On the heels of news that Apple’s iPhone interest among consumers is sustaining unprecedentedly high levels, Apple can enjoy one more round on the house of good news today: shares of the company briefly surpassed the $427 mark twice today, …

According to the Employment Situation Summary released earlier this month from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate is 8.6 percent, which means 13.3 million people are unemployed. In other words, a lot of people are clearly struggling.

Facebook has a lot going for it lately.

Facebook is reportedly planning on expanding its staff by up to 50% this year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered this news to Bloomberg, saying the economy has provided a "great environment" for them, because nobody else has been hiring.

comScore has released its Q2 retail eComerce sales estimates, which indicate that US online retail spending totaled $30.2 billion, which is 1% less than the same period last year. This is only the 2nd time eCommerce spending has been lower for the same quarter than the previous year.

It doesn’t look like too many people plan to do their back-to-school shopping online. eMarketer looks at a combination of studies from BIGresearch and the National Retail Federation, Deloitte, and OfficeMax. These studies paint similar pictures, and they just don’t show too many intentions from parents to turn to the web as the school year draws near.

While it should come as no surprise, Apple is doing very well, thank you. Amidst all of the gloom and doom, the hand wringing and the concern over the future, Apple is simply rolling along as if to say “What recession?” In what will likely be a classic case study in business schools for the future, Apple has taken an approach to the market that is so revolutionary that it has to be examined. You see, they are providing high quality products that fill needs for their customers.

Google releases their Q2 earnings today.  It will be interesting to see how their results will be received on Wall St. for a number of reasons. Google is one of those companies that people measure the economy as a whole against to some extent. As such, today has sort of a groundhog day kind of feel to me.  I don’t typically spend a lot of time watching economic news – even in good times, but i’ll be paying a little more attention to it today.