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When I think of Sears, or Kmart, a lot of products come to mind: discounted clothing, inexpensive tools, televisions, bicycles and apple pie. But one thing that doesn’t pop into my head is online movie rentals. Sears hope that will all change soon with the start of a new online video rental service called Alphaline Entertainment that is powered by RoxioNow, an online video streaming service owned by Sonic Solutions.

Since Monday, nine Delta Air Lines agents with special Twitter training have been rotating shifts to help travelers wired enough to know how to “dm,” or send a direct message. Many other airlines are doing the same as a way to help travelers cut through the confusion of a storm that has grounded thousands of flights this week.

HTC sent out a mysterious package apparently promising a 4G phone at CES with video calling, Google Android 2.2, and GPS, which may or may not be the rumored "HTC Thunderbolt" for Verizon Wireless.

MySpace, the social network often mistaken for a down arrow, is planning fire about half of its 1,100 people, Liz Gannes reports. The idea is to get the thing into shape for a sale. Lately, MySpace got into producing some of its own original content. One video we saw, about an awards ceremony put on my a stoner magazine, wasn't half bad.

Verizon is planning to showcase at the Consumer Electronics Show next month the use of its high-speed Internet service to drive the automated home, a decades old idea that has yet to attract much interest among consumers. The telecommunications company said Thursday that the CES demonstration would be the precursor to a pilot program Verizon plans to launch in New Jersey in January. Selected homes will be outfitted with an energy reader, motion sensors, indoor and outdoor video cameras and thermostats, appliances, doors, and windows that can be controlled remotely over a broadband connection. Much of this technology stems from partnerships with device manufacturers.

Early shareholders in the hottest privately-held technology companies are increasingly finding liquidity without an acquisition or a public offering, with Groupon Inc. being the most recent example. The daily-deals company is using $344 million of a fresh $500 million funding round to buy shares from insiders.

A developer on the XDA forums recently posted a whitepaper showing how one could possibly crack the Windows Phone 7 marketplace. Not long after those instructions were posted, another "white hat" developer, whose goal was to show the Marketplace's vulnerability, created an application that allowed him to download apps from the Marketplace for free to unlocked WP7 phones.

Tony works late editing TWiT 282 - The Golden Boys. One if the best TWiTs evah. @ TWiT Cottage

Online travel company Expedia removed American Airlines from its flight searches this weekend. The action is the culmination of a series of disagreements between the airline and online travel booking companies over fees. American has pressed for travel sites to cut the fees they charge in order to book flights on the airline's behalf. Last month, American pulled its listing from Orbitz over a similar disagreement. And following that move Expedia tweaked its search module, effectively burying American flight listings. Customers could still book flights on American - if they could find them - but after this weekend, no longer. American Airlines flights are gone from the site.

The latest smartphone market share survey from Nielsen looks at data from November 2010. This data shows the iPhone has retained pole position in overall smartphone marketshare in the U.S. with an estimated 28.6% of the market. RIM’s BlackBerry and Google’s Android platforms are essentially tied in second place, with 26.1% and 25.8% respectively.

Buy the Will Ferrell comedy The Other Guys and you’ll notice three extras that can’t be found on DVD or any other digital platform. A search button allows you to input a word, and any mention of it in the script will be retrieved along with a link to the exact moment in the movie in which the line was uttered. A “clip & share” function lets the viewer take select scenes and post them to social networks. There’s also a playlist with songs from the film, which are linked to to places on iTunes where those songs can be purchased. The same features are also found on Sony’s Salt and Resident Evil: Afterlife.

Google's new Android Honeycomb tablet OS will require a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor to run properly, said Bobby Cha, managing director of Korean consumer electronics firm Enspert.

One of our trusted Best Buy sources has come through with several documents that provide additional details on the retailer’s new Buy Back program. The new protection plan, which allows consumers to sell back their devices for a percentage of the its original MSRP, will launch covering phones, laptops, netbooks, tablets, and TVs priced under $5,000 on January 5th; the service will be expanded to “other product categories” sometime during fiscal year 2012. To heighten awareness, commercials and advertisements will begin hitting the airwaves and print media beginning on February 6th.

Despite stereotypes, almost half of iPad owners also have a Kindle at the same time, JPMorgan found in a new study. About 40 percent have Amazon's e-reader, and another 23 percent still plan to buy one in the next year. Only 23 percent have no plans, and 14 percent didn't know what a Kindle was.

According to Reuters, Time Warner's digital distribution unit and other studios plan to offer high-definition movies to consumers who have PCs with Intel Sandy Bridge chips inside, simultaneous with releasing them on DVD. Apparently the media cartels are dead keen to get their content on PCs that are locked-down even to the level of the chip.

With its $500 million infusion from Goldman Sachs and other investors, Facebook is now flush with cash, and a market value of about $50 billion, giving it the financial muscle it needs to compete with better-heeled rivals like Google.

Beginning this spring, such Netflix buttons, including some featuring the company's red logo, are planned for remotes for devices from the likes of Best Buy's Dynex brand, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba. Remote controls for Boxee, Iomega and Roku set-top boxes also will feature the Netflix one-click remote.

The search engine is courting publishers to build versions of their publications tailored for Android mobile gadgets for a new "Google-operated digital newsstand," according to the Wall Street Journal. Google has broached its plan, which would include taking a smaller cut than the 30 percent Apple commands for applications sales on iTunes, with Time Inc., Condé Nast and Hearst Corp., the Journal said.

Rovio's title will be downloadable for the PSP and likely the PS3, as most (but not all) of the "mini" games work on both. No word on pricing yet, but the iOS version is 99 cents, or $4.99 for the iPad version. The Android version is free, but ad-supported. The PlayStation version will offer 63 levels of the game, and will likely include the Golden Egg hidden levels. What's unknown is if it will include the Great Eagle feature that the latest update received. It's a good update that makes the game far more replayable by rewarding players for replaying all the old levels with different objectives. This blogger is hooked.

A glitch with Apple Inc.'s iPhone alarm gave some users a late start to the new year. The alarm application on the smartphone failed to work for alarms that were set for one-time use only—as opposed to recurring—on the first two days of 2011, triggering reports that some people wound up oversleeping.

Android ran 40 percent of U.S. smartphones purchased in the six months leading up to November. However, Nielsen noted Apple remaims the overall smartphone market leader. Rate This Article: Poor Best E-mail Print PDF Version Google's Android operating system powered 40.8 percent of smartphones purchased in the last six months, though Apple iOS led the U.S. in consumer market share, according to the Nielsen Company.

Analyst Chris Whitmore with Deutsche Bank said in a note to investors on Tuesday that checks over the holidays indicated that Apple saw better-than-expected demand for both the iPad and the Mac. In addition, consumer demand for the iPhone showed no signs of slowing down, even as rumors of a Verizon iPhone loomed over the holiday buying season.

RT @siracusa "Watch out, @leolaporte "

RT @Dan_H: @bigepaz @leolaporte @acedtect - I set up a venue for the twit booth on foursquare for #CES: :)

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster now says that the web giant has “given up on social,” because it realizes it doesn’t stand a chance of actually competing with Facebook. The problem with doing this, as the analyst notes, is that as advertisers continue to chase the social graph, Google will have very little to offer them.