to slow down. → Read More
If you’re going to CES in two weeks, or are visiting sites like us here at CrunchGear to get up-to-the-minute news, know this: the show will absolutely suck. That’s what the Los Angeles Times says, at least. → Read More
It’s official. We’re in a recession. Recessions naturally inject fear and panic, which is only heightened by every discussion of market losses, layoffs, bailouts, and somber predictions. We’re only human after all; of course everything affects us personally and emotionally.
Fear is not a catalyst for productivity however.
With valuable advice pouring in from concerned and sympathetic… → Read More
Adios, Circuit City. You will be remembered forever as a not-good-enough version of Best Buy (even though Best Buy is pretty suspect, too.) Yes, Circuit City has officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It did so last week, when we were busy talking about store closings and fake sales. It is, I think, the biggest tech-realted failure (if that’s the right word to use) of the… → Read More
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