In time for the holiday season, mobile commerce startup shopkick has partnered with Target to bring its location-based shopping system to 242 of the retailer's stores nationwide. The shopkick app for the iPhone lets users automatically receive points known as "kickbucks" on entering a Target store that can be redeemed at checkout for rewards like Target GiftCards, music downloads or charitable donations. People also can scan certain product barcodes in-store to earn additional kickbucks on everything from food and cleaning supplies to specialty products like electronics and toys. Because shopkick provides rewards for scanning Kraft Foods and Procter …

With the local deals craze spreading online via the likes of Groupon, Foursquare and Facebook Places, Yahoo is jumping on the bandwagon with a new local offers service in partnership with more than a dozen Internet-based discounters including Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt City, Coupons.com and Valpak. Yahoo says its Local Offers program is open to all deal providers, including local “deal of the day” partners and traditional direct-marketers. Rather than creating a separate section for offers, deals from the various partners will appear across Yahoo's network and key properties as well as on its mobile site. The Web portal said …

In an anticipated move by many, Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment Group, is resigning -- this after failing to find an appropriate position in the new company to be majority owned by Comcast. Gaspin, in the position just over a year and a half, is responsible for all broadcast, cable, television production and distribution. In a memo to NBC staffers, Gaspin said he'd be leaving just after the merger is completed because a role could not be found in the new company. He said this came after many conversations with Steve Burke, the chief operating …

If Apple is really pulling out its media hype machine to announce that "The White Album" and "Abbey Road" will finally be available in the iTunes store, is it a sign that Steve Jobs has finally totally and completely lost his mind? Jobs has had a whiff of "Apocalypse Now"'s Col. Kurtz about him in the past couple of press conferences, so the possibility is not out of the question. But will anybody care? Is there a Beatles fan on earth left who in the past decade has not burned or otherwise migrated his Beatles catalog into digital form? …

JCPenney, which last week said it had formed a New Growth Brands division, is already hatching its first big baby: The Foundry Big & Tall Supply Co., which will expand to 300 units and an ecommerce site in the next five years. The stores will carry an assortment of national men's brands, as well as private-label clothing. Big and tall men now account for 50% of the population, it says, spending some $6 billion annually. And thanks to America's weight problem, it's one of the fastest growing segments out there. The new Penney division—run by marketing vet Anne …

Apple is teasing a major announcement for its iTunes music, application and video software for Tuesday, Nov. 16. "Tomorrow is just another day. You'll never forget," reads the company's web site. "Check back here tomorrow for an exciting announcement from iTunes." Images of clocks suggest the announcement will come at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, with other clocks representing London, Tokyo and Los Angeles, suggesting the announcement will be global in nature. No one seems to know what the announcement is. Bloggers speculate it could involve "cloud" storage, which would allow users to access their music and videos from …

Apple, on its homepage this morning, promises that tomorrow's announcement concerning iTunes will be one "you'll never forget." Most music fans haven't forgotten the way Apple last year bought and then promptly shuttered cloud-based music service Lala. The smart money says that tomorrow Apple will be adding some sort of cloud functionality to iTunes. Such speculation had been brewing since Apple acquired Lala in December 2009. Since then, there's little doubt that Lala users moved onto other cloud-based music services such as MOG, Grooveshark, Rdio, and Spotify. And, of course, they've been joined by countless new users. …

As expected, Facebook today unveiled its new communications platform which includes an email system that allows users to have email addresses with a facebook.com suffix. But the revamped messaging service goes beyond adding email to allow users to integrate all online communication seamlessly in one place. Besides combining email, SMS, IM and other messaging from different channels, the new platform will feature a history of a users's online communications and a social inbox designed to automatically prioritize messages that come from Facebook friends. "This is a messaging service that includes email as one part of it," said Facebook CEO …

Building on its acquisition earlier this year, Yahoo has launched the Yahoo Contributor Network, a new platform allowing people to publisher their creative content on the Web portal. In buying Associated Content last May, Yahoo gained a supply of 2 million articles, photos, videos and audio works from some 400,000 freelance contributors. "Associated Content has been known for maintaining the industry's largest contributor base, and with the launch of the Yahoo Contributor Network, we've added scale and reach that sets us apart from any other crowdsourced media platform," said Luke Beatty, vice president and general manager, Yahoo, in a …

Multi media pomp and circumstance has become big in boxing. In a recent forgettable fight by one of the Klitchko's, the heavyweight king marked his entrance with a phalanx of holograms of great fighters announcing how great Klitchko is. Now, here in Cowboy's Stadium, the fighters' entrances are preceded by giant video screen homages to all of the great ring wars. It's as if the promoters are begging us to believe this will be such an event. Either that or they are desperately hoping that the videos themselves, screened as they are in the Cowboys' enormous screens will make …