Amazon struck a gold mine with its online retail business, but the company may be looking to expand its reach. Sources speaking to Good e-Reader has informed the site Amazon is planning on opening a retail store in Seattle in a few months time. The design of the store is rumored to be small and more »

Owners of the HTC Sensation 4G on T-Mobile are going to find themselves with one less application at the end of October. HTC announced it will be closing its Listen music store on October 31. Everything about the store will cease to exist including any songs you may have purchased. HTC recommends downloading any music purchased from the Listen app because they will all be inaccessible once the store shuts down.

Walmart’s MP3 store is in its final days. On August 28, 2011, the Walmart Music Downloads Store will be closed. Come August 29, all content from the store will be disabled. Customer support will still be around for anyone who purchased music from Walmart’s MP3 store prior to its closure.

Over the next three years, Microsoft has said they will go from the 11 stores they currently have to 86. Originally built to compete with the successful Apple stores, Microsoft is more than doubling down, the company is committing to putting boots all over the US, but focused primarily on the Northeast, Florida, California and more »

Has private billing by the companies that make the OS helped the market for smartphone applications? Bucking the trend of carrier-billed applications, the smartphone revolution has changed many of the rules. One company in Germany is looking to undue this model and put the power of billing back into carriers hands. The new generation of more »

Just a few days back we were happy to hear that at least some of those people who pre-ordered a Nook were going to have it in time for Christmas morning, well it seems that may not have been all that good of news for everyone. It appears that there have been at least more more »

At one time, electronics giants Best Buy and Circuit City seemed to share the market without any clear fiscal winner. Circuit City was often credited with building one of the first successful box stores back in the 1980s. However, recent financial reports show that Best Buy has gained market dominance while Circuit City is struggling more »

With the release of the iPhone App Store and the Android Market, a lot of apps are trying to become the next social networking app. E-ventr for Android tries to accomplish this goal by managing your free time. With E-ventr you can create ope events, or join open events that your friends that are attempting to do something.

Sure, E-ventr requires everyone else to have the same app, which as of now means they also need to have a G1 phone. So, assuming that is the case, you’ll be able to coordinate events easily.

Committing to a firm date of March 2009, RIM announced today it, too, would have an app store at its super-fun RIM BBDC (BlackBerry Developement Center). Just like the cool kids from Apple and Google, users can shop for applications to bring new functionality or just time wasters to their phones. Developers can begin submitting applications to RIM come this December. In what appears to be an obvious attempt to thumb its nose at Apple with a, “whatever you can do, I can do better” attitude RIM will only keep 20% of the revenue brought in as opposed to Apples crushing 30%.

Your boss might still want you to work.

Users will have to navigate PayPal for the purchase of apps, which could make the ride a little bumpy from a diminutive screen (assuming everyone isn’t upgrading to the Storm if it shows). What’s more, in a move to be uber-business friendly to your corporate IT, running BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry Professional Software, can make sure you can’t get any games, just like on your laptop. Hmmmphf.

Might the telecoms stop RIM from offering the storefront on their phones? Find out by clicking “more” below.

This is where we call out by names the actions and companies that seem odd, out of touch or just plain straight up smokin crack. Technology is an odd realm where PR speak doesn’t hold a lot of water if the 1s and 0s don’t line up. This week sees posturing, positioning and flat out insanity. Here is what caught my eye this week:

Hit the jump to see bonehead moves from Apple, Google, T-Mobile, SanDisk and Motorola…