The story continues to be the same for Apple Inc. Although expectations for the Cupertino computer and digital device company are higher than ever, the company continues to exceed estimates quarter after quarter and year after year. Today, after NASDAQ market close, Apple announced fiscal earnings of $7 billion, with more than $1 billion in profits. In the quarter, Apple increased iPod sales by 50% over the previous year, to 21 million, and 1.6 million Macs, up 28% year over year.

Apple has come an amazingly long way from the mid-90's squalor that had some expecting they simply wouldn't make it. It's even more amazing to realize that this tremendous growth from the company's base products comes in advance of their recently announced iPhone and Apple TV products, which wasn't lost on the company's CEO, Steve Jobs, in today's press release.

"We've just kicked off what is going to be a very strong new product year for Apple by launching Apple TV and the revolutionary iPhone."

Apple's growth looks like it is in no danger of slowing. Through unique innovation and aggressive marketing, Apple has forged a place for itself in the marketplace. Now, it's not just a question of whether the company will survive, or if Apple can sell beyond its installed base, but just how much market share the company can take from Windows. With Vista around the corner, and Leopard offering some cutting-edge features, Apple can make significant traction in the coming year.

As Apple users and Mac afficionados, we look forward to more progress.

Picking on Yahoo! for its failings is as easy as it once was to pick on Microsoft for its monopoly tactics and shoddy software, or Apple for its scant market share. It's not as if the world needs yet more proof points that Google has won the online search and advertising race, and that Yahoo! has squandered more than one opportunity to get ahead. Yet an increasing amount of news shows that Google is taking more share in all categories at the expense of Yahoo! and Microsoft, despite already having the leader position.

Yesterday, Comscore released its December search rankings for search engines, showing Google with 47.3 percent. Yahoo! eked up to 28.5% and Microsoft fell to 10.5%, down from 11%. Tom Foremski wonders aloud if there is a place for niched, specialized search engines that don't try to do it all. While many are being funded, the truth is that outside of the top two engines, everybody else seems to be losing share, as consumers grow more comfortable and entrenched with Google especially.

The battle over search engine eyes and clicks, and the domination of Google, grows ever more astounding when one learns more about the history of Google and Yahoo!, particularly. Wired Magazine launched an extensive piece on how Yahoo! once had the opportunity to acquire the nascent challenger in the summer of 2002, but simply didn't offer enough dough. As the article points out, this stemmed from the timing of it all. In 2002, as the first Internet bubble had come crashing down, Yahoo! was left a shadow of its once high-flying self, and it just simply couldn't scare up billions to acquire Google. Instead, they settled for second best acquisitions of Inktomi and GoTo (now Overture), and couldn't mash the new products together well enough to take on what's become the far and away market leader.

As much fun as it is to see companies challenge the market front-runners and add more services beyond their core business model, I believe they also need the ability to recognize where they are failing and they need to make the hard decisions to focus on what they do well. I don't use Microsoft search and Yahoo! search because they simply aren't as good, and won't get me the answers I need. Advertisers know the intelligent consumers have made the choice, and that choice is Google.

Of late, I've found my attention span in the stock market is decreasing rapidly. I used to be of the standard "buy and hold" mentality, picking great companies with potentially great stocks. But the seeming inevitability of the buy and hold strategy was that eventually, the stock would go down - sometimes in a big way, thanks to a profit miss or product issue.

The result is that my investment strategy has morphed, first from holding stocks for the better part of a year to instead a few months, down to a month or two at longest, and most recently, it's been unusual for me to even hold a specific stock for even a week. Instead, I've been looking for momentum plays, with specific actions that would temporarily boost a stock or stem a drop. This change in strategy has made it easier to turn money over and better regulate the potential spikes.

By turning into more of a day trader, per se, I don't fall emotionally for stocks, but instead look at them as faceless entities with ticker symbols, whether it's AAPL, GOOG, TIVO, or others. In fact, I even prey on companies that have fallen on hard times to benefit from their eventual rebound. Even a 3 percent jump in a day or two might be enough for me to sell. As a result, I've made more in stock profits in January already than I did in December, and more in December than I did in all of 2006 prior.

I don't know if this is a recent stroke of luck or the result of good planning. But for now, we'll keep trading off CES and MacWorld, and earnings hit or misses. It's working.

Listening to ''Walk Down (KVA Club Mix)'', by Kyau & Albert (Play Count: 2)

I've been good. Even though Kristine and I watched the first four episodes of 24 more than a week ago, we didn't tell anybody what happened. Not only did 24 not officially debut on television until last night, but I am, for some reason, surrounded by coworkers and family members alike who haven't made their way through the previous season - either due to lax TiVo discipline, or an inability to find time to watch the show on DVD. Therefore, I have gone out of my way to be courteous and avoid slipping details of the newest adventures of Jack Bauer - for their safety and mine.

With that said, the cat is pretty much out of the bag now. 24 kicked off the season yesterday on Fox, and people are all talking about CTU's latest attempt to save the world from the evils of terrorism. Even the Drudge Report was abuzz about 24's possibly setting off a nuclear weapon on American soil. Drudge, in his typical flair, quoted one anonymous Fox executive as saying it was "Time to wake the country up!" and keep them riveted to the screen - hoping that once again, the good guys prevail.

Our early access to 24 paid dividends over the weekend. My parents had somehow made an alternative show hold a higher TiVo season pass, and 24's debut was nowhere to be found. We scrambled to push the new episodes to my mother's big screen Apple Cinema Display, where we then proceeded to watch all four shows until after 2 in the morning. Today, around breakfast, she said the improvised slumber party was well worth it. Had I not had the 24 episodes on the iPod, they would be forced to find somebody else with true TiVo expertise to get them their Jack Bauer fix.

If you haven't yet made 24 a must see in your TV watching itinerary, it's time. This season looks to be better than ever.

Listening to ''floatation'', by Ulrich Schnauss (Play Count: 1)