It was a big day for aerospace giant The Boeing Company (BA), which celebrated the inaugural flight of the biggest plane the company has ever built.

The plane, the Boeing 747-8, was originally planned to get off the ground over a year ago, but the delay did not dampen the mood at today's take off. Hundreds of employees and spectators on hand to watch the massive 253 foot jumbo jet take flight for the first time.

Facebook wants to take over the display advertising on its larger-than-life social network. In the process, it will stop using Microsoft (MSFT) to display the majority of advertising at what is becoming one of the most heavily-trafficked pieces of Internet real estate globally.

Is Microsoft angry? It should be -- every time the world's largest software company crafts some small way to try and compete with Internet advertising leader Google (GOOG), the rugs gets pulled from under it.

Several factors converging on the metals markets are causing a sell off.

First, China has taken steps to curb bank lending. Much of the Chinese stimulus money has gone into the purchase of raw materials. Now, with things cooling down, traders are less willing to stockpile base metals.

Second, U.S. payrolls fell by 20,000 last month, indicating sluggishness in the U.S. economy.

Shortly after the introduction of Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) long anticipated iPad tablet computer I was quite surprised to receive an email from one of our more astute readers boldly stating "Game, set and match. See you at $300"

My immediate reaction was that this overly zealous stock trader and Apple enthusiast had let all reason escape his cranium. For me it reinforced how irrational investors are and how little they understand numbers. Apple stock will not reach $300 this year.

The securities business is highly competitive, probably the most competitive. The pressure to secure big clients and to bring the greatest trading profits is enormous.

Right now, Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) lead the industry in trading. Goldman has high-speed trading, which generates the largest profits per trade on Wall Street. Naturally, clients are attracted to Goldman because they can give them the best executions and generate the biggest profits in their managed accounts.

Some of my all-time favorite movies are from James Cameron, such as the Terminator series and Aliens.

And this week, Cameron's latest creation, Avatar, has become the top-grossing movie worldwide (going beyond his 1997 blockbuster, Titanic). So far, it has taken in $1.6 billion.

In a way, Cameron is a New Age entrepreneur -- that is, combining creativity, unconventional wisdom, over-the-top optimism and good business sense (this is also the case with others in the entertainment industry, like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and even Steve Jobs).

Walmart (WMT) will be getting rid of more than 11,000 employees inside its Sam's Club wholesale stores and replacing them with outside marketers. Frankly, it's surprising the world's largest retailer didn't do this years ago.

Sam's Club offers so many products in bulk that goading some aisle surfers into buying 36-packs of portable sausages comes at a price: sampling and in-aisle live displays. The manufacturers of those products or their hired outsourcers will now get the joy of working those demo displays.

Following Wednesday's market close, Netflix (NFLX) reported its fourth quarter numbers, and the stock soared 13% higher in after-hours trading when the company posted better-than-expected numbers for the quarter.

The company had a great quarter, with profit rising by an impressive 36%. While the fourth quarter earnings were dramatic, what really had the stock moving after hours was the upbeat forecast for 2010.

The three major social media sites have been pushing new tools out to their user communities aggressively over the past year. Each company has its own set of rumors, from IPOs to being on both sides of an acquisition. While the ultimate 2010 aims of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn may not have been revealed to us yet, it is clear that all three are looking for ways to beef up revenue and demonstrate long-term viability.

Whether or not Facebook goes public this year, it's still pointed toward that ultimate goal. The 350-million member social network is focused on finding new sources of revenue and gaining better penetration into those it already has. Even if it's more than a year away, it's never too soon to start shoring up your financial statements for an IPO. The latest new feature from Facebook, which has been announcing enhancements fairly rapidly over the past few months, is targeted directly at advertisers, underscoring the importance that the company's attaching to revenue growth.

The recent announcement by the New York Times (NYT) that it would start to require subscriptions next year has drawn no shortage of attention and commentary. It has tried to put content behind a pay wall before (and failed), as have other newspapers.

Almost universally, newspapers have struggled with online subscriptions, with the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, a News Corp (NWS) property, the only two that have really delivered results better than awful. Whether the New York Times can operate at that level is in doubt, particularly given the stunning realization about Long Island daily newspaper Newsday.

Taiwan's Acer became the world's second-largest PC maker in 2009 by getting very aggressive in retail with pricing and positioning its three brands across all pricing segments. The eMachines brand is entry-level, the Acer brand seems to be mid-level and Acer has positioned the Gateway brand as a premium product.

All told, Acer's might unseated Dell (DELL) and the company shows no signs of slowing down sales. It even was an early participant in the netbook category last year, helping it capture sales in that red-hot category as well.

Amazon.com (AMZN) will be offering higher royalty payouts for books and material headed for its popular Kindle reading device in anticipation of the Apple (AAPL) tablet, which most likely will be announced this Wednesday at the "Product Event" recently unveiled by Apple.

Target (TGT) will downsize its ambitions a bit in the near future. Not in growth, but store size. Instead of littering the American landscape with even more big-box stores, the second-largest discount retailer in the U.S. wants to open smaller, more urban locations.

Outlining its store strategy last week, Target execs indicated that the retailer won't be forging ahead and a slew of larger SuperTarget locations. Instead, it will remodel existing stores and test the urban store concept to try and connect with the mass populations inside city centers instead of the folks in suburbs. Prediction: the effort won't go far. The point of people living in urban centers is familiarity and community -- the suburban feel and larger stores that compete with the mom-and-pop circuit won't cut it with city dwellers.

Medtronic (MDT) announced Monday morning that it has agreed to acquire Invatec and two of its affiliated companies.

Medtronic will issue an initial payment of roughly $350 million. Invatec develops medical technologies that are used for the "interventional treatment" of cardiovascular disease. In addition to Invatec, Medtronic will acquire Fogazzi (which provides polymer technology to Invatec) and Krauth Cardiovascular (which distributes Invatec's products in Germany)

Maxine Clark has had a stellar career in retail. She spent 19 years at May Department Store and eventually became the president of Payless Shoe Source. Then in 1997, she started an innovative retail concept, Build-A-Bear Workshop (BBW). The store allows kids to build their own dolls.

While the business has suffered recently because of the recession, Build-A-Bear Workshop is nonetheless a major success story. There are now more than 400 locations across the world. There is even a virtual world, called buildabearville.com.