Apple alumni are starting to look like the original Google team. When Google was founded and then became successful, it spawned a series of smaller, but very successful, companies as former workers for Google branched off with their own ideas and accumulated venture capital. The same is now true of Apple alumni, who are, by and large, cashing in on the mobile app industry that they helped to create.

The stock’s performance of late has given plenty of employees the means to do their own thing. And this time the departures may help Apple. “We have left Apple, but we ultimately still work for them because we’re giving them 30 percent of everything we do on the App Store,” says Mike Matas, who co-founded e-book company Push Pop Press in 2010 after four years at Apple. His company’s first title was released on the App Store in April for $5. Apple takes about $1.50 of each sale. “Whether we’re inside the company or outside, in a lot of ways the bottom line doesn’t change for Apple,” says Matas. Apple declined to comment.

At the end of the day, Apple is benefiting from this “exodus” of talent. They get to take portions out of all of the apps that are sold, and millions upon millions of them are sold. The iPhone and iPad are both immensely popular and with the way Apple has been on a roll, this doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.

Dish Network Corp. is one of the largest providers of satellite television in the United States and they have posted some good fourth-quarter numbers. The profits beat their estimations on the back of a higher subscription rate than they had anticipated.

Dish added 249,000 subscribers after airing “Why Pay More” ads that claim it charges $24 less a month than rival DirecTV for the same service. The ads have appealed to cost- conscious subscribers as they struggle to recover from last year’s recession, said Matthew Harrigan, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities LLC in Denver.

“Dish is price leader in a soft economy, so no doubt that helps in picking up subscribers,” said Harrigan, who recommends selling the stock and doesn’t own it. “They’re aggressive on pricing and really try to punch people in the gut with their promotions.”

Dish Network has set themselves apart by using the oldest and most straightforward business strategy there is–have the lowest price for the best product, and make sure people know it.

One of the biggest shopping days of the year is the day after Christmas. This year, though, the day carried less significance than in the past. In such a bare economy, there were far less deals and steals this year than in previous years. This is a natural extension of a bad economy, but many people still expected the sales to be more impressive. Still–news wasn’t all bad.

This year, store owners believe they navigated the tough economic terrain better by discounting a few items and offering other promotions, but keeping prices relatively steady for much of their inventory. This set up a game of chicken, with consumers hoping for signs of panic among retailers that would prompt last-minute price drops and retail executives betting that signs of a possible economic recovery would cause customers to finally give in and shop.

It seems to have worked well enough.

We often see scams in the business world, they teach us what to be wary of and to not trust what anyone says without first verifying their claims. The story of Orange County man John Arthur Walthall is instructive in this way. He was able to convince a couple in their 80s to “invest” roughly $4.7 million in a company that he claimed was going to extract gold from old mines in Brazil and Imperial Valley, Nevada. This story was, of course, a farce–just like the company was.

So how did he do it? He told the couple that he had personally invested $3 million in learning the processes of gold extraction. So what did he really do with their money? Authorities seized three vehicles and $500,000 in gold coins that he had stashed under his bed. If convicted of all charges, which is likely, he will be sentenced to roughly 150 years in prison.