The news flow is abuzz this week with stats about Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and its Xbox 360 console. According to reports, the company has sold 30 million units of the gaming hardware around the world. Nintendo Co., Ltd. (OTC: NTDOY) is still in first place with 50 million Wii consoles sold. And Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE)? Well, the PlayStation 3 is decidedly third with roughly 22 million systems moved through retail channels. And don't give me that Xbox-360-had-a-year-over-Sony excuse. Doesn't matter. Microsoft has so far played it well.

But I'd like to see Microsoft do even better when it comes to the Xbox 360. I think, out of all the investments Microsoft makes that are outside of the core operating system asset, the Xbox 360 is the one with the most potential promise.

Verizon Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VZ) reported Q1 earnings on Monday, and they didn't disappoint. The telecommunication entity said it earned $0.63 per share on an adjusted basis. Okay, the growth wasn't so great. The company earned an adjusted $0.61 per share in the year-ago period. But you know the game: it's all about expectations. So, on that count, Verizon was ahead by four pennies, according to this database.

But the Verizon story isn't just about earnings. It's also about cash flow. Net cash from operations increased 19% to $6.4 billion. Free cash flow more than doubled to $2.7 billion. Verizon is a well-known dividend-paying stock, so shareholders definitely want to see good cash flows.

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) has had an impressive run as of late. The stock is up by a double-digit percentage over the year-to-date period. At the time of this writing, shares have gained 6.8% in afternoon trading on decent volume.

According to this CNET article, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is once again the catalyst for the rise in Yahoo!'s fortunes. Are you, like I, getting sick and tired of the drama between these two tech companies? Now, I know today's news isn't about an all-out takeover/merger or anything like that, but still, if I read Microsoft and Yahoo! in the same sentence again, I think I'll scream. Anyway, CNET is reporting that the two are in talks about an advertising partnership.

Plenty of investment guru's have suggested buying on fear and selling when greed reaches its pinnacle. Well I think the fear side is self evident but I'm not hearing about many analysts who are brave enough to buy right now. As a matter of fact I only hear that this would be a very foolish time to invest in the financial sector, in particular, any stocks with sub-prime or "Alt-A" mortgage exposure.

For this reason, contrarian that I am, I thought I would speak out about my recent BAD CALLS, or at least very premature calls, and start tracking them for all to see -- accepting the ribbing, tomato-throwing and blunt comments about the error of my ways.

I own four of the five stocks I will be following for the next year, Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC), IndyMac Bancorp Inc. (NYSE: IMB), Popular Inc. (NASDAQ: BPOP), and Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM). I wrote favorable comments on each and in the case of WM, more than once. Needless to say, I am under water on all of them. I do not own Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC) but it will make for a fine pace car in the middle of this storm.

Welcome to the 19th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a weekly column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

Last week I discussed how Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) partners with China for so much of its merchandise. So much, in fact, that one company is China's six largest trading partner. Being in the midst of entire countries must make Wal-Mart feel pretty good.

This week, I'll be looking at Wal-Mart's public image in-depth. Why is the company so vilified in the media but so loved by customers? One would say that American consumers want goods and groceries for the absolute lowest price anywhere. Wal-Mart serves that need better than any other retailer, yet, it comes at a cost (sourcing from China is just one). But has the retailer brought on its bad image all by itself? Let's take a look.

The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas hit a record $3.196, not accounting for inflation, according to the AAA and Oil Price Information Service. If using inflationary terms, 1981's $3.223, we're probably going to surpass that quite soon, heading into the Memorial Day weekend.

If you read Brian White's Gasoline prices go off the deep end on May 7th, you would have read nationwide gas prices surged to $3.07. In just two weeks we've seen a 12 cent bump, and some analysts don't expect the momentum to stop.

According to an AAA survey, some 38.3 million Americans are expected to drive more than 50 miles or more during the Memorial Day weekend, up 1.7% from last year.

With gas prices growing ever so quickly, where do you stand? Do you plan to cut down your traveling this weekend? Will the growing prices reduce your driving habits at all?

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.

It seems that the competition that has been brewing between Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has never really died down from the late 1970s, even as both companies have had ups and downs in the stock market and in the consumer products market as well. The battle between Apple and Microsoft has been (and will be) a perfect case study for future business textbooks at the best universities, as the fight between the two has been nothing short of amazing in the past 25 years or so.

Apple

Apple's start began with Steve Jobs (visionary guru) and buddy Steve Wozniak (tech guru) trying to find a way to get customers buying the personal computer before the market and world even knew what a personal computer was. Steve Jobs was trained in calligraphy and wanted the PC experience to be just as much an art and visceral, visible experience as a technical, computer program-interface experience. With that vision, and with a little help from friends, the two Steves started selling Apple's first PC products out of a garage about 27 years ago in the Southern California area, after Jobs dropped out of college due to lack of funds and general boredom.

What transpired throughout the early 1980s was the rapid growth of Apple Computer Inc. as the PC powerhouse at the same time it was grabbing the attention of MicroSoft (later renamed Microsoft Corp.) founder Bill Gates, who had dropped out of Harvard to pursue his vision of coming up with a PC operating system that he could "license" to all the big hardware manufacturers to use on their machines. But, Gates needed a nice interface to ensure his product was better than Apple's.

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) was the shining star of the internet bubble in 2000, just before the dot-com crash, and has managed to keep a huge customer base (tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions based on how you calculate it). Yahoo! customers are loyal apparently, even though Google has trounced Yahoo! in recent years in terms of search popularity and overall brand awareness. Like Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo! was founded by Stanford grad students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, so that information on the web could be more easily found back when the web was in its infancy -- 1995.

From 1995 to 2001, Yahoo! grew at a rapid clip, and then saw a downward spiral as advertising fortunes started collapsing at the same time Google's "text ad" advertising model started growing by leaps and bounds. It's pretty obvious by now that Yahoo!'s "one ad for all" approach grew quite stale (and so did its revenues) at the same time Google's "customer relevant" and unobtrusive ad model grew an an inversely proportionate rate. Yahoo! has made great strides on the comeback trail under five-year CEO and Hollywood expert Terry Semel, who has modeled Yahoo! as a "relationship builder" to customers (and gotten them to pay for certain services).

This model is quite opposed to Google's "tool-based" customer model that can't touch Yahoo!'s model for creating and enhancing actual relationships with paying customers, beyond just providing easy internet tools for customers while keeping that "relationship" quite distant. Yahoo! shares spit almost three years ago, but have remained between $29 and $44 per share since that time. By contrast, Google's shares have skyrocketed from $85 in August 2004 to over $460 today. In terms of an investment over the past five years, it's hard to draw a conclusion since Google has been publicly traded for less than three years, while Yahoo! has been traded for quite a bit longer than that.

Sheldon Liber and I have aggregated our latest thoughts on the ongoing eBay saga so you all will have something to SPEND your time on over the weekend. Seems like the eBay seller base is being rather vocal while the market watchers on Wall Street are yawning and just looking at eBay's balance sheet. That's a lot of zeroes.

Brian: With all the fierce hubbub these days on fee craziness on eBay, what is the online auction giant doing to quell the masses? Does it even have to? eBay stock has been doing just fine even as highly-motivated eBay sellers have been incredibly vocal all around the web on eBay's recent fee hikes. Sure, eBay has seen hikes before, and the resultant seller loudness has quieted down over time. What makes this situation any different?

Sheldon: Sellers claim they are spending to much for what they get! Buyers will have to spend on some cost pass-thrus somewhere along the line. EBay cannot ignore the fact that they are an ever increasing and larger percentage of the cost part of mechandise so they are contributing to a reduction in the desirability of their website as the customer finds themselves spending more and thus the site being less competitive with other sites.