Level Orange

According to an announcement today by Great American Group, one of the firms liquidating the remaining Circuit City inventory, over $1 billion of product has been moved in the last month. After the announcement on January 17 that Circuit City would be closing its 567 stores, sales have apparently been brisk on discounted consumer electronics.

While that’s all well and good, deeper discounts and even lower prices are on the way, starting this Thursday, February 19th, and will continue for the next month or so until all inventory is gone. So, for those shoppers who didn’t bite at the “going out of business” prices, maybe now they’ll be able to find some real deals worth their time.

When looking for work late last year, I recently got in touch with a former employer of mine, Bob Lamons, and we discussed building out a site for his new B2B marketing venture, Industribrand (as in “industry brand”). Now, I’d worked for Bob for nearly six years at his ad agency, Robert Lamons & Associates and when that operation closed its doors, I moved on to publishing for several years. Still, I jumped at the chance to both rebuild a working relationship with Bob as well as flex some more of my skills in web design. As I’m sure often happens in the design industry, I was once again working for a former employer, albeit in a slightly different capacity.

Back in 1998 or so, I’d built the RL&A site (ads2biz.com) entirely by hand, one page at a time. Eventually, I retooled the site using one of the early versions of Movable Type mostly out of a need to make adding and editing content a breeze. Similarly, the Industribrand site would need to be just as easy to use, while still being powerful and flexible. Enter WordPress.

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Hot on the heels of last year’s big release of Battlefield: Bad Company, DICE has announced the release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 this winter. Once again, gamers will ride or die with B Company and fight their way through more of the intense, totally destructive environments that only the Frostbite engine can deliver. Also announced is the new Battlefield 1943 title, following in the footsteps of the wildly successful Battlefield 1942 WWII setting and gameplay. Bad Company 2 will be available for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, while Battlefield 1943 will find its way to gamers online through Xbox Live Marketplace, Playstation Store and PC.

I played a fair share of Bad Company and even though some of the weapons frustrated me to no end, it was endlessly amusing to see what can happen when you take all manner of weapons to any given structure. So while the promise of more vehicles, more team play and more mayhem in Bad Company 2 is a no-brainer, I’m more curious to see how Battlefield 1943 will fare, both in terms of being yet another WWII game and with online distribution for such a massive game.