Here is a post from our colleague Shradhha Sharma in Bangalore:

Martha Stewart loves your pet.

The home decorating expert and tastemaker (Macy's good, Home Depot good, Kmart not so good) wants you to buy pet clothing, collars, leashes, bedding, grooming supplies, toys and more, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia said on Tuesday. Pet products retailer PetSmart Inc will sell the accessories starting in the spring of 2010.

Age Group Ltd, which makes licensed products for brands such as Disney, Baby Phat, Hello Kitty and Peanuts, will design the goods.

The announcement adds pet stores to the roster of retailers where you can see Martha's name emblazoned on various products. As we mentioned above, Macy's and Home Depot are two others. One place where you WON'T see her name anymore after next January is Kmart, the discount retailer. The company and Kmart are ending their relationship, something that's been known for months. Stewart's latest comment on that relationship came last Friday when she wished them well and said it would be wrong to interpret earlier remarks she made about Kmart as being inconsistent with her good feelings.

Those remarks, which she uttered on CNBC in September, were more in the spirit of "doberman pinscher" than "cute little kitten," but no matter -- PetSmart no doubt will sport a variety of tasteful Stewart products to suit a variety of temperaments and breeds.

(Photo: Reuters)

If you want your football or baseball to cheer for you after a great play, EA Sports has just the toys for you.

EA Sports, a unit of Electronic Arts, is introducing its first line of products beyond the company's popular video games, offering sports toys and equipment to appeal to the young sports lovers in the house. 

The EA Sports-branded equipment, made by Toy Island, is rolling out now in Target and Toys "R" Us stores. Terms of the licensing deal were not disclosed.    

"We're expanding the brand to give young and future EA Sports fans a realistic and innovative experience in the real-world of sports, just as you can in the interactive world by playing an EA Sports video game," EA Sports vice president Glenn Chin said in a statement.

The products use infrared motion, touch sensors and voice command technologies. 

The "Sweet Spot Sports" line includes a football that cheers and yells "Touchdown!" when caught, or a baseball that makes a sound like a ball being hit by a bat followed by the road of the crowd after being hit. Similar products are available for hockey and basketball, and list for suggested retail prices ranging from $15 to $20.

The "Voice Command" and "Sure Shot" lines offer products for baseball, football, hockey, soccer and basketball, such as a pitching machine or a football game with a video screen to practice hitting your favorite receiver in stride, and sell for $70 to $80.

EA Sports said additional products will be available later. If it wanted to be realistic, EA Sports would introduce a ball that demands more playing time and a higher salary.

(Photo courtesy of Toy Island)

Maybe Whole Foods Chief Executive John Mackey should stay away from the keyboard and stick to selling gourmet groceries.

The CEO's recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal suggested alternatives to healthcare proposals being batted around in the nation's capital.

Among other things, he asserted that healthcare is not a right and called for "less government control and more individual empowerment."

His view got some of the chain's historically liberal customers so hot under the collar that they have threatened to go elsewhere for their organic apples.

The company's own healthcare reform forum has more than 14,000 posts. Twitter users are opining on the subject.

And the Boycott Whole Foods group on Facebook, which has attracted more than 20,000 members, is planning to picket stores in Washington, D.C. and the company's hometown of Austin, Texas, on Friday.

According to the Facebook group, which also dings the company for not having unions, Mackey is "suggesting that healthcare is a commodity that only the rich, like him, deserve."

In his own blog, published shortly after the editorial ran, Mackey pinned some of the blame on changes made by those darn headline editors.

"I wrote this Op/Ed piece called simply 'Health Care Reform.' An editor at the Journal rewrote the headline to call it 'Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare,' which led to antagonistic feelings by many."

He continued: "While I am in favor of health care reform, Whole Foods Market as a company has no official position on the issue."

This isn't the first time Mackey, the scribe, has caused a flap.

For several years ending in 2006, Mackey used the pseudonym "rahobed" on Yahoo Finance stock forums to talk up Whole Foods shares and his performance as CEO. He also trash talked competitors like Wild Oats. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigated for nearly a year but eventually ruled out any action.

Whole Foods acquired Wild Oats in 2007 and just recently settled an antitrust case with the same federal government that Mackey says should keep its hands off healthcare.

(Photo/Reuters)

A non-profit organization is linking cancer to hot dogs outside one of the most iconic U.S. sports parks.

The Cancer Project is reminding fans of the Chicago Cubs baseball team of the connection between consumption of hot dogs and the occurrence of colorectal cancer with a billboard outside Chicago's storied Wrigley Field.

The 48-foot-wide billboard (pictured above) -- featuring an image of hot dogs jammed into a cigarette pack labeled "Unlucky Strike" --  is scheduled to debut on Monday at the intersection of W. Addison and N. Halsted, just east of Wrigley Field.

The organization is not asking the Cubs to ban hot dogs at Wrigley. (They don't want a fan insurrection after all). The group even lauds the Cubs for offering such vegetarian options as veggie burgers and hummus at Wrigley. 

What the Cancer Project asked in a letter to Cubs Chairman Crane Kenney dated Aug. 3, however, is for the team to place "dietary disaster" warning labels near where hot dogs are sold at the ballpark since processed meats have been linked to colorectal cancer.

"Baseball stadiums need to be frank about the cancer risk posed by hot dogs and other processed meats," Krista Haynes, a Cancer Project dietitian, said in a statement. 
   
"Just as tobacco causes lung cancer, processed meats are linked to colon cancer," she added. "Like cigarettes, hot dogs should come with a warning label that helps baseball fans and other consumers understand the health risk."

Kenney and a Cubs spokesman could no immediately be reached for comment.

The billboard is part of Cancer Project's national campaign, launched in July with a similar billboard outside the home park of Cubs rival, the St. Louis Cardinals.

There are no further plans at this point to expand the campaign, a Cancer Project spokeswoman said.

More than 21 million hot dogs are expected to be sold this season at U.S. major league ballparks, the Cancer Project said, citing a survey by the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council.

In March, the National Cancer Institute published a study of more than half a million people showing red and processed meat intake is associated with a higher risk of dying from cancer and cardiovascular disease, according to the Cancer Project. 
 
In 2007, the American Institute for Cancer Research published a report showing that just one 50-gram serving of processed meat (about the amount in one hot dog) consumed daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer, on average, by 21 percent, the Cancer Project said. Every year, about 150,000 Americans are diagnosed with colorectal cancer and about 50,000 die of it, the Cancer Project said.  

The Cancer Project is affiliated with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which advocates a vegetarian diet as a way to better health, based on research and not animal rights beliefs.
 
(Billboard image provided by Cancer Project; Reuters photo of Wrigley)

Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos puts his quirky on in an online introduction geared to employees of Web shoe retailer Zappos.com.

The chief executive of the world's largest online retailer, in an 8 minute YouTube video posted on Zappos' website, told folks he "gets all weak-kneed when I see a customer-obsessed company."

Bezos, wearing a purple-red button-down shirt and standing in a very non-corporate-looking garden under natural light -- which gives the spot a quasi-online video dating feel -- enthuses about Zappos and his excitement over acquiring the zany online shoe company. Amazon announced on Wednesday the approximately $928 million deal, mostly in stock.

The video was included in an online letter posted by Zappos' CEO Tony Hsieh to employees, in which he assures staff that the acquisition is amicable and  suggests a headline for the deal as "Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree." Readers will remember the next line of that juvenile rhyme is "K-I-S-S-I-N-G." Online video dating moves fast.

Using an easel and a large pad of white paper (uh-oh, vaguely corporate feeling is invading the garden) Bezos explains what he calls the short list of things he learned running Amazon for the past 15 years -- "obsess over customers"; "invent"; and "think long term."

He tells war stories about the early days of his company, some of which are admittedly endearing -- as when he admits that Amazon's first customers were the employees' mothers, or describes a software snafu.

"Customers could order a negative quantity of books and we would credit their credit card with the price," Bezos sheepishly explains. "We fixed that one. It's fixed."

Bezos says he's "totally excited over what can happen over time" with Zappos and reminds employees that "It's always Day 1."

The popular social networking website has a new champion among its brands: Starbucks.

With a combination of recent social networking promotions and front-page ads, the Seattle-based mega coffee company has attracted more than 3.6 million fans to reportedly passed Coca-Cola to become the most popular brand on Facebook.

While that huge fan base makes Starbucks the No. 1 brand, statistics compiled by the website Inside Facebook showed Starbucks as the 8th most popular "page," behind Hollywood star Will Smith, President Barack Obama, and the current leader, Michael Jackson.

Facebook "pages" are public profiles that are designed to help companies advertise, and to also connect with the website's users by sending them messages and interacting in conversations.

Retailers like Wal-Mart and Target have used their pages in the past to promote seasonal sales, and other companies like Dell and Apple have offered exclusive promotions through the site to boost popularity.

According to Inside Facebook, Starbucks' Facebook page saw spikes on July 18 and July 21, when the company was running its free pastry giveaway. Earlier this month, the company also purportedly gave away free ice cream through Facebook as well.

(Photo/Reuters)

Cola rivals Coke and Pepsi gave their long-standing feud a rest last week after a user-provoked experiment on Twitter prompted the two pop makers to trade friendly greetings on the popular social networking service.

Coca-Cola responded first to a clever user's message suggesting that the two make nice on Twitter, offering "A gracious (yet competitive) hello" to Pepsi. In return, Pepsi extended a Twitter-style olive branch of sorts to its competitor: "Can rivals and tweeps coexist? We're willing to find out. :)" Tweeps, for those unversed in the lingo, is a cutesy term for Twitter users.

The whole episode began with the single Twitter message sent by a digital media consultant from a web marketing firm called Amnesia Razorfish based in Sydney, Australia, but quickly grew as other users got in on the fun and repeated (or "retweeted") the message to their own friends and followers across the social network.

Within three hours of the original message being sent, Coke had fired off its friendly response and even decided to add Pepsi to its Twitter network. Pepsi took a bit longer to respond but wasn't far behind in returning the virtual handshake.

Considering both companies' long-standing commitment to the whole cola-war marketing scheme, such a quick decision to take part in the digital truce may come as a bit of a surprise. But what's probably more illuminating about the viral affair is that it shows two companies with deeply established brands adapting their marketing strategies to the world of social networking.

Whether the whole incident actually compelled anyone on Twitter to go out and buy a bottle of Coke or Pepsi is less important than the essential message it sends to consumers - namely, that their brands are still fun and youthful.

Moreover, as people increasingly turn to the Internet for information and entertainment, companies are being forced to accept that they have less control over what information gets to consumers. In such an organic environment, top-down brand management no longer seems to be a sustainable strategy.

Of course, as marketing news site Ad Age opines, the whole incident may simply have reminded the cola competitors of an age-old adage: "You know what they say about keeping your friends close and enemies closer."

Brian Dunn, who is set to become Best Buy's CEO next week, has his own example of what it means to be connected in today's digital age.

When he was visiting London a few weeks ago, Dunn watched the L.A. Lakers take on the Utah Jazz in the NBA playoffs on his notebook computer.  His three sons, who are also big basketball fans, were watching the game on TV at home, Dunn said.  They kept in touch using Skype to have a video chat.

As Dunn told Reuters, the boys were whispering to him, worried that their mother would hear that they were up too late.

"I'm across the Atlantic, but I'm connected to my sons, watching the game.  It's like the most pristine example I have right now of what this connected world means for people."

Maybe if more people tried to stay connected it could drive sales at Best Buy.  The retailer's first-quarter revenue rose less than Wall Street expected and its shares fell on Tuesday.

(Reuters photo)

 Perhaps he woke up one day and smelled his own coffee shops struggling in the weak economy. So, Starbucks Corp Chief Executive Howard Schultz is waking up to a fresh brew by percolating new business in the media world.

Starbucks has become the official naming sponsor of CNBC's "Morning Joe" television show. The move is a throwback to the 1950s, when television programs were underwritten by manufacturers ranging from soap to cigarettes, and it comes as traditional advertising dollars are shrinking for publishers, television networks and other ad-reliant businesses. 

Schultz, who has made his own headlines over the years, also is an investor in TheWrap.com, a celebrity news blog based in Los Angeles, through Maveron, a venture capital firm he co-founded with Dan Levitan.

Maveron's other investments include restaurant operators Pinkberry and Potbelly Sandwich Works as well as online names like eBay and drugstore.com.

(Photo: Reuters/Robert Sorbo)

AT&T says it sees a lot of promise for the netbook and the connection fees that come with the devices as a growing source of revenue as consumers look to take broadband connectivity on the road. But will consumers be as enthusiatic to sign another contract for the service? Click below to hear AT&T's President of Mobile & Consumer Markets talk about what he sees as the future of the netbook.

AT&T: Netbook popularity on the rise from Reuters TV on Vimeo.