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Rock Band and Guitar Hero co-creator Alex Rigopulos scored part of a $300 million-plus payday when he sold his gaming company Harmonix to Viacom (VIA) in 2006, but he's not resting on his laurels. Speaking at the new Wired Store in New York's Flatiron district on Friday, Alex said he's looking to expand his "rhythm action" game empire to new platforms -- like Apple's (AAPL) iPhone.

But Alex impressed on us he's not some callow businessman -- he wants to make art. "If we made a move to the iPhone, I would want to take an ambitious step in that direction, rather than just do a kind of port to

Filed under: Market matters, Viacom (VIA), Marvel Entertainment (MVL)

Well, I've finally done it. I sold my entire position of Marvel Entertainment (NYSE: MVL). It wasn't an easy decision.

When I covered Marvel's latest earnings report, I alluded to the issue of emotion. My emotion, to be specific. I stated that it most likely would be in my best interest to get out of the stock since there really weren't many catalysts coming up in 2009 to propel the stock higher.

In fact, it would be easy to make the argument that, since the market has been so haywire and irrational, one must take profits w

Filed under: Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), Activision Inc (ATVI), Film

I think we all knew which film would come out on top this past weekend. Sony's (NYSE: SNE) new James Bond adventure, Quantum of Solace, grossed an estimated $70 million at domestic theaters over the last three days according to Boxofficemojo. Excellent showing, Jimbo. As far as I'm concerned, though, I think you have to give the number-two film even more credit.

DreamWorks Animation (NYSE: DWA) and its distributor, Viacom (NYSE: VIA), need to be given major kudos for their work on Madagascar: Escap

So now that Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt understandably told Jim Cramer he's not interested in being "America's CTO," who's being eyed for the job? There's been a lot of fanciful speculation (Steve Jobs! Bill Gates! Lawrence Lessig!), but this weekend the WSJ identified who it thinks are the top three candidates for the job:

Julius Genachowski: Obama asked for Julius' help in picking a CTO, and speculation runs high Julius might pull a Cheney and suggest himself. Julius knows all the right people: he's a Harvard Law school chum of Barack's, a former general counsel at IAC (IACI), and a for

National Amusements, the holding company for media mogul Sumner Redstone, need to raise cash - and that has implications for a number of public companies he controls.

In a research note earlier today, Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield noted that the combination of the declining value of National’s public holdings and “unfriendly credit markets” are going to force Redstone to take action. Greenfield thinks his best move would be to put Viacom (VIA) up for sale, but that Redstone isn’t likely to allow that.

Greenfield sees the company taking two initial steps:

• Selling all of his shares