Following Apple's lead, Microsoft plans to invest in more physical retails locations, the software giant tells Business Insider. After launching its first two store last fall -- in Phoenix, Ariz., Mission Viejo, Calif. -- Microsoft is preparing to open two more in Denver and San Diego. Are the stores actually moving merchandise? Well, according to Business Insider: "Other than things are going 'great,' we couldn't get much out of the company." For what it's worth, after visiting the Mission Viejo location, NPD analyst Peter Baker says he was "more impressed than he thought he would be." Baker …

With millions of iPad's ready to ship, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says it's time for Amazon to cut the price of the Kindle from $259 to $149. Munster tells Tech Trader Daily that Amazon stock shares are likely to be under pressure for a few weeks as the Street anticipates the iPad to cramp Kindle sales. Amazon provides no data on Kindle unit sales, though Munster estimates that lifetime sales to date are in the 2-to-3 million range. By contrast, he sees calendar 2010 iPad sales of 2.7 million -- a number that he said may …

Two years after dropping $850 million on Bebo, corporate tax experts recently said AOL would be better off just scrapping the struggling social network. Adding insult to injury, Facebook has now hired former Bebo chief exec Joanna Shields -- who spearheaded the sale to AOL before jumping ship last summer. Shields will now serve as Facebook's vice-president of sales and business development for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Shield spent the last six months at Shine Group, which owns the production companies behind television shows such as Spooks and Ugly Betty. ShineVu, the unit Shields established, …

Nearly three years on, The New York Times checks in on Hulu and its prospects for the future. Jason Kilar, Hulu's chief executive, says the joint media venture has been profitable for two consecutive quarters. The Times, meanwhile, says it "successfully brought online TV into the mainstream." Citing four -- count 'em, four -- sources, the paper reports that Hulu is about to move beyond "standard" computer screens with an application for Apple's iPad. Challenges facing the venture -- jointly owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Disney -- include increasing pressure from the companies that supply …

As iPad pre-orders continue to climb, the first (hands-on) reviews are in, and, by and large, better than expected. The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg -- the Roger Ebert of consumer technology -- calls the device "pretty close" to a laptop killer, concluding that the "beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop." On the contrary, "The iPad is not a laptop," insists The New York Times' David Pogue -- Gene Siskel to Mossberg's Ebert. …