Carol Vinzant
- http://www.animaltourism.com

It's only a stopgap measure, everyone knows. It's a temporary reprieve for XP. Just the same, netbooks are allowing XP, the operating system Microsoft tore from its loyal public last year, to make a comeback.

Last year I tried to get a new computer but was so badly abused by Vista I took it back and reformatted my old computer so I could avoid the demanding operating system.

I almost was one of the people that put money back in the market at the end of the year. It's a new year, Obama is coming in, things will improve, I figured. But I held back. I don't like to make market decisions based solely on gut. And even then, my gut is of two minds and one of them says this recession is going to be the worst of my lifetime.

Some stats do point to an up year this year. We've been hearing a lot this week how the market goes up a lot after a fall. My friends at the always smart Stock Traders' Almanac use a measure of the first five trading days of the year. It was on this measure that I -- thankfully -- pulled back last January. If the first five days are up, the year will be generally be up, they've found. Sy Hirsch invented this measure as an improvement on his other early indicator, which says however January goes, so goes the market for the year.

For the last 36 times that the market has been up for those first five trading days in January, the market has been up for the whole year, they say. And they judge the indicator to have a 86% accuracy ratio. This year it's a little confusing: the Dow was down a little, the S&P was up a little (both under 1%) and the Nasdaq was up 2.5%. By that measure the rally that started in December will continue.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

Whatever you do, don't tell my mom about John Webber. He's an English guy who had hung onto a cup that his junk dealer grandfather bought in the 1930s. One day he took it out from under the bed and decided to get it examined. It turns out to be made of gold, about 1,700 years old, and decorated with the face of a Roman god. He got $100,000 at auction.

The reason I don't want you to tell my mom about this guy is that this is exactly the scenario she thinks will happen with every mug she has ever bought at a garage sale, each "collectible" she keeps stashed in cabinets and even the old eight-track player that she cannot be persuaded is worthless. It's stories like Webber's that keep houses full of junk.

Also, Webber is now in his 70s. I don't know what his family or financial situation is. I'm sure he could use $100,000. Who couldn't? But I'm also pretty sure that the money would've made a bigger difference in his life if he had examined the cup when he was saving for a house, sending a kid to school, or starting a business.

Be sure to check out more Money Winners of 2008.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

Bill Ackman, who manages the hedge fund Pershing Capital, was one of the first major investors to realize what poor shape Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) were in. He warned that the apparent back-up of the federal government wasn't going to do investors much good unless the company fell apart and had to be bailed out.

"It doesn't matter what the rating agencies say about their capitalization," Ackman told CNBC. "Implicit guarantees don't work in the market that we're in now." And he turned out to be right, of course. Ackman was shorting the debt of Fannie and Freddie.

While Ackman has had to take some heat from investors who blame him for profiting off Fannie and Freddie's collapse, some critics say he was a bloodsucker, others point to his keen analysis as the reason we should allow short selling: it's the only way to offer an incentive to investors not to believe the hype.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

Lots of people thought real estate was overpriced. Many worried that banks were giving out mortgages too cheap. But what did you do about it? (Either to help the situation or to make money.) Jeff Greene, a real estate mogul in California, actually found a way to bet against the subprime mortgage folly. He made $450 million -- at least that was the count earlier this year.

Well, he didn't just think of it on his own. He basically took the idea that his friend, hedge fund manager John Paulson, had. Paulson thought that, as an individual, Greene wouldn't be able to do this complex a transaction. According to the Wall Street Journal he even used special software so investors in a hedge fund Paulson created just to exploit the subprime crisis couldn't pass on his strategy.

How Greene and Paulson made money involves two financial terms you've probably had to learn this year and never want to hear again. Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) are the way mortgages are packaged and sold to investors in various slices of risk. Credit default swaps are the holders of those investments insured themselves -- by buying what was like unregulated insurance from one another. The credit default swaps are what got so many big companies in trouble -- they had to pay up on investments that went bad. So Paulson shorted CDOs and bought some credit default swaps.

This post is part of a feature on companies and products that our bloggers think are in need of a makeover. See all 26.

McDonald's has been hit by one serious critique after another of food safety and nutrition. The company has gone from being a family chain to something only those desperate to save time or money want. There have been half-hearted efforts to modernize, but what McDonald's really needs is a complete menu makeover.

I'm not talking about changing away from hamburgers in all their infinite variety, either. But over the last couple decades the eating public has gotten a lot more picky and worried about getting fat or sick from mad cow disease or some contaminant.

There have been many serious critiques of their impact on worldwide nutrition. Eric Schlosser described in Fast Food Nation how mega-producer McDonald's uses butchering assembly lines. In an era of food safety concern, "a single fast-food hamburger now contains meat from dozens or even hundreds of different cattle." Morgan Spurlock examined in the movie Supersize Me and a related book what happens when an individual -- or a whole country -- eats too much McDonald's.

Of course, McDonald's is facing pressure from the other side, too. We want cheap food. Especially in a recession, people love the dollar menu. But McDonald's has just got to improve the food.

This post is part of a feature on companies and products that our bloggers think are in need of a makeover. See all 26.

When Kmart bought Sears to become Sears Holdings Corp (NASDAQ: SHLD) it seemed like a perfect match. Here were two retail titans of the 1970s who had completely missed the boat of modern big box retailers. Instead of trying to sell dowdy clothes, Sears could have concentrated on hardware and become Home Depot (NYSE: HD). Instead of selling dowdy everything with surly service, Kmart could have become Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT).

Now what both stores need is a makeover. They need to become that bright, wide-aisle store that people love to shop at because they find neat things they didn't know they needed. Heck, if the Kmart in my neighborhood could just manage to keep its shelves stocked and not hire the surly, it would be a step up.

Both Kmart and Sears know they have trouble, but it just may be too late to make the changes. Kmart already went through bankruptcy and closed about 300 stores. They even came up with a bright, open store prototype with wide, well-lit aisles. But then they couldn't afford to really roll it out, says Shopping Centers Today. And many think they didn't close enough bad stores.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

Verizon made an ad this summer showing a guy scaling a junkyard fence to get his hands on an LG Dare phone, only to run into two junkyard dogs -- chained and snarling pit bulls. Pit bull lovers didn't like the casual depiction of animal neglect and cruelty. Animal rights groups have been working for a long time to stop people from chaining up dogs in their yard, abusing them and generally using them as a street weapon.

Verizon at first insisted that it would keep running the ad. Then concerned dog owners got the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals involved. PETA first tried to talk with Verizon and explain why the ad annoyed people: the dogs in the commercial had ears docked in a "fight crop" and pit bulls are the most abused breed of dogs.

Verizon refused to meet to discuss the situation, PETA says. So they put out an action alert. After Verizon got 7,000 e-mails from angry animal lovers, they took down the ad.

See other examples of Ads Gone Bad.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

Mars Inc., has made not just one, but two ad campaigns for its popular Snickers bar seem to sneer at gays. Mars, one of the biggest privately held, family-owned companies, makes many of the world's most popular candies: Snickers, M&Ms, Twix, Starburst (along with Uncle Ben's Rice and pet food like Whiskas), but both of the ads gay rights groups found offensive were for the Snickers bar.

The first gay-themed Snickers ad made a big splash in Super Bowl XLI in 2007. Two mechanics get so wrapped up in eating the opposite ends of Snickers bar that their lips touch, prompting them to decide to "do something manly" lest they accidentally catch gayness -- so they pull their chest hair out.