The Motley Fool's Weekly Editors' Picks

The Fool gave out some investing tips this week (as always), sparked some outrage, and turned an investor's eye toward a much-hyped device called the iPad.

5 Keys to Successful Dividend Investing
What's with all the dividend damage over the past couple of years? What's an investor to think? Better yet: What's an investor to learn? Fool analyst Todd Wenning this week brought Fools "five key lessons that we can use to our advantage going forward."

As part of Lesson 3, Todd reminds us that "while earnings are an accountant's opinion, cash is fact." He highlights McDonald's (NYSE: MCD), Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) as companies that appear to have sustainable dividends.

Here's one tip: "[L]ook further down the cash flow statement and see how much the firm paid in cash dividends each year. If that figure is consistently less than free cash flow, it's a good sign that the firm has enough cash to maintain its current dividend."

Why Are Homeowners Idiots?
Fool writer Matt Koppenheffer's article about "underwater" homeowners who continue to pay their mortgages, even though doing so may not be in their best interest, sparked an impassioned conversation. Many who commented took issue with the focus on economic self-interest, saying that homes aren't merely investments, and that people should live up to their obligation to pay their debts.

In true Foolish fashion, Matt joined the conversation. Here's a couple of excerpts from his comments:

"… [T]he point I was making wasn't that walking away shouldn't impact your conscience, it's that perhaps your conscience shouldn't be on the line in the first place. The banks look at these loans as business deals, why are consumers treating them as moral obligations?"

" … We're talking about houses that people paid $300,000 for and are now being sold for $150,000 or less. It's easy to figure out that it'll be a long, long time before somebody in that kind of situation will have any equity to speak of and meanwhile they could be paying rent that's far lower than their mortgage payment."

Fool Analysts Debate the iPad
Stop giggling about the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad's name, and please direct your attention this way. Six Fool analysts talked about what they like and don't like about the device that Steve Jobs introduced this week, how it might mix with products from Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), and Apple's relationship with AT&T (NYSE: T).

David Forrest, VP of international development, dreamed of  more:

How can you possibly make something this big, thin, and beautiful sitting on a 3G network, and not have an actual telephone? I want to mount this thing on my kitchen wall and have it replace my stupid land line. I want Spacely Sprocket and George Jetson touchscreen video calls.

Seth Jayson, co-advisor of Motley Fool Hidden Gems, was far less enamored: "Ultimately, this thing will matter about as much as Apple TV -- another product hailed as a killer of cable providers and video game console makers, and another product that no one bought because it didn't do anything better than products that already existed."

Click on the headline above to see the rest of the discussion about the device (and, yes, its somewhat unfortunate name).