If you can’t get enough of “The Simpsons Movie,” you should definately check out the related web site, located at simpsonsmovie.com.
There are five games to play, including my favorite, “Three Card Moe.” You can also help a motorcycle-riding Homer survive the “Ball Of Death and help a naked Bart skate through Springfield.
You can also create your own Simpsons-based avatar on the web site, and then visit Moe’s so you can hang out and drink with Homer. You can take a virtual tour of Springfield, and also do the typical web site stuff, such as downloading wallpaper, buddy icons, screensavers and ringtones.
It’s a clever site, and while it might not be something I would revisiting a year from now, I managed to waste more than a hour on the site during the first visit. Which I think is a vote of confidence in the web site.
By the way, if you’re interested in purchasing some cool Simpsons merchandise, check out the offical site, thesimpsonsshop.com. Enter the word HOMER during checkout, and you’ll save 10% on everything.
After six years of stagnation, pressure is mounting on the chief executive of General Electric to boost shares. This NY Times article takes a look at some of the rumors, which include spinning off NBC/Universal.
Despite a 15 percent rally over the last two months, G.E. shares are still down 30 percent from their Welch-era peak. And in April, the analyst Jeffrey T. Sprague of Citigroup Investment Research stunned Wall Street by calling for a breakup of the company, urging Mr. Immelt to sell off NBC Universal, as well as the consumer finance and real estate units.
Mr. Sprague’s call was the equivalent of breaking china in G.E.’s executive dining room, and the company’s top brass took it as a sign that Wall Street was running out of patience. Although NBC looks safe until after the broadcast of the Summer Olympics next year, Mr. Immelt is vowing to be “tough-minded and investor-friendly” in evaluating G.E.’s myriad holdings, while swearing off big acquisitions for the rest of this year.
Well, for what it’s worth, my feeling is that the two best things that could happen to NBC/Universal would be a spin-off from GE and a replacement for Jeff Zucker.
The NY Times notes that, while there’s been a lot of press coverage about Rupert Murdoch’s attempts to wrestle himself control of the Wall Street Journal, News Corp. is making some investments in smaller publications.
Yesterday, News Corporation said it would expand the reach of the Brooklyn and Queens newspaper chains it bought last September into more neighborhoods. Including the two Bronx papers, the company’s weekly newspapers in New York have a combined circulation — some paid, but mostly free — of nearly 300,000.
Neighborhood newspapers are often highly profitable, and News Corporation executives say they can attract more advertising to the newspapers as part of a larger company. “It’s great for selling combined ad buys with The New York Post,” said Les Goodstein, a senior vice president for the company.
