Aram Zucker-Scharff

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Top of the Interwebs:

Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy a while back and has now put itself up for sale. This isn’t really top of the internet as much as it is ‘everyone on the internet saw this coming in 1999.’  The slow-to-awaken video rental chain, which is now $1 billion in debt, is fielding an offer for $290 million.

To put that in context, Twitter is valued at $8 billion, The New York Times has an enterprise value of $2.17 billion, Barnes and Noble is considered worth $1.67 billion and Blockbuster-buster Netflix is worth $12.32 billion.

Anyway, if Blockbuster still exists anywhere near you, keep an eye out for more sales, they are going to want to liquefy some assets to look more attractive. What ever happened to those old video games they used to rent? Dumpster diving anyone?

Self-aggrandizement:

Looking for a remarkably useful  Twitter archiving tool? Check out my latest blog post, in which I help you understand how to use WhatTheHashtag.

Pwety:

Why save PBS? This heroic infographic has the answer. It’s a good one.

Niche controversy of the day:

Sony continues its constant and pointless battle to prevent people from hacking the PS3 by creating a “hack-proof” version of the console. Excuse me for a minute… I had to get up off the floor and stop laughing. Does Sony know what it is getting itself into by calling its device hack-proof? Here’s a hint:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHsx1cvACkY[/youtube]

To top off their hubris, they threatened to ban hackers from the PlayStation Network forever. I personally don’t see the attraction of the PSN, but I guess some people really wanted their Little Big Planet 2 maps and made very short work of that threat.

Worth looking at today:

Smelling the scent of failure on Apple, Square joins a number of other transaction facilitation services to provide an even cheaper alternative to the iPhone-maker’s fantastically stupid attempt to blackmail developers.

More information on the New Zealand earthquake. Also: Photos.

Apple may or may not be delayed in its unveiling of the iPad 2 and iPhone 2. Honestly just flip a coin and you could get just as accurate an idea as any given reporter. Whatever.

Al Jazeera English is in talks with US cable providers to get the big names to carry the network.

37signals has a wholly depressing blog post on all the awesome services that Yahoo got their grubby mitts on and what happened to them. In case you don’t want to read the whole thing, let me skip to the end: it killed them or let them die a slow innovation-less death. All 34 of them. What a damn shame.