Coinstar, whose coin counting machines can be found in retail stores throughout the country, has partnered with WildTangent, Rixty and other digital entertainment companies to offer prepaid cards at more than 500 Cumberland Farms stores. Bellevue-based Coinstar also said that prepaid cards will be available for Facebook and MySpace applications as part of an effort to reach a younger demographic.

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata chats with VentureBeat about iPhone games, competition from Microsoft and the effect of the recession on the video game business.

Portland's SplashCast -- an online video startup -- is dumping its original product and looking to sell out after failing to raise a series B financing round, reports TechCrunch.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Google board member Ram Shriram says "we're seeing the emergence of the app economy" in which small startup companies will thrive, noting that if you "aim to build big you will fail," reports InternetNews.com.

BusinessWeek starts off its story on cloud computing with an anecdote from Bill Gates' 1990 Comdex speech about the future of computing, an interesting way to enter a story on how businesses are shifting to this new approach. "Sometimes visionaries are right on the vision but off on the timing," reporter Steve Hamm writes.

Amazon.com last month said it would allow anyone to upload their blog into the Kindle store. Now the online retailer says that more than 5,000 blogs are available on its electronic reader.

Venture capitalists are predicting a wave of spin outs as larger media and technology companies divest some of the startup properties they bought in recent years, reports Reuters.

Headline of the day comes via Peter Kafka at MediaMemo: "Yes, We Know: Online Ads are Down"