Retail sales results are pouring in, and one of the companies finding itself on the smiling side of the data is Costco (COST). The warehouse club reported that higher gas prices and a weak dollar helped a "key sales figure" increase 9% during December. The Street expected Costco to report an increase of 7.9%. Removing higher gasoline prices and the soft dollar from the equation resulted in a sales increase of 4%. U.S. sales increased 2% and international results increased 10%.

Costco (and other warehouse stores) turned in a solid month, as shoppers looked to stretch their dollar as far as possible. When you can go into a store and purchase 50 toilet paper rolls for a reasonable price, why wouldn't you shop at a bulk retailer?

A recent article by Melly Alazraki examines the rapid advance of voice-recognition technology and its application to search utilities. As areas of speculative investment go, this is a great one! I suggest getting on the voice-recognition train right now because it's going to take off and once it does, there will be few stops between here and the top.

Now here's what you want to look for because this is being utilized successfully in warehouses and distribution centers around the globe. You want to find the companies who are developing voice-recognition programming which is "normalized" by the user at time of inception. Simply put, the best voice-recognition applications are user specific in the recognition of voice patterns.

On the industrial side, warehouse and DC workers spend a brief time introducing themselves to the voice-recognition programs by "installing" their own voices into the programming patterns. The applications come to recognize each employee's individual voice and speech patterns. Special nuances such as a lisp, teeth clicking, slurring or a nasal tone are cataloged as specific speech characteristics upon which the programming can rely for accuracy and validation of information and the individual. The industrial world has found that this allows the systems to adapt to any amount of accents, dialects and colloquialisms. In many cases these programs will even act as interpreter between employees and allow individuals who speak entirely different languages to interact effectively.

Please do look into voice recognition as your next cutting-edge investment. Check on the industrial side of things to get the real picture about what is working. Newly developing voice-activated search is already working at our house. I used it just moments ago. I told our two year old to go get her shoes... oh, never mind, that's something altogether different.

I've been reading the January 2007 issue of Material Handling Management. In this issue, there is a fine article by Tom Andel that discusses the current realities regarding hydrogen fuel cell use in commercial operations utilizing lift truck fleets. The MHM article brings home some truths of just how close we are to finally beginning the replacement of currently accepted methods of providing the energy to operate various industrial equipment. Consumers (and investors), sometimes don't realize that when it comes to heavy duty technology conversions in our day to day world, most often those changes are implemented and perfected on the industrial side well before the consumer side gets its hands on them. Such seems to be the case in the matter of hydrogen fuel cells.

MHM research suggests that while increasing improvements are still being aggressively sought, hydrogen fuel cell technology has reached the point of being completely practical in replacing some of today's current energy provision systems. The single largest hurdle that developers are addressing is in making the technology more economical. With current incentive programs for energy provision change over, it's almost a dead heat between hydrogen fuel cells and current methods in use. Developers have already begun their marketing programs while the scientists and engineers continue to push towards their goals for economical hydrogen deployment absent of outside financial incentives. Their goal is to make hydrogen fuel cell technology a stand alone proposition.