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(Credit:
Toyota)

Americans will soon have another feel-good reason to buy a Prius.

So,A Lange and Sohne Watches, aside from saving on the cost of gas through better gas mileage and raising environmental awareness, buying a Prius will soon be a product made by American workers…or at least assembled by them.

2008 Toyota Prius Touring Edition.

There is no word on whether the plant changes will result in the loss of U.S. jobs.

As it’s been widely reported, there’s been a Prius shortage in the U.S. with some consumers being forced to wait as long as three months and pay as much as $3,Hermes Watches,000 over sticker price. Even celebrity techies have been told to wait their turn.

The Japan-based company also plans to consolidate the production of its Tundra, a full-size pick-up truck produced in both Indiana and Texas, to one plant in San Antonio starting in spring 2009.

Toyota also announced in early June that it plans to produce a Prius with solar panels as early as 2009 and a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle available for purchase in the U.S. in 2010. Toyota, however, has not yet said where the vehicles will be produced.

Prius production in the U.S. will begin in late 2010 at a plant currently under construction in Blue Springs, Miss., Toyota announced Thursday.

Wiseman also said that the introduction of the Prius into company plant plans is an example of Toyota’s long-term commitment to suppliers, workers, and their communities in North America.

“The truck market continues to worsen,OMEGA Watches, so unfortunately we must temporarily suspend production,” Jim Wiseman, vice president of external affairs for Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, said in a statement.

Toyota does produce the Camry hybrid in the U.S. already and that production shall continue, according to the company.

The company is halting production of its Tundra and Sequoia SUVs as of August 8 due to the decrease in consumer demand. Production is scheduled to resume in November and the workers of those plants “will continue to be provided work,” Toyota said in a statement.

Meanwhile, sales of Toyota SUVs have gone down and Toyota is responding to that change as well.

Toyota said the change is in response to consumer demand in North America.

(Credit:
Valve Corp.)

Already got the weighted companion cube fuzzy dice in your Astrovan and the cardboard helmet to match? There’s hope for you dear portal fan. Here’s yet another Aperture Laboratories-themed creation to show off your geek fetish to the world. This time it’s numbered parking permits for both Aperture Laboratories and Black Mesa, the fictional experimental science organizations found in Valve’s Portal and Half-Life games. The Black Mesa one’s been around a little longer, but the Aperture Labs reared its wonderful head last month. Both run for $10 and come with bonus Half-Life themed bumper stickers.

The Linux Desktop team explained:

A product called Red Hat Global Desktop that is targeted specifically at resellers, which focus on emerging markets, has been delayed for almost a year because of business issues. The company hopes to release it “soon,” according to its corporate blog.

Red Hat likes Linux on the desktop, but it also likes making money.

An explanation: as a public, for-profit company, Red Hat must create products and technologies with an eye on the bottom line, and with desktops, this is much harder to do than with servers. The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative.

Instead, Red Hat is focusing on desktop software that works with its server products aimed at businesses and developers.

The company’s desktop software unit on Wednesday released an update on its plans, saying it will focus its efforts on specific markets but not face off against Microsoft in the consumer market.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.–Rep. Howard Berman, who heads a congressional panel in charge of writing copyright legislation, lashed out at Internet pirates this week and defended his effort to add stiffer anticopying penalties to federal law.

(Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET News.com)

* Joked that as the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (after Rep. Tom Lantos’ death), he’d support using military force against countries that are piracy havens. Berman didn’t say who would be the next chairman of the House copyright subcommittee and refused to speculate on whether Rick Boucher or Jerry Nadler would get the spot.

* Wondered whether Internet service providers should be required to pull the plug on customers engaged in piratical activities: “To what extent do we ask ISPs to (undertake) some affirmative actions?” The Motion Picture Association of America has called on ISPs to do precisely that, without saying it should be mandated by law; its international counterparts have not been as reticent.

Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge have opposed the Pro-IP Act, saying it makes little sense to seize a family computer allegedly used to download music on a peer-to-peer network and that the legislation amounts to protecting the entertainment industry’s business model at the expense of technology.

“There are people who want to steal intellectual property,” Berman said in an apparent criticism of EFF and Public Knowledge. “Their lobby is distributed, diffuse, but unfortunately very popular.”

* Defended the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which has been the subject of protests from technologists for nearly a decade: “I know the DMCA is controversial–by and large I think it makes a lot of sense.”

“I don’t think there’s a lot of controversy,” Berman said on Wednesday. “This one is not like the patent bill.”

Berman, a Democrat who represents the congressional district near Hollywood, said at a technology policy conference here that he was on track to enact the so-called Pro-IP Act by the end of 2008. The bill ratchets up civil penalties for copyright infringement and creates a new federal agency charged with bringing about a national and international copyright crackdown.

Rep. Howard Berman, the Democrat who represents the area near Hollywood, Calif., slams ‘people who want to steal intellectual property’ and their ‘lobby.’

Berman dismissed the Justice Department’s criticism of Pro-IP–the agency believes the current arrangement for criminal enforcement works fine–as merely protecting political turf. “They don’t like Congress telling them how to organize their branch, but that’s our right,” Berman said. “They take the notion of executive privilege very seriously.”

He also:

The Visa-Android deal calls for Chase Visa cardholders to use their Android phone for not only transferring money, but also to receive real-time email alerts when transactions happen on their Visa account, receive offers from merchants, and view images on Google maps to find the location of those merchants who are offering the specials. The Google-Visa deal is expected to begin sometime by the end of the year.

Under a pilot program with U.S. Bank, which is scheduled to begin by the end of the year, Visa will offer mobile money transfers from one Visa cardholder’s account to another. A U.S. Bank Visa cardholder would use a Web browser on their phone to access funds and transfer it directly to the recipient’s account. The recipient could then withdraw the funds from an ATM machine, or use the money to make purchases.

Visa is also working with cell phone giant Nokia and new entrant Google’s Android to offer mobility to its service.

The credit card processing giant announced Thursday several initiatives to allow its credit card toting customers the ability to transfer money, make payments, and receive real-time account notification alerts on their Nokia and Android cellular phones. Visa also struck a mobile deal with U.S. Bank.

Visa has also struck a similar deal with Nokia for its Nokia 6212 Classic phone. That service is expected to beginning next month.

Visa is adding a wireless twist to the old phrase “Charge It.”

Selling shares in a musician is not new. In 1997, David Bowie sold Bowie Bonds, which gave a single buyer (the Prudential Insurance Co.) the rights to future assets derived from Bowie’s first 25 albums (287) songs for a total of 10 years. In return Bowie received an upfront payment of $55 million. After 10 years, the rights returned to Bowie.

The Web start-up has financed 13 bands and generated the equivalent of nearly $80,000 for its 40,000 “scouts,” according to a story from Reuters. The company enables members to test their skills at evaluating talent and in this way they become mini music moguls.

Investors receive $1.98 for every album sold, according to Reuters. The wire service used as an example the Arctic Monkeys, a popular U.K. band. Had the group been on Slicethepie and sold 1.1 million copies, then someone making a $40 investment in the band would have received $4,000.

The good news for Americans is that you don’t need to live in Great Britain to invest, according to a note on Slicethepie.com.

This is the latest attempt to find an alternative business model for the ailing music industry and provide fans more direct interaction with entertainers. Last year, Radiohead walked away from its record label and in a ground-breaking move offered the album In Rainbows directly to the public via the Web. The band allowed anyone who wanted the music to pay what they thought it was worth.

Artists are allowed to opt out and sign with a traditional label provided they pay a 50 percent premium, Reuters said. Next month, the indie rock band, The Alps, will be the first act from Slicethepie to release an album.

“We effectively turn every music fan into a record label,” David Cortier-Dutton, the company’s CEO told Reuters. “Everyone can invest in new artists on an economically attractive basis.”

A lot of people have talked about selling stock in bands as a means to help finance promising musicians. In Great Britain, a company called Slicethepie.com is enabling fans to trade shares of music acts the way they would a publicly traded company.

Only about one or two acts receive enough financial backing to create and release an album. According to Reuters, a band would need to sell 100,000 albums for a major record label to break even. But at Slicethepie.com, a band need sell only 1,000 units for the Web site’s members to make money.

The Alps, one of the bands that Slicethepie members can buy shares in.

Bowie, of course, was an established artist, and Slicethepie focuses on bankrolling unsigned and largely unknown performers. The way Slicethpie works is that members review a pool of about 7,500 acts, Reuters reported. The 20 or so with the highest ratings every month “go forward to qualify for funding.”

(Credit:
Slicethepie.com)

Meanwhile, Nielsen Media Research reported that NBC’s TV coverage averaged more than 30 million viewers for the first three days of the games, a 26 percent increase compared with the same period during the Athens Games in 2004. The opening ceremony was last week’s most-watched program, attracting nearly 35 million viewers.

As well as NBC is doing both on TV and on online, it begs the question of whether NBC’s policy of delaying popular events online until they have run on TV in prime time was a wise move or overly restrictive.

Mobile usage also saw a significant boost, increasing from 210,000 on Friday to 476,062 on Monday. NBC, which said it polled users, said it was “stunned” at the number of users who were using mobile video download for the first time.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

Traffic to Yahoo’s Olympics site also skyrocketed, up 86 percent to 5.2 million visitors compared with Sunday’s 2.8 million.

(Credit:
Nielsen Online)

The Olympic Games in Beijing is proving to be a hit in the workplace.

Traffic to Olympics-related Web sites soared Monday, the first full workday after the official opening of the games Friday, according to numbers released Wednesday by Nielsen Online (see chart below). More than 2 million people visited the video section of NBCOlympics.com, up nearly 140 percent from Sunday when the site had about 858,000 visitors, according to Nielsen. Overall visits to the site increased 40 percent to 4.6 million compared with Sunday’s 3.3 million.

Twenty-six percent of Americans said they relied on the Internet as a major source of campaign news in 2008, compared with 11 percent in 2000.

The 2008 election was truly the most Internet-based presidential race ever, but the more voters went online, the more they sought out partisan content, a new report shows.

While more voters turned to the Internet for political information, fewer relied on traditional news sources like radio or newspapers. Television remained the most common source of election news, with 77 percent of Americans watching election-related coverage. Twenty-eight percent of voters cited newspapers as a major source of election news, down from 39 percent in 2000.

For the first time ever, more than half of the voting age population–55 percent of adults–went online for news and information about a presidential election or to communicate with others about the race, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

With greater online political engagement, the report shows, came greater partisanship. One-third of online news consumers said they usually seek out online political information from Web sites that share their political point of view, and the more online news sources a person regularly visited, the more likely he would be to seek out specific view points. Nearly half of online news consumers visited at least five different online types of news content in 2008.

Some voters went online to find voting information. Nearly one in five voters used the Internet to find out where to vote, 16 percent of voters went online for information about absentee or early voting, and 9 percent went online to find out where they were registered to vote.

(Credit: Pew Research Center)

“The 2008 elections saw the role of the Internet in politics increase, and it witnessed the emergence of a unique group of online political activists,” said Aaron Smith, the Pew research specialist who authored the new report. The research for the report was conducted between November 20 and December 4, 2008.

Official campaign Web sites were also more popular in the 2008 election. While 18 percent of all Internet users visited the John Kerry Web site in 2004 and 14 percent visited George Bush’s 2004 site, 30 percent went to Barack Obama’s site last year and 21 percent went to John McCain’s.

Social media Web sites also featured much more prominently in the 2008 election, which is not surprising–most were in their infancy, if even in existence, during the 2004 campaign. Nearly half of all 18 to 29-year-olds–Internet users and nonusers alike–watched online political videos during the campaign. Among Internet users with a social networking profile, 52 percent used social networking sites for political purposes.

Obama supporters typically were more engaged online than John McCain supporters–26 percent of Obama supporters online created their own original political content online, compared with 15 percent of McCain supporters.

Also, hide the pets, because we might just turn Fluffy into a new
iPod case.

This week on the Crave vodcast, Brian Tong and Jasmine France show off some vibrating earbuds, a bag made for both beer and music, and the comeback of the Polaroid.

“We intend to ensure that it is profitable,” Catz said, having noted that Oracle will combine the software assets quickly after closing the deal. “We believe we will be able to run Sun at substantially higher margins.”

An early take from my colleague Larry Dignan at ZDNet:

Update, 5:59 a.m. PDT: On a conference call to present the deal to investors, Catz emphasized that Oracle expects to make money from its Sun property.

Click here for more stories on the Oracle-Sun deal.

Historical footnote, 6:35 a.m. PDT: Ellison didn’t always see Sun as a desirable takeover target. In 2003, when Oracle was in the throes of trying to acquire PeopleSoft, Ellison said that buying Sun would be a “bad idea.” At Oracle’s annual shareholder meeting that October, Ellison said: “I don’t think Oracle should be in the hardware business, so I don’t think you’ll see us buying any hardware companies.”

Sun Chairman Scott McNealy and CEO Jonathan Schwartz joined Oracle’s team on the call.

My hunch is that (Oracle CEO Larry) Ellison saw the possibilities of integrating hardware and software with Oracle’s Exadata database machine. Ellison boasted that the Exadata machine has seen strong demand on Oracle’s earnings conference call.

Oracle, not IBM, will be buying Sun Microsystems.

(Credit:
Sun Microsystems)

“We’re thrilled to be acquired by Oracle,” McNealy said.

Oracle and Sun announced Monday that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. That puts the value of the transaction at about $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt.

Update, 9:50 a.m. PDT: Sun’s shares jumped about 35 percent when the stock market opened Monday to $9.07, following Friday’s close at $6.69, and have been holding at about that level through the morning.

Sun’s stock jumped around 35 percent first thing Monday on word of Oracle’s takeover bid.

(Credit:
Yahoo Finance)

This story has been updated. See below for details.

Sun made its name as a supplier of server hardware during the dot-com heyday, but its best-known technology is software: the Java programming language. In the Monday morning announcement, the two companies said that Java is the “most important software Oracle has ever acquired.”

Oracle President Safra Catz said in a statement:

Also on the call, Ellison said that Java is “critical” to Oracle’s middleware and that the company’s middleware offerings are on track to be as big as its database business. Sun’s Solaris software, he said, is “by far best Unix technology available on market,” though he also spoke well of Linux.

We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle’s earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined.

Sun’s board has unanimously approved the transaction. The deal is expected to close this summer, subject to Sun stockholder approval, regulatory approvals, and closing conditions.

In its most recent quarter, Sun reported a net loss of $209 million, or 28 cents a share, on revenue of $3.22 billion. Revenue was down 11 percent year over year.

Oracle’s shares opened about 7 percent lower, at $17.77 versus Friday’s closing price of $19.06. The stock has since risen to about $18.60.

Last month, reports surfaced that IBM wanted to buy Sun, but Sun didn’t like the terms that Big Blue was offering.

Developers will learn more about creating apps for the BlackBerry Bold later this year.

Smartphone application development appears to be the next frontier for software developers. Such applications have already been in development for years for operating systems like Symbian and Windows Mobile, but the swell of interest in Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating systems is generating new demand for third-party software that knows how to play well within the constraints of a phone.

The BlackBerry is the leading smartphone in North America, and is No. 2 on a worldwide basis. RIM just launched the newest version, the BlackBerry Bold, this week.

Research in Motion will hold its own conference for smartphone developers later this year, as interest in mobile development continues to grow.

(Credit:
RIM)

Electronista spotted a Web page advertising the BlackBerry Developer Conference, scheduled for the week of October 20 in Santa Clara, Calif. The two-and-a-half day conference will feature the usual keynote speeches and technical sessions, but RIM doesn’t seem to have settled on an agenda just yet.