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. In the process they have even created even more need due to the nature of their products and the possibilities they offer. That is just brilliant.

Barnes and Noble is no stranger to the eBook business. The first ‘go round’ was shelved six years ago but yesterday the retail bookseller announced it is reentering the market in a big way. As the storefront book business continues to fight for survival in the continuing move to online purchases and other formats Barnes and Noble is looking to make sure it is in the fight. All Things D covers the development:

On Monday afternoon, the bookseller announced what it describes as “the world’s largest eBookstore,” an online storefront that boasts 700,000 titles. That’s substantially more than the 300,000 available for download on Amazon’s Kindle service, though half-a-million of them are public domain books provided by Amazon (AMZN). They’ll be compatible with Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, BlackBerry smartphones, and, when it finally arrives at market, the Plastic Logic eReader — a Kindle DX-sized E-book reader for which it will be the exclusive storefront

As a sports fan I don’t get to write much about sports and Internet marketing. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why that is but I’ll work on that later. What we have covered extensively here at Marketing Pilgrim is the decline and fall of the Printed Empire; the newspaper. Today, in fact stands to be a rough day again as the Boston Globe workers agrees to more cuts to keep the paper in print. Even more ominous, however, is the announcement that ESPN, sports media’s 900 lb gorilla, is planning to go local.

As a culture, we love to try to determine how successful someone will be in a huge job based on the first 100 days. We do it regularly with the President of the US and now there is the same examination occurring with Tim Armstrong, the recently minted CEO of AOL. Much like our struggling economy AOL needs some real help and Armstrong was brought in to get the once high-flying Internet giant back among the ranks of the heavyweights. So how’s it going thus far?