One of the simplest ways to create a shortage, and the buying frenzy that typically accompanies it, is to announce that there will be one. And this is precisely what Sprint CEO Dan Hesse did for the Palm Pre Tuesday. Speaking at J.P. Morgan’s Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference shortly after Sprint announced the handset’s street date, Hesse said he anticipates that supplies will be limited, at least initially.

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After the collapse of acquisition talks with IBM, Sun’s shares continue to take a beating. Plus, Twittering Rhode Island’s daily cash flow and bad news from Blockbuster. (April 7)

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Blockbuster in a Monday filing told the Securities and Exchange Commission what anyone who’s observed its fast-declining fortunes has known for some time now: The company isn’t sure it can stay in business much longer. In a PricewaterhouseCoopers assessment included as part of its latest 10-K, Blockbuster acknowledged that its financial situation raises “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

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Repudiating claims that Blockbuster intended to file for bankruptcy earlier this month, spokesperson Karen Raskopf said the troubled video rental chain has “lots of plans to grow our business.” If inking a video-on-demand deal with a declining DVR pioneer is one of them… well, that’s not much of a plan, is it?

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Its proposed acquisition of Twitter now little more than an unrequited Superpoke, Facebook is tweaking its own service to mimic the microblogging outfit. The social network on Wednesday unveiled a new homepage that, in a nod to Twitter’s real-time message broadcasting system, now features “Streams”–Facebook’s “News Feed” revamped to update in real-time.

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The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come just paid Circuit City an early visit, pointing a single bony finger toward a future of insolvency.

A week after announcing the closure of a fifth of its stores in the U.S., the struggling retailer succumbed to the inevitable and filed for bankruptcy protection.

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Netflix’s March 2008 outage is back, this time in wide theatrical release. A serious disruption to the company’s distribution systems has prevented it from mailing DVDs to many of its customers for the better part of this week. “Our engineers continue to work around the clock to restore normal operations,” Netflix said in a post [...]

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A BlockBuster (BBI) acquisition of Circuit City (CC) may not be as much of a long shot as it first appeared. This morning the electronics chain, which has been vocal in its skepticism of BlockBuster’s ability to finance such a deal, opened its books to the video rental outfit. Why the sudden turnabout? Two words: Carl. Icahn.

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Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes says acquiring Circuit City will be “a challenge,” and while the company is up for one, a challenge of this particular sort may be more than it can handle. Because a week after announcing its $1.3 billion gambit for the foundering–yes, foundering–electronics chain, Blockbuster (BBI) says it would rather drop it [...]

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