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Dear Readers,

I just wanted to highlight a new capability to BloggingStocks that many of you have asked for in the past two years we've been posting: You can now print articles.

Below each post, in the gray bar, there is now a "Print" link. You can also email and "share" our posts with your favorite bookmarking or social networking site.

Please let us know about other improvements you'd like to see to our site.

This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See our list of the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

Back in 2005, for Sarah Jessica Parker's 40th birthday, The Gap (NYSE: GPS) got her something brand new: a pink slip. Then they hired a 17-year-old to replace her.

Now, I've never been a fan of Sex in the City, the hugely popular TV show where Parker starred as gossip columnist Carrie Bradshow. Even though I spent my late 20s as a single woman in New York City, I spent my 30s -- when the show was hot -- as a staid married woman, with a baby either in tow or on the way most of the time. In fact, the few times I watched the steamy show, I found it so embarrassing I had to turn it off.

However, Sarah Jessica Parker and I are just a year apart in age. So it still makes my blood boil to think that the Gap (they were lucky to have her!) replaced her with 17-year-old singer (Joss Stone), right after her 40th birthday in March, 2005.

But who got the last laugh? It certainly isn't The Gap, which has seen its stock price fall nearly 25% in the past three years to a current $15.90 a share.

AOL Money & Finance launched real-time quotes this week. The site's quote pages still headline with exchange-provided delayed stock prices. But right below that now, you can see a real-time quote that is provided by BATS Trading, an electronic communication network, or ECN (more information here). It shows the prices that broker dealers use to trade big lots of stock among themselves. It is usually the same as the price the exchanges quote and is especially reliable for stocks with major trading volume.

This real-time information can be quite useful if you are checking a stock that is making a big move during the day. For example, General Electric (NYSE: GE) is reporting earnings tomorrow and is in the news today as investors anticipate it may soon announce some spin-offs. As I look at the quote now (1:40 PM), I see the main quote is $27.45. But the real-time quote is at $27.60. That tells me that GE is higher heading into its earnings announcement. (Here's an earnings preview from Peter Cohan). Maybe this would be a good time to buy?

Since BloggingStocks is part of the AOL Money & Finance family of sites and links to AOL quotes in posts, all you have to do is click on a link on this site and you can see real-time quotes for yourself.

More recent improvements to AOL quotes pages include information by ticker on:
Option chains (see Time Warner's)
SEC filings (see Microsoft's)
Conference Calls (see Yahoo's)
Earnings releases (see Apple's)
Dividends & Splits (see Dupont's)


Disclosure: Amey Stone, an editor of BloggingStocks, doesn't own GE shares. She is an employee of AOL, a division of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX).

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

If you like to save money on gas and live near a Wal-Mart in the Southeast and Midwest, chances are you are filling up these days at stations operated by Murphy Oil Corp. (NYSE: MUR), which is headquartered in the small town of El Dorado, Arkansas.

Those Murphy USA gas stations, located in parking lots of Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT), are just a small part of Murphy's many energy-related businesses. Murphy Oil is a giant, publicly-traded oil and natural gas exploration and production company with operations as far afield as Malaysia and Ecuador. Much of its U.S. drilling and refining is done off the shores of Louisiana, and some of that equipment was damaged during Hurricane Katrina. Sales in 2007 were more than $18 billion and the stock is up 60% in the past year. The company was recently ranked No. 134 in the Fortune 500 (to put that in perspective, Google is ranked 150 and Nike 153).

Corporate headquarters to all this (as well as a timber company that was spun off from Murphy in 1996), is El Dorado, population of 20,000. A boom town in the 1920s when oil was discovered, El Dorado has a colorful history and currently boasts summertime reenactments of a Wild West style gun fight on the courthouse steps, as well as a historic "haunted" theater. The town participated in the federal "Mainstreet" program, which provides grants for restoring historic downtowns, suggesting that the downtown was once in rough shape, but has since been prettied up.

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

I can't say I had much personal experience with Adelphia, which was the fifth largest cable company in the country when it filed for bankruptcy in 2002. But I did follow the case of the Rigas' family with interest. Dad and founder John and son Timothy Rigas ended up going to jail after treating this huge public company like their own personal candy store.

Founded in 1952 in Coudersport, Penn., Adelphia's name came from the Greek word for brother. The company went public in 1986 and grew by acquisition -- buying up smaller cable providers.

The company went bankrupt in 2002 after disclosing $2.3 billion in debt that was kept off the balance sheet. Federal prosecutors charged the Rigases and other officers of looting the company of an estimated $100 million, much of it spent on ridiculous excess -- like spending $6,000 to have Christmas trees flown in to New York.

Both Rigas men were found guilty and in 2007 started serving time in a Federal prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) bought up Adelphia's cable business in 2006, splitting up the customers by region.

Let us know in the comments what you miss about Adelphia. And be sure to check out other Companies That Have Vanished.

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

Ah WorldCom. Aside from its storied history as one of the world's biggest accounting frauds, I remember it as my first cell phone company. My husband bought me a WorldCom phone as a gift and it turned out to not only have terrible service, but ridiculous billing practices, and we ended up paying to get out of the contract as I recall. I remember thinking that there was something really wrong with that company and later wishing I had pursued it as an investigative story, since I was then a writer at BusinessWeek Online and WorldCom was a hot stock.

But no, I never got onto such a story. In fact, I followed WorldCom's stock with interest since I had picked it in an office stock-picking contest years earlier and felt some satisfaction at its meteoric rise through the 1990s (even though I never actually owned the shares; it was just part of a fantasy portfolio).

But here's the WorldCom history that is worth remembering now: WorldCom started as Long Distance Discount Services (LDDS) in 1983. It changed its name to WorldCom in 1995. A series of mega-mergers transformed the company, culminating in its $40 billion deal for MCI. It was rechristened MCI WorldCom in 1998, the second largest long-distance calling company. The following year, just as it announced a deal with Sprint (now Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S)) that never came to fruition, the telecom industry started a prolonged downturn.

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

I credit Nick Leeson for creating jobs for lots of my friends. Back in 1995, when he single-handedly brought down Barings Bank with currency trading run amok, I had never heard the term "risk management." But I soon started hearing right and left of friends getting highly paid jobs at financial firms in the "risk management" department.

Apparently, after Mr. Leeson lost $1.4 billion dollars in unauthorized trading rendering Barings insolvent, financial institutions around the world decided to put in more rigorous systems of checks and balances that would keep such things from happening. Hence, newly expanded risk management departments.

Founded in 1762, Barings Bank was the oldest merchant bank in London, financed the Napoleonic Wars, and was the Queen of England's own bank.

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

In the world of diapers, try as other brands might to gain a foothold, it is really a Pampers vs. Huggies world.

Pampers, made by Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) has been the market share winner for decades and is P&G's top global brand. But Huggies, made by Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB) has made significant inroads thanks to frequent discounts.

Consumer Reports estimates parents will spend between $1,500 and $2,000 on disposable diapers before their child is potty trained. With that kind of investment, many parents have strong views about which brand is best. Leakage control and rash prevention are the main criteria. Consumer reports rates Pampers (both its Cruisers and Baby Dry brands) higher than Huggies, mainly due to Pampers' superior leakage prevention.

Baby blogs also seem to favor Pampers over Huggies. And in my experience, I do think of Pampers as the "premium" and was surprised that when I actually checked price tags in my local drug store this week, found that they were priced exactly the same.

For my diaper dollar, I don't see much of a difference between the two. I'm all for changing the baby more often and buying a cheaper diaper. If you really put the diapers to the test with, say an eight-hour day at the playground without a change, you might find a difference. But my priority is to spend as little time and money diaper shopping as possible. Costco stocks Huggies in bulk, so that's what we have now.

This post is one of several on business heirs apparent. Let us know in the comments whether you think Abigail Johnson should take up the reigns of Fidelity, and be sure to check out the other heir apparent posts.

I covered the mutual fund business for about six years in the 1990s, when Fidelity Investments was all the rage. It had the most star managers, the best performing funds and by far the most assets. It had the awe-inspiring Fidelity Magellan! And that was nothing to sneer at back then.

So it was with great interest when I learned that Abigail Johnson, the daughter of CEO 'Ned' Johnson (himself an heir to Fidelity), and a woman near my age (she's 46), was being primed to take over the company. I have been cheering for her ever since. (Even as I wonder if the only way a woman can get to the top of a major financial services firm is by having her father run the place).

The New York Times has reported that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- my governor, a man I voted for, covered when he was Attorney General, and have defended in many a heated conversation with friends and colleagues -- has admitted to being 'involved' in a prostitution ring.

How is he involved? Let's just say, I don't think he has been running the thing. In fact, as of this writing, I'm still holding out a smidgen of hope that the report is somehow wrong. Maybe he was just investigating it! (Okay, wishful thinking).

When the news conference starts -- presumably any minute (It's now 2:45 PM) -- I'll liveblog it to the best of my ability here (refresh this post to see updates). Then you too, can be among the first to know what Spitzer, possibly this century's greatest law-and-order hypocrite, has to say for himself.

3 PM: We're still waiting for the press conference to start. But CNBC has reports that government investigators have text messages of some sort. The discussion on TV now is that Spitzer will have to step down if there is any truth to this story. Commentators are also reprising just how zealous Spitzer was in his prosecutions of Wall Street executives. Silly me, I thought that meant he really knew the difference between right and wrong.

3:13: Oops! missed it! That was quick. Spitzer read a brief statement. All I heard was him apologizing to his family.

3:15: Rewind: He said, "I have I've acted in a way that violates my obilgations to my family and that violates my or any standards of right or wroing. I apologize first and foremost to my family."

Kevin March, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Well, you were right in identifying that the DLP space is highly challenged on the TV front by LCDs and that has been going on for pretty much most of 2007, especially picking up pace in the back half. We're seeing DLP really having its most attractive position for television space in the 50, 55-plus screen size, which is a very large screen size. We continue to be very successful in DLP in front projectors with roughly half the front projectors sold today having DLP-based projection systems inside them. What we have seen in the last few quarters is front projector growth has slowed versus what we've seen in prior years. The other area that's actually gained quite a bit of traction, although it's a relatively small part of DLP is the large venues, such as movie theaters and so on. We now have over 6,000 screens identified around the world that are installed and that continues to expand quite rapidly. So, as we look into the future, we would expect that TV would probably be, continue to be quite challenged going forward. Large venue continues to be growing nicely, albeit relatively a small piece, and front projectors, to the extent that market continues to grow, and we have 50% market share, we'll see DLP growth underneath that, hopefully offsetting any changes in the TV space.

Uche Orji, UBS

Okay. Thank you, Uche. And so before we wrap up, let me make just a few closing comments. 2007 was a year of progress for TI. We established a stronger strategic position in analog. We increased profitability, reflecting a better product portfolio. We were more capital efficient due to our manufacturing strategy that is focused on generating long-term returns. The combination of higher profitability and better capital efficiency generated strong cash flow and improved return on our invested capital. At the same time, growth is important to TI. TI revenue grew in the fourth quarter for the first time in four quarters on a year on year basis, and our wireless revenue resumed growth as well, and we expect TI's year on year growth to accelerate in the first quarter. And with that, I'll say thank you for joining us. A replay of this call is available on our website. Good evening.

Operator

And this does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

Regular readers of BloggingStocks will find no shortage of stock picks for 2008 on our pages. Steven Halpern alone has compiled about 120 picks from the investment advisors he follows. But plenty of other bloggers have favorites for 2008 to share.

In an effort to consolidate the wealth of ideas into one handy post, here are a few of our bloggers' favorite selections for the year ahead:

VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) is the 2008 pick of Georges Yared (check out how his 2007 picks did). He expects this internet security and domain registry firm to sell off its non-core assets and grow its core business in 2008.

Priceline (NASDAQ: PCLN) is the current favorite of Beth Gaston Moon. It's already had an amazing run in 2007, climbing from about $45 to $120 a share. Looking for a lower-priced stock? Beth recently spotlighted 10 Stocks for Under $10.

Deckers Outdoor (NASDAQ: DECK) is a stock I picked in a recent video, which Beth likes as well. I think it will continue to surprise to the upside on the strength of sales of its trendy Ugg boots. Zac Bissonnette thinks it will no doubt flame out at some point.

I've been writing about finance for longer than I care to admit (okay, 15 years, which feels like a long time, even if Floyd Norris might scoff). But one of the most surprising news flashes of my career has to be when I read in mid-November this year that E*Trade was tanking on concerns the company could go bankrupt.

E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC)? Bankrupt? I've seen discount brokerages come and go, but E*Trade has long been one of the survivors. It was up there, knocking on king Schwab's (SCHW) door, leaving competitor TD Ameritrade (AMTD) snapping at it heels. Or so I thought.

But it turns out that was the way things were before the mortgage market went bust. And before CEO Mitch Caplan decided to place a big bet on residential mortgages. Caplan, formerly head of a bank that E*Trade acquired, became CEO in 2002.

Lou Pearlman once seemed to possess the secret formula for making millions by putting together popular boy bands that could churn out hits. Most famously, he created the Backstreet Boys and 'NSync, which sold $100 million and $56 million records respectively. By some accounts, the boys didn't get too rich off the deal, but Pearlman did.

But Pearlman's fortunes have long since turned and now he is being held on charges of running a fraudulent savings program. Claims against him run to $500 million. He was arrested in June in Indonesia and indicted by a Federal Grand Jury and the trial is slated to begin next March. Pearlman insists on his innocence. Meantime, allegations that he liked the young male performers for a lot more than their singing and dancing abilities are swirling.

Although Pearlman is no doubt one of 2007's great losers, it is unclear how much money he actually lost this past year. He may have squandered most of it long ago, perhaps keeping his Ponzi savings scheme afloat. If he is found guilty, he could be on the hook for those $500 millions investors lost in his savings plan.

I was too old to appreciate the boy bands Pearlman created and promoted when they were in their heyday. But I can confess that I gained a new found appreciation for the Backstreet Boys -- and even bought a CD for my daughter --not long ago after watching the famous and wonderful Chinese Boys lip-sync to their tune, "I Want It That Way."

Pearlman's success may have been short-lived and no doubt his fortunes are falling fast. But through the wonders of YouTube, the music he helped create will live on.

Be sure to check out other Money Losers of 2007.

This post was part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2007. Voting has now closed and readers have chosen Martha Stewart as the most annoying money personality of the year. Let us know in the comments if you are pleased with this result.

In last year's Best & Worst in Money awards, Donald Trump was the easy victor in the Most Annoying Money Expert category, securing 44% of the votes, more than twice as much as Suze Orman, Jim Cramer, or Mark Cuban. Trump won by such a landslide that this year we decided to take him out of the running, giving some new personalities a shot at the prize.

So, let's take a look at the contestants for this year's Donald Trump Honorary Most Annoying Money Personality contest:

Maria Bartiromo, CNBC's famed "Money Honey," isn't looking so sweet and spunky these days. She now seems a touch vampish as the apparent centerpiece in a Citigroup scandal that led to the ouster of exec Todd Thomson. Thomson might have earned the CEO spot recently vacated by Chuck Prince if he hadn't offered Bartiromo a spot on a Citi jet to fly to Asia to speak to customers.

Maria's journalistic ethics were called into question for accepting the junket, but CNBC, which nets plenty of advertising from Citi, glossed over the scandal. Criticism of Maria, however, helped raise the profile of CNBC's new sweetheart, Erin Burnett. In September, AOL's Money Face-Off found them virtually neck-and-neck among voters.