Research in Motion

It has been 63 years since Frank McNamara invented the credit card, and those little pieces of plastic are everywhere. But now, a groundbreaking new technology could upend the industry he created.

Like most investing, you're not protected from market meltdown, and there's always the risk of missing out on a star.

You know things are going from bad to worse for BlackBerry farmer Research In Motion when some of the stodgiest companies on the planet start trading in their BlackBerry smartphones for shiny new iPhones. The most recent defector from RIM: Halliburton, the fuddy-duddy oil-field services giant that critics associate with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, Dick Cheney, and no-bid contracts in Iraq.

As surprising as it may seem to many of us when large corporations with familiar brands vanish suddenly from the scene, it happens. Major companies like Saab, Borders, and Countrywide -- just to same a recent few -- are now history. Who's next? Read on ...

A host of new products launched this year. So were big successes -- like the iPhone 4S and the Boeing Dreamliner 787. Other new offerings crashed and burned spectacularly. Here's 24/7 Wall St.'s look at the biggest duds of 2011.

It is unusual for a stock's price to double in a year, but several well-known companies' shares have done it recently. The more important question for investors is: Which stock could be next? 24/7 Wall St. offer their list of S&P 500 companies whose stocks could double in 2012.

Major tech companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Nokia have been eyeing BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, according to recent reports. True, we shouldn't jump to any conclusions based on the words of "unnamed sources." But all of the attention RIM's getting does make sense.

Nokia smartphone users starving for app extras may finally get some new toys for their handsets. App developers who previously stuck to iOS and Android are probably going to branch out, thanks to Nokia's Windows 7 deal.

Following the massive outage in service that affected tens of millions of BlackBerry users worldwide last week, Research in Motion said it would provide $100 of free premium apps to each customer, ranging from games to technical programs, including SIMS 3, iSpeech Translator Pro and Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant.

This week, Research In Motion's Blackberry network suffered a massive outage that spanned continents and cut off the cellular oxygen to millions. Competing phone carriers and handset makers are certain to jump on the chance to woo some of those frustrated customers.