If you're feeling good about the market, you're not alone. Take my hand as we go over some of this week's more uplifting headlines.

1. Fashion bid-ness
eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) is courting thrifty fashionistas. The leading online marketplace is introducing flash sales to its Fashion Vault site, offering designer-sanctioned items for as much as 60% off their original prices. The sales will last only 48 to 72 hours, so there's clearly an incentive for browsers to act quickly.

Allowing only sellers with established relationships with designers to offer up items will add some well-needed integrity to the process. eBay has had legal battles against Louis Vuitton and Tiffany in the past over counterfeit listings, so playing nice should pay off if it helps stem future litigation. Designers may also come to see eBay as a revenue-generating partner, instead of a sales killer that facilitates apparel resale (with designers suffering through devaluation and a secondhand transaction where they don't profit from the resale).

It may be problematic to see eBay spreading its brand too thin with this move, but eBay has spent the past couple of years shifting to a fixed-price format to reposition itself as a more conventional online retailer.

2. You can't spell Apple without A-P-P
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) began shipping out its first iPad devices earlier this week. Those who pre-ordered the non-3G models should be receiving them by Saturday, just when they will become available in stores.

Despite the initial criticism, I think Apple has another winner here. Morgan Stanley expects the tech darling to sell more than 6 million units this calendar year. Between the early adopters buying in now and the holiday gift lists that will likely be loaded with iPad requests, this supersized iPod touch can pave the way for a brand-new market for Apple.

If Apple is able to generate enough demand for the iPad -- without cannibalizing sales of smaller iPods and iPhones and larger Macs and MacBooks -- analysts will have to revisit the potential upside for one of the hottest stocks over the past few years.

3. This well-trained dragon's so hot it breathes fire
IMAX (Nasdaq: IMAX) still has the magic touch. It accounted for 11.5% of the box office receipts brought in by How to Train Your Dragon over its debut, despite playing on less than 3% of the total screens. This compares to the 10.5% cut brought in by Alice in Wonderland during its opening weekend on IMAX last month.

Why is this important? Well, since several multiplex operators decided to introduce higher IMAX and 3-D ticket prices during the weekend, it means that consumers didn't balk at the jacked-up seats. It may be true that Alice was a bigger hit, but it's all relative when it comes to motivating studios to go the incremental IMAX route.

4. All the news that's fit to Yahoo!
If major newspapers are out to bury the lede, let's applaud Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) for being a grave robber. Yahoo! News has been plucking pedigreed journalists from Politico, BusinessWeek, and ABC, The New York Times is ironically reporting.

At a time when many print publications are readying moves to begin charging for their online content, there's going to be a huge bump in demand for ad-supported news. Yahoo! gets it. Media company paywalls are going to shoo away consumers, so the no-brainer move is to beef up quality content offerings.

5. Big G checks in
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is beginning to offer hotel room rates on its popular Google Maps application.

The world's leading search engine has been slow in monetizing its mapping site. It's hard to imagine why Google has taken it slow here. Local mapping dovetails perfectly with the company's leading collection of paid search ads. If folks are using Google to map their way around their next vacation, why shouldn't it be Big G itself to profit by sending qualified leads to hospitality providers.

This could be bad news for priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN), Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE), and the rest of their travel portal peers. Even if they are the ones bidding top dollar for the subsequent leads, it means more paid traffic through Google instead of free organic visitors.

Either way, chalk up another winner for Google.