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There are certain things that we all have to do that just never seem to get easier. And for Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson, one of them is folding a fitted sheet.

Now, one of life's little mysteries has been solved care of LivingonaDime.com. Watch the video below to learn for yourself and happy folding!

Video of How to Fold A Fitted Sheet

J.C. Penney needs something to change its momentum. More than a year ago, the retail giant dropped sales and coupons in exchange for everyday low pricing. Since then, it has lost $1 billion and laid off 20,000 workers.
 
"They've lost 30 percent of their business. It's just gone away," says Ed Fox, a marketing professor at Southern Methodist University who tracks J.C. Penney. "That's an incredible hurdle for a retailer to try to clear."
 
He says Joe Fresh has sold well for Penney online and may work in stores. But by the time Penney fully implements its store-in-a-store plan, it may be too late.

Gabriella Santaniello, a retail analyst at Wedbush Securities, says Penney needs the fashion-conscious customer it's targeting because it has left its middle and lower income core out to dry.
 
"While they're trying to court a younger consumer, a hipper consumer, they're forgetting this moderate customer, Santaniello says. "They've brought in these hip cool brands which, at the end of the day, the consumer who has been shopping J.C. Penney is not really going to identify with."
 
Santaniello and Fox say that leaves the chain in a sort of no man's land, with confused customers who don't know who J.C. Penney is anymore.

J.C. Penney needs something to change its momentum. More than a year ago, the retail giant dropped sales and coupons in exchange for everyday low pricing. Since then, it has lost $1 billion and laid off 20,000 workers.
 
"They've lost 30 percent of their business. It's just gone away," says Ed Fox, a marketing professor at Southern Methodist University who tracks J.C. Penney. "That's an incredible hurdle for a retailer to try to clear."
 
He says Joe Fresh has sold well for Penney online and may work in stores. But by the time Penney fully implements its store-in-a-store plan, it may be too late.

Gabriella Santaniello, a retail analyst at Wedbush Securities, says Penney needs the fashion-conscious customer it's targeting because it has left its middle and lower income core out to dry.
 
"While they're trying to court a younger consumer, a hipper consumer, they're forgetting this moderate customer, Santaniello says. "They've brought in these hip cool brands which, at the end of the day, the consumer who has been shopping J.C. Penney is not really going to identify with."
 
Santaniello and Fox say that leaves the chain in a sort of no man's land, with confused customers who don't know who J.C. Penney is anymore.

Volkswagen reports earnings today at a moment when its business is on the upswing. The company has said its goal is to become the largest carmaker in the world. Volkswagen is the parent company of several brands, including Audi, Lamborghini and Bentley. So, how's it doing in its quest?   

Total world domination would be so much easier if there was no competition. For Volkswagen, third biggest car seller in the world, those rivals are Ford, General Motors, and Toyota according to Richard Hilgert, an equity analyst with Morningstar.  

"It's going to be a dog fight," Hilgert adds.

Volkswagen's profits soared 41 percent last year. The company sold more than 9 million cars for the first time ever. It has had great growth in China, its luxury Audi business is doing well, but car sales in Europe are declining.

Michelle Krebs, an analyst with Edmunds.com, says in order for Volkswagen to be the biggest, it first needs to conquer the U.S. 

"They are very strong, globally, and yet the U.S. market, I tease them. It's an emerging market for them," Krebs says. 

Last year Volkswagen sold more cars in the U.S. than it had since the 1970s. But that number, less than half a million, is only about 3 percent of the U.S. market. Volkswagen says it is focused on growing in the States, but also in two real emerging markets: India and Brazil.

This is a story about the new Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone, set to be unveiled today -- and you can’t do a story about the contender without mentioning the champ. In 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone he said, “Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along and changes everything.”

The iPhone did change everything and in the U.S. it still smokes its competitors in terms of sales.

Now, fast-forward to 2013 and this Samsung Galaxy commercial set in front of an Apple store. A line of fans are waiting for the new iPhone.

In the commercial, a man standing in line celebrates the fact that “the headphone jack is going to be on the bottom.”

While a woman gets excited about a new feature, “I heard the connector is going to be all digital!”

“What?” somebody asks.

“What does that even mean? Who knows?” she says cheerily.

The commercial illustrates what may be a tipping point away from Apple brand loyalty.

“You see this flip where apple as a brand has gone from, 'oh, that’s the unique think differently brand' to iPhone user being this mindless person in the herd,” said Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Steve Jobs famously said, “customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” But some Apple fans are wondering if that business model is a little outdated.

“It kind of comes down to old eyes. The more I use my iPhone, I realize I’m squinting," said USC journalism professor Andrew Lih. He has an iPhone, but he’s thinking of making a switch to the Galaxy for the bigger screen.

Apple says it designs its smartphones to fit comfortably in your hand. But Lih says that ignores the way people are using smart phones these days.

He says it’s not so much a phone, but a way to check Twitter, take pics, post to Facebook and if Apple doesn’t get hip to that, Lih and others will start turning to the Samsung Galaxy.

As the Interactive session of South by Southwest in Austin, Texas now gives way to the film and music portions, here's a lesson from the festival on shifting digital media from plain silliness, to some silliness mixed with real journalism care of Buzzfeed.

The popular online media website has aimed to evolve along with the social web, and that now means publishing everything from cat videos to political news.

"The same person is interested in light fare and in serious fare, and we move between different types of content, it's a much better experience," says Buzzfeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti. "I think people who grow up Facebook and Twitter are used to having all of those things mashed together."

And for those readers who don't like cat videos, better have your system checked.

"If people don't like cute animals, they are either a robot or a serial killer," Peretti says. "But humans should love cute animals and love to share them and be connoisseurs of cuteness with their friends."

 

Dozens of state attorneys general say they are going to closely watch how Google safeguards privacy from now on. The announcement comes just after the search giant agreed to pay $7 million to settle charges it collected personal data from people's wireless networks with its mapping cameras. 

Experts say a new test of privacy will come when the Google's electronic eyeglasses hit the market late this year. Sure, Google Glass is mostly a wearable display screen, but it also acts as a video and audio recorder.

Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain joins Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio to explain Google's privacy problem when it comes to the high-tech spectacles.

This final note today, which speaks volumes about:

1. Health care pricing in this country
2. Why the daily discount site Groupon is in such a bad place.

This offer popped up today in a friend of mine's email inbox. An MRI, including a carotid artery scan, brain aneurysm scan, or both, with 3-D imaging and private consultation -- starting at just $39.

The brain scan package is worth $900; so with the Groupon, your savings are 96 percent.

Or...it's just crazy.

The amazing thing? More than 140 have been purchased.

The Federal Reserve's bond and mortgage purchases have kept long-term interest rates low, but they haven't done what the Fed intended -- which was to help would-be home buyers get affordable mortgages.

Instead, they've fueled a new round of speculation by investors and real estate developers. And that's meant a new generation of Americans has become renters rather than owners.
   
Yes, home sales and prices have been rising, which in turn has created lot of construction jobs and made some home-owners feel a bit wealthier. All good for the economy, at least for now.

But the housing market hasn't turned around because banks are issuing lots of new mortgages. Lending standards are still tight, and banks are reluctant to lend -- especially to younger. Unemployment remains high among millennials -- more than 8 percent even for recent college graduates. And their student debts keep mounting. As a result, the number of first-time home buyers is still shrinking, and young buyers now make up their smallest share of the housing market in more than a decade.

The rise in home prices and construction is being fueled instead by big investors -- many of whom are paying cash and have no intention of living in the homes they buy or build. They're getting a high return on investment by borrowing at rock-bottom rates and then turning the properties into rental units, which young individuals and families are moving into in record numbers.

Last month, a Pew Research Center survey found that the share of millennials who own their homes has fallen from 40 percent to 34 percent since the start of the recession, with a similar decline in residential debt.

Overall, the percent of Americans owning their homes continues to drop, while the percent renting is growing.

The housing market may be bouncing back, but not homeownership. And that's a big change for an economy and society once based on the ideal of owning your own place.

The smartphone wars are fought on a lot of fronts. It starts with creating a great product. And Samsung’s Galaxy is getting real credit for being innovative, said Andrew Lih, an iPhone user and a professor of journalism at University of Southern California.

He’s considering making a switch to the Galaxy.

“So even the Retina display that they’re touting with Apple is going to look a little bit low-res with what Samsung is announcing this week,” Lih said. 

Along with a sharper screen, some analysts say that the new Galaxy will have “eye tracking” technology. A camera on the phone tracks your eyes when you’re reading and when you get to the bottom of the page, it scrolls down automatically.

To be sure, in terms of popularity, Samsung still has a lot of catching up to do in the U.S. where Apple’s got about 40 percent of the smartphone market to Samsung’s 20 percent. But the Galaxy is generating a lot of buzz. For the first time since Apple launched the iPhone, the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant might have a real competitor in the smartphone space.

But with so many smartphones out there, you need an identity.

“Branding has become an absolute must in this market,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner.

Milanesi added that Samsung has positioned Galaxy as a real alternative to the iPhone -- something no other cell phone maker has been able to do. And Samsung is spending plenty on advertising to do it.

“In 2012, Apple’s budget increased to $333 million, but in contrast, Samsung’s budget skyrocketed to $401 million,” said Prashant Malaviya, a marketing professor at Georgetown’s Business School.

Samsung has launched a series of clever ads, gently poking fun of the iPhone as a has-been. So the real question now, is whether it can deliver the “next new thing.”

Celixia Rodriguez used to spend more than 60 percent of her income on rent. She makes about $10 an hour cleaning houses in Boston and picks up any side work she can.

“Even if I had five part time jobs, at $10 an hour it’s hard to come up with $1,500 a month and still support your children and fill your gas tank,” she says.

For three years, Rodriguez and her two kids doubled up, sharing a three-bedroom apartment in Boston with her sister and her two kids. Now she’s moved to the suburbs and her rent is subsidized by the local nonprofit, Neighborhood Housing Services of the South Shore. Her rent is now a much more manageable 30 percent of her income.

Over a quarter of renter households paid over half their income to rent in 2010, says Eric Belsky, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. That’s up from 20 percent in 2000.

“And we know that that’s a risk for homelessness, because you just have so little left over for basic necessitie,s and you are unable to save for emergencies,” says Megan Bolton, the research director at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which released a report looking on rents and wages this week.

The study estimates that workers would need to make $18.79 an hour in order to keep rent from eating up more than 30 pecent of their income. Yet the average renter actually only makes an hourly wage of $14.32.

That often means sacrificing on money for food, health care, travel, and other expenses.

It also means the economic impact can spread from the renter to the communities they live in, says Harvard’s Belsky.

“They’re spending less on things in the local economy,” he says. “There’s no question, from nothing comes nothing.”

Moreover, some renters are forced out of pricey cities because they can’t afford the rents at all.

“Families are deliberately, and in many cases systematically, moving outside of some of the high-cost cities across the country,” says Brett Theodos, a senior research associate in the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center. “What we’re losing there is some of the fabric of social life in cities.”

See how many hours a week a minimum wage worker would have to clock just to keep rent around 30 percent of their income. Map from The National Low Income Housing Coalition. (Click to enlarge PDF)

President Obama isn't just sitting at conference tables with Republicans in Congress these days, he's sitting down at the dinner table. In fact, this week he dined with a group of senators for a business dinner to discuss the budget.

Now, a business dinner is an opportunity to get to know each other, to talk business in a social setting, to make an impression. But as anyone who's sat down for one of these meals knows, there's all that food on the table. How do you avoid botching lunch? Marketplace’s Adriene Hill met up with Jules Hirst of Etiquette Consulting, Inc. for a one-on-one lesson.

Listen to the story above, and check out some of the tidbits she picked up:

1. Always follow your host’s lead.  Put your napkin in your lap after they put their napkin in their lap.  Order food in the same price range as the food that they order.
2. The fold of your napkin should go toward you.
3. Order a food that is easy to eat.  Ribs are a bad choice.
4. Eat before you go out to lunch.  You don’t want to scarf your food during the interview or meeting.  You want the focus to be on the conversation, not the food.
5. If your host orders alcohol, you may order alcohol.  But know yourself well enough to know whether or not it’s a good idea to drink it.   
6. Wait until your host starts to eat before you start to eat.
7. If your host asks a question just as you take a bite of food, politely indicate with your fingers that you will talk as soon as you have swallowed. 
8. Don’t correct someone else’s manners at the table.
9. If you have called the meeting, you should pay.  Instead of waiting for the bill to come to the table, step away to the restroom, hand your credit card to the waitstaff and ask them to add a 20 percent tip.
10. Write a thank you note.

American corporations are on hight alert on the hacking front after a series of attacks coming from China.

President Obama sat down with a group of CEOs at the White House today to talk about strategies to protect their companies' confidential business information from the threat of cyber attacks.

But what happens when a company has already been attacked? Kim Zetter, senior writer for Wired, says that companies can't "hack back," or try to retrieve stolen data.

"You can be self-defensive, you can protect yourself against an attack. You can't go back after the hacker or the computer that appears to be attacking you because that's basically doing what the attacker is doing," said Zetter.

President Obama signed an executive order last month designed to make it easier for the government to warn private companies of cyber threats and to set up a system of voluntary cybersecurity standards. The government is in a better position than corporations to fight back after a company has been hacked.

"The government can take certain legal measure," Zetter said. "They can go after the servers and get them taken down. They can't hack the servers, but they can go after the authorities who host the servers and get those taken down."

Paris has culture. Barbados: beaches. The big draw to Southeastern China’s Fujian province: Breathable air.

A television ad from Fujian’s tourism bureau shows off the province’s lush, green mountains, and sandy beaches. Crystal clear views abound. "Take a deep breath," says the voiceover, "you’re in Fujian."

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"We launched the clean air tourism campaign in January, when Beijing’s pollution levels were very bad," says Zheng Weirong, deputy director of the bureau. "We’re promoting 20 tourism sites around the province where people can breathe clean air."

Boasting about clean air may seem to set the bar pretty low. But in a country where just one percent of half a billion urban residents breathe air judged safe by European Union standards, Fujian’s strategy is paying off.

A guide holding a neon pink flag in one hand and a megaphone in the other corrals a group of tourists along an island pathway overlooking the sea in the city of Xiamen. On this particular day, Xiamen’s level of what’s known as PM2.5 -- particulate matter in the air small enough to enter your blood stream -- hovers around 45. That’s dirtier than the most-polluted day on record in Los Angeles over a 24-hour period. But these folks are from Beijing, where on this day the level is 10 times as bad.
What would your city look like with Beijing's smog? Use our Smog Simulator to see. Tourist Yun Ya is thrilled. "The air is so fresh here!" she says, adjusting her sunglasses. "Whenever I go to work in Beijing, I have to wear a mask or else I’ll start coughing uncontrollably. It’s just been terrible lately."

Yun is part of a 38 percent spike in tourists to Fujian this year -- twice the national average. Like most tourists interviewed for this story, she came here to escape the smog. "China has always followed the path of ‘pollute first, clean up later,'" says Yun, who works for an environmental consulting company in Beijing, "But if China doesn’t start cleaning up its environment, I’m afraid of what’s going to happen. An environment like this one in China has become rare."

Fujian hugs China’s Southeastern coast. It’s position along the Taiwain Strait helps diffuse pollutants in the air. Deng Junjun, a researcher at the China Academy of Science’s Institute of Urban Environment, says Fujian’s air is cleaner than other parts of China thanks to policy decisions, too. "For 35 years, Fujian’s government has ensured that it’s had the highest forestry coverage rate throughout China," says Deng.

Still, Deng says an increase in car ownership means that Xiamen’s air, despite its national fame of a clean air city is getting slightly dirtier each year. There are no cars here on a quiet tree-lined alley on the island of Gulangyu in Xiamen; just birds.

And two young lovers on their honeymoon, holding hands, going for a morning stroll. Ai Jintao and Zhang Nana came here from Beijing."It’s nice to be here. On our way here, we drove through Shandong," recalls Ai. "The smog was so thick that police had to close the highway. You couldn’t even see the cars in front of you! There’s no traffic at all here. There’s a little fog in the morning here, but it smells like the ocean."

Ai says he’ll be sure to take a deep breath before he heads back home to smoggy Beijing.

A bill proposed in California today could open the door a bit wider to massive open online courses, or MOOCs. (By the way, if anyone’s got a better name for these things, send it our way). The bill would require public colleges and universities in the state to grant credit for MOOCs and other online courses when students can’t get into those classes on campus

Budget cuts have taken such a big bite out of California’s community colleges and universities that thousands of students are turned away from required classes.

“No college student should be denied the right to complete their education because they could not get a seat [in] the course that they needed in order to graduate,” said Darrell Steinberg, president pro tem of the California senate, in a press conference announcing the bill today.

If it passes, the bill could be good news for companies like StraighterLine, based in Baltimore, Md. The company sells low-cost intro courses like the ones students are having trouble getting into.

“What it also does is open a much larger marketplace,” says Burck Smith, StraighterLine’s CEO.“A larger marketplace will ultimately drive prices down, will raise quality up, and that’s a good thing.”

Others looking for a bigger slice of that market are providers of those massive open courses -- companies like Udacity and Coursera. Classes on artificial intelligence and gamification have been wildly popular, but few colleges accept them for actual credit.

F. King Alexander, president of California State University, Long Beach, is concerned that too few students who sign up for MOOCs actually finish them. Of course, that might change when the stakes are higher.

“At the moment, we’re very neutral but very optimistic about taking advantage of these technologies,” says Alexander.

Faculty also have good reason to be nervous about online alternatives, says Kevin Carey, director of education policy at the New America Foundation.

“It may mean that people who right now are employed as adjunct professors teaching these basic classes will not have those jobs in the future,” Carey says.

The bill has to pass first. With Democrats controlling the legislature, it’s got a good shot. Sen. Steinberg said today, “if it wasn’t at least a little bit controversial, it wouldn’t be worth doing.”

The growing threat of cyber attacks has put business on the front lines of national security. Today, President Obama met CEOs of American defense and technology companies -- in the Situation Room, no less -- to discuss how companies and the government can work together to bolster digital defense. The meeting followed warnings from intelligence, defense and counter-terrorism officials that cyber security could pose as big a threat as terrorism.

One clear impact of the White House cybersecurity push is pressure on business to do more. Stewart Baker, a former senior official at the Homeland Security Department and National Security Agency, says he just met with Silicon Valley execs who are feeling the heat.

“Their boards of directors are asking questions about their cybersecurity and whether they’ve had intrusions and how they’ve responded to them,” says Baker, who is now a partner at Steptoe & Johnson. “And that’s a direct result of the kinds of publicity we’re seeing for these attacks.”

Whether it’s companies or governments, figuring out the right budget for digital defense is tricky. They never really know when they’ve spent too much. And they only know if they’ve spent too little when they get hacked. Experts don’t even agree on how much is actually being spent now.

"One number says annual global spending on cybersecurity is $18 billion. Another number says it’s $60 billion," notes Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former State Department official.

Cybersecurity analysts say a lot of the money spent on digital security is wasted. In some cases, companies aren’t even doing the simple things right, unsexy stuff like managing passwords and updating software.

“This is not rocket science. That’ll remove about 80 percent of the successful attacks," Lewis says.

Then there’s the question of who foots the bill. America’s top cyber commander said yesterday there have been 140 attacks on Wall Street firms in the past six months. An attack on a large American company could damage the entire American economy. So companies argue the government should take more of the burden.

“There’s a sense that you want the government to come in and secure the cyber borders the same way the physical borders are secured,” says Tom Field, a vice president at Information Security Media Group, a cybersecurity trade publisher.

Field hears from a lot of execs frustrated that the government isn’t doing enough. On the other hand, taxpayers may not be too thrilled to pay for the security of private companies. We may not know what the tab will be, but it won’t be cheap.

Kai Ryssdal: The White House calls. Says the president wants you to come for a meeting. You get there this morning. They take you downstairs. Maybe way downstairs. People swipe their ID cards. Maybe there are biometric measuring devices.

All of a sudden, some door whooshes open -- and you're in the Situation Room. The real one -- not the one with Wolf Blitzer. You and a bunch of fellow defense and technology company CEOs there to talk cybersecurity.

This has been a week heavy on digital threats in Washington. Intelligence, defense and counter-terrorism officials have been sounding the alarm in speeches and on Capitol Hill. Today, the White House welcomed Beijing's willingness to hold talks on cyber threats.

But in the meanwhile, there was that meeting in the Situation Room. Marketplace's Mark Garrison has more on business at the front lines of national security.

Mark Garrison: One clear impact of the White House cybersecurity push is pressure on business to do more. Attorney Stewart Baker is a former senior official at the Homeland Security Department. He just met with Silicon Valley execs who are feeling the heat.

Stewart Baker: Their boards of directors are asking questions about their cybersecurity and whether they’ve had intrusions and how they’ve responded to them. And that’s a direct result of the kinds of publicity we’re seeing for these attacks.

America’s top cyber commander said yesterday there have been 140 attacks on Wall Street firms in the past six months. Whether it’s companies or governments, figuring out the right budget for digital defense is tricky. You never really know when you’ve spent too much. You only know if you’ve spent too little when you get hacked. Experts don’t even agree on how much is being spent now.

Jim Lewis: One number says annual global spending on cybersecurity is $18 billion. Another number says it’s $60 billion.

Jim Lewis is a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He says for all they spend, companies aren’t even doing the simple things right, boring stuff like managing passwords and updating software.

Lewis: This is not rocket science. That’ll remove about 80% of the successful attacks.

So, who should pay? Companies argue the government should take more of the burden. Tom Field is VP at Information Security Media Group, a trade publisher. He hears from a lot of frustrated execs.

Tom Field: There’s a sense that you want the government to come in and secure the cyber borders the same way the physical borders are secured.

Of course, taxpayers may not be too thrilled to pay for the security of private companies. We may not know what the tab will be, but it won’t be cheap. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

Retail sales ticked up by 1.1 percent last month according to the Commerce Department. The growth was better than expected, despite higher gas prices and the payroll tax increase that went into effect at the beginning of the year.

Shoppers around the world may have tightened their belts, but the world’s biggest clothing retailer is doing the opposite -- it is expanding fast. The Spanish company Inditex, which owns Zara among other chain stores, has just unveiled an impressive set of figures: a 22 percent jump in profits. Large does not necessarily mean unwieldy, and Inditext is the proof. The world’s biggest clothing retailer is also one of the  nimblest; it invented fast fashion. By manufacturing more than 50 percent of its products itself the Inditex chains can respond quickly to changing tastes.

President Obama is getting together with a group of CEO's today to discuss cybersecurity. Obama will be talking with the CEO's -- such as JPMorgan head Jamie Dimon -- about how the public and private sectors can work together to protect against cyber attacks.

President Obama is meeting at the White House this morning with corporate CEO's to talk about cybersecurity. The CEO's and the administration will discuss sharing information about potential computer vulnerabliess and specific threats.

"There are sensitivities both ways because some of the information the government has comes from intelligence sources and that needs to be protected," said Michael Kaiser*, who works with the National Cyber Security Alliance representing big names from the digital world, including Google and Facebook. "Going the other way, industry wants to be sure that when they give information to the government, that somehow won't come back to haunt them."

Some worry the government will impose technology that it wants on the private sector. 

"It may force things to be deployed which are less than optimal," said Michael Angelo with NetIQ Corporation. "There have been instances where proposed legislation actually recommended technology, and [that] causes issues for growth."

Today's White House meeting comes soon after U.S. officials said they're looking into reports that Obama's own family, including the First Lady, has been hit by hacking.

*CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article mis-identified the first name of Michael Kaiser. The text has been corrected.

Retail sales ticked up by 1.1 percent last month according to the Commerce Department. The growth was better than expected, despite higher gas prices and the payroll tax increase that went into effect at the beginning of the year.

Gus Faucher, senior economist with PNC Financial Services Group, joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to break down the details behind the numbers.

The Federal Aviation Administration has approved Boeing's plans for new safety tests that could get its troubled 787 Dreamliner back in the air as early as this spring. After a series of incidents linked to its lithium ion batteries, all 50 of Boeing's 787 Dreamliners were grounded earlier this year.

Though Boeing has added extra safety precautions to the 787 and remains upbeat about the plane's future, will passengers feel confident enough to fly it? 

Seth Kaplan, at Airline Weekly, says yes.

"People [will] fly [the] aircraft for the same reason they always do, which is that there is a plane going from where they are to where they are going for about the price they want to pay," Kaplan says, adding that as long as regulatory authorities are on-board, travelers will be too.