A long goodbye to Oprah (and the Oprah Effect). It's official. Oprah Winfrey will announce to viewers on today's show that she will be retiring from her long-running talk show at the completion of the 2011 season. No need to shed a tear for Oprah, who has amassed a fortune reportedly in the neighborhood ...

Steve Case's $300 million payday. It may not be much compared to that ill-fated, monster merger he presided over several years ago--the effects of which persist today--but Steve Case just won himself another big payday. His finance company, Revolution Money, will be acquired by American Express for ...

Foursquare releases its API in the race to dominate location. Foursquare, the suddenly white hot location-based social network, released its API to the public yesterday. And Mashable is predictably bullish about the results, making the argument that just as Twitter's meteoric rise depended on developer ...

Lessons learned from a million-dollar mistake. Entrepreneurs are forever learning from their own mistakes, so once in a while it's nice to learn from someone else's for a change. Tech entrepreneur Neil Patel shares the story of his million-dollar mistake made while pursuing a web-hosting start-up. Patel ...

No health care reform, say most entrepreneurs in Congress. The New York Times has the breakdown, showing that eight of 11 entrepreneurs in Congress voted against the recently-passed health care reform bill. Four of those who voted against the bill? Democrats, all of whom represent districts won by John ...

From the annals of world domination: Google launches its own programming language. One of the pillars of Google's success has been efficiency, whether that's serving search results or processing data, says Mashable Ben Parr. On the heels of launching its mobile operating system, Android, which Motorola ...

Filing for customer divorce. Some small business owners are finding it difficult (and expensive) to maintain relationships with delinquent or discount-hungry customers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Shedding those clients, which was the option chosen by Kishau Rogers, owner of Richmond, Virginia-based ...

Playfish sells to EA for $275 million. So it turns out that there's a lot of money in virtual goods. Playfish, a London company that makes Facebook's Restaurant City, just sold itself to video game giant Electronic Arts for $275 million in cash, with the prospect of an additional $100 million in earn-outs. ...

Tour a Start-up's Office: The Gawker edition. Gawker Media, the parent company behind blogs like Valleywag and io9, has been experiencing a growth spurt of 40 percent year-over-year. Now Silicon Alley Insider takes us inside CEO Nick Denton's "steampunk" headquarters in downtown New York as part of ...

Yanks win, but few spoils for Bronx businesses. Congratulations to the New York Yankees, for winning (yet another) World Series championship. But while the team celebrates, owners of the struggling small businesses whose shops flank the new $1.5 billion House that Steinbrenner Built, are feeling more ...