stocks

Tech stocks typically have to break significant price milestones or have dramatic dips to make CNET's news story queue. Likewise, we try not to hop on the Apple rumor bandwagon unless there's something credible or/and novel to report.

But being as it's Christmas Eve and all, we'll go out on a limb and offer you this nugget anyway. Apple's stock closed Thursday at an all time high of $209.04, up 6.94 points (3.43 percent) in a shortened day of trading on unconfirmed rumors that the company might unveil a long-awaited portable … Read more

Simply Invoice provides purchase orders and quotes in addition to its namesake function, producing high-quality invoices quickly and easily. Behind its cluttered layout hides a useful program for entrepreneurs and small-business owners.

The program's interface requires more patience than we expected, since its layout overflows with foreign-looking command icons. Fortunately, there's enough onscreen direction to keep most users in control. Creating a new invoice takes mere minutes, once you understand the layout. We set up our company's profile, including name, logo, and taxes, and Simply Invoice automatically populated our documents with the appropriate information in the appropriate … Read more

NEW YORK--The line on Wednesday night snaked outside the New York Stock Exchange building as a swarm of marketing, advertising, and other media types waited to get into the party that AOL was throwing on the trading floor to mark its spin-off from Time Warner. Onlookers weren't really sure what the big deal was.

An evening commuter walked past, craning his neck up at the massive AOL-logo banner--yes, the one with the fuzzy blue monster on it--and asking a few of the people in line, "Why's AOL having a party?"

"Spinning off from Time … Read more

Facebook is changing the structure of its company stock to a dual-class system, a move that hints the company may be looking toward an initial public offering--even though it says it has no plans to do so yet.

Here's how it works. Existing Facebook shareholders currently have Class A stock. That'll be converted to Class B stock, which has 10 times the voting power of Class A. Should those shareholders sell their stock when Facebook goes public, they'll be converted back into Class A stock--otherwise, they'll stay the way they are.

The story was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, … Read more

For the first time in its history, Google plans to buy back its own shares, following the completion of the AdMob acquisition.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Bloomberg of the plan Tuesday, which of course assumes the deal passes regulatory scrutiny. Google announced plans Monday to buy AdMob--one of the most successful mobile advertising companies--for $750 million in stock, making it the third-largest acquisition in Google's history.

Some had wondered why Google used stock instead of dipping into its cash horde to make the deal, which has the effect of diluting the holdings of other shareholders. However, by … Read more

Yahoo's Flickr site has deepened its relationship with photo-licensing power Getty Images so photographers can nominate their own photos for inclusion in Getty's Flickr Collection.

Previously, Getty decided which images it believed were commercially viable, and since the program launched in July 2008, it has put together a collection of more than 60,000 commercial images. Now photographers, instead of just being able to indicate that they're willing to be contacted by Getty, can actively submit a portfolio of images.

"A submission should include exactly 10 images that represent what you consider to be the best … Read more

The Wall Street barons of yesteryear are usually depicted standing next to a stock ticker, reading prices off ticker tape in what passed for real-time. Today, even small-time investors have access to an overwhelming amount of financial news and information, in real-time, all the time. Fortunately, there's software that can help you sort it all out, such as DTLink's Personal Stock Streamer. It delivers streaming stock quotes, multiple streaming charts containing a wide range of technical analysis indicators, automatic portfolio updating and recalculating, e-mail alerts with third-party software support, and more, all in real-time. It does a lot … Read more

Vista Toolbar Icons from icon specialist Aha-Soft promises to update your Windows Vista interface with a spiffy new look. It offers dozens of different icons executed in Vista's shiny, glassy, highlighted style. You can replace the default Vista icons with new ones that initiate the same functions, or add entirely new icons linked to new programs and features. They seem to have an icon for just about everything, and if it's not in Vista Toolbar Icons, it's probably in one of Aha-Soft's other icon packages. They do custom icons, too.

The icons that come with the … Read more

Wall Street Raider provides a realistic simulation of the wheeling-dealing stock market lifestyle. Much like the real Wall Street, this game is incredibly complex and not for novices.

The program's interface was so confusingly dense that it practically gave us a headache with its multicolored, compartmentalized display. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that Wall Street Raider is reserved for those with prior stock-trading knowledge, since the Help file was just as dense with text and jargon. From our limited understanding of Wall Street dealings, the program does an impressive job of recreating a trader's life, despite its horrible organization. … Read more