Technicians continue to bemoan that, despite the oversold internal indicators and sentiment numbers that show record levels of fear, the market continues to sell off. Normally at such oversold levels of the key indicators we should expect a rally -- but not lately.

A rally may be overdue but, so far, all we seem to get is one or two days up and then down again. The mood is best described by a Standard & Poor's market strategist who on Friday said, "We think the market is in desperate need of a washout to at least turn the tide for awhile back to the upside. We have been looking for a counter-trend rally, but all we are seeing are one-day wonders."

So where is the bottom -- or bottoms?

Tuesday's sell-off may have been a classic case of buy the rumor/sell the news -- heightened a bit by the president's anticipatory remarks at his first press conference on Monday.

Whatever the reason for Tuesday's sell-off, it will no doubt terrorize the public and have the letter writers running for even deeper cover.

While Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) are locked in their battle for smartphone supremacy, a new entry into the market has grabbed headlines.

Palm's (NASDAQ: PALM) brand new touch-screen smartphone -- the Pre -- was the surprise event at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Among other things, the Pre uses the Palm's Web OS, which supposedly can consolidate data from multiple Web sources.

A recent ChangeWave smartphone survey of 3,800 cell phone owners measured customer reaction to Research In Motion's (NASDAQ: RIMM) newest touch-screen phone, the BlackBerry Storm.

The survey was conducted just weeks after the Storm went on sale.

We also compared the Storm's favorability rating to those of the original Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone, taken from a 2007 ChangeWave survey conducted a few weeks after the iPhone's release.

The original iPhone's "very satisfied" rating (77%) was more than double that of the Storm (33%).

Moreover, the original iPhone's unsatisfied rating (5%) was three times lower than that of the Storm (14%).

Dropped calls have been a nuisance since the dawn of cell phones. But which cellular service provider has the best record in terms of the fewest dropped calls?

In a recent survey, ChangeWave asked 3,800 cell phone owners to estimate the percentage of their calls that were dropped during the past 90 days.

The survey, which was conducted Dec. 9-15, 2008, produced a clear winner: Verizon (NYSE: VZ) has the fewest dropped calls of all.

Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) ended the day up $1.51, or 1.89%. This put the stock's price at $81.46, breaking the $80 barrier quite nicely. This was nice momentum due to last week's incredible earnings report and figures of both iPods and computers shipped.

The other good news for Apple is a new survey by ChangeWave Research that shows lots of switchers are getting ready to move to Apple this holiday season. After surveying members the company sees that planned purchases of Apple computers will be up for the holidays. While ChangeWave's members are a bit more tech-oriented, the percentage of members wanting a Christmas Apple have shifted from 19% last year to 37% this year, and ChangeWave thinks it's the start of big market-share shift.