Sales of video games continue to slow with July marking five consecutive months of decline.  July sales were down 29% from 2008 sales.

Ok some short items not worthy of a post of their own but hey, interesting anyway.

Sears is launching “Blue Electronics” as a spinoff of their “Blue Appliances” department.  Sales associates dress in blue polo shirts and well, try to sell you stuff. Um, ok, we don’t get it either!

Radio Shack might be dropping the “Radio” from its namesake.  Of course many will continue to call it “Rat Shack” as they walk by it into Best Buy.

Ritz Camera’s own CEO, David Ritz, out bid two other parties in a bankruptcy auction to retain control of Ritz.

In some menagerie, Sears opened its first Sears-branded major appliance shop inside a Kmart store.  Yes, its all so clear now.

Microsoft will open its first retail store this fall to market Windows 7.  Prior to entering the store, you must agree to the EULA.

Our beloved url shortener, tr.im, unceremoniously stopped development and no new url’s can be shortened.  The tr.im homepage reads that existing urls will still redirect but the service is ending.

tr.im states that all efforts for monetizing the service failed and further that bit.ly is clearly the Twitter market leader.

Sorry tr.im, we will miss you!

Over a year since the Bluray/HD-DVD format war has past with victor Bluray on shelves everywhere.  Toshiba, the largest backer of the now obsolete HD-DVD format has announced that it will have Bluray products for TVs and PCs for this 2009 holiday season.

Struggling Dish Network announces 2nd quarter profits down 81%.  Rival DirecTV showed record levels of re subscribers bringing its subscriber base to 18.3 million.