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Toyota’s runaway vehicle problem has suddenly transformed into a problem with runaway incentives. After launching a massive sales incentives program in March to lure customers back to showrooms, Toyota may have to continue its sales blitz through late summer.

Toyota began offering 0 percent financing and free maintenance in March to smooth things over with U.S. buyers, causing a dramatic jump in the company’s per vehicle incentives average. Toyota’s average vehicle incentives totaled $1,003 in March 2009, but ballooned to $2,568 last month. Moreover, Toyota may have to continue its incentives push well into the summer months.

“With what we can gather today, they’re going to have to continue this level of spending until 2011 models start to come in a meaningful way,” Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends at forecaster TrueCar.com, told Bloomberg. “That could mean until about August.”

The incentives rallied Toyota’s sales 41 percent in March, but April hasn’t been kind to the Japanese automaker. U.S. regulators announced earlier this month that Toyota “knowingly hid a dangerous defect” and the Japanese automaker was forced to stop global sales of its Lexus GX 460 SUV following a “do not buy” recommendation by Consumer Reports.

References
1. ‘Toyota Quality Woes…’ view

   

Source: Leftlane

ChannelWeb has some speculation about icelandic volcano eruptions making people think twice about hosting data centres there to take advantage of abundant clean energy sources – Volcanic Ash May Impact Iceland’s Data Center Plans.

Iceland says its cool climate and abundant supply of geothermal and hydroelectric energy makes it a prime spot for IT data centers. But in the wake of a major volcanic eruption earlier this week, companies may be thinking twice about hosting core IT assets in a place where Mother Nature is known for being a bit unstable.

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted for the first time in nearly 200 years on Monday, sending ash nearly 40,000 feet into the air and shutting down heavily traveled air routes in northern Europe and Scandinavia. The eruption triggered flooding and sporadic ash fall of up to three millimeters thick around the eruption site, according to a Thursday report from the Icelandic Government Information Center.

It’s unclear if the ash fall is affecting Iceland’s IT infrastructure, as Channelweb.com’s attempts Thursday to contact Icelandic solution providers were unsuccessful. But according to one local news report, the ash fall is the largest Iceland has seen since an eruption in 1918, and scientists aren’t ruling out the possibility that the volcano could keep erupting.

Data centers are constructed to withstand environmental extremes and natural disasters, but volcanic ash is known for its ability to wreak havoc on desktops, servers, and basically any type of IT infrastructure that has moving parts.

Volcanic ash also contains silica sand, an abrasive, conductive material that’s capable of destroying circuit boards. With the weight and consistency of talcum powder, ash can easily slip through air conditioning systems, even with filters installed.

The volcanic eruption comes at a time when Iceland’s data center building push is beginning to gain momentum. In January, Verne Global, a data center developer based in Keflavik, Iceland, and Washington, D.C ., inked a deal with Wellcome Trust, a global biomedical research firm, to build a 44 acre data center facility on the site of a former NATO Command Centre in Keflavik, Iceland.

It’s scaremongering at best, but yesterday’s volcanic ash story has turned into a right old mess for the aviation industry, with all planes grounded until at least Sunday in the UK. Even worse, a much larger volcano could erupt. More »

Lindsay Lohan is getting on her knees for next film role. Although producers deny it, LiLo has been telling anyone who’ll listen that she was recently cast to play adult film icon Linda Lovelace in an upcoming biopic about her life. Lovelace — who would become a feminist activist in her later years — is best remembered as the star of the X-rated epic Deep Throat, one of the few adult films to gain mainstream notority in the 1970s.

Tina Yothers, of the ’80s sitcom Family Ties, was cast as Lovelace in the Broadway production Lovelace: The Musical. Rose McGowen was the last actress reportedly in chats to play Linda on the big screen.

Lovelace died in a car accident in 2002.

The rise in the demand for electric cars has made electric car manufacturers think of futuristic rides that are clean and offer their owners a zero-emission mode of transport. While there are many vehicles on the market that are clean and trendy at the same time, there are some designers who’re trying to replicate the same technology in their garages. Here is a list of 12 such DIY electric vehicles that have been made by those who believe that building an EV isn’t that difficult:

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Wade Roush wrote:

I’m a digital pack rat, which means I tend to get unreasonably excited about online notekeeping systems. I’m driven by the conviction that there’s got to be one best way to use the Internet to save and retrieve every bit of information I might want to look at later, whether that means Web clippings, important e-mails, voice memos, receipts, photos, maps, shopping lists, restaurant reviews, instruction manuals, or whatever. Of course, you could just store all this stuff on a single hard drive—but then you’d have to carry that drive with you everywhere. Putting it in the cloud means it’s available from anywhere, including your mobile devices.

I thought I’d found the beginnings of an answer back in 1999, when a developer at the Silicon Valley startup where I was working created, in his spare time, one of the most elegant content management and publishing systems I’ve ever seen. It was intended as the custom backend for the news website I was managing, and the beautiful thing about it was that you could easily create categories for articles, and categories-within-categories, and categories-within-categories-within-categories, then post stories to as many categories as you liked and navigate to them using a nifty system of nested links. It was like one of those cubby hole racks for your closet, only infinitely expandable. I thought it would make a great product on its own, but alas, the startup was in a different business (e-books) and when it eventually died, so did the publishing system.

I’ve been searching for a replacement ever since. Right now I think there are two main contenders for the title of best online notes application: Evernote and Springpad. I signed up for Evernote—created by the Mountain View, CA, startup of the same name—shortly after the Web version of the service was launched in June 2008, and I’ve stored just over 2,100 items there, averaging about three per day. And I’ve been following Springpad closely since Charlestown, MA-based Spring Partners opened their service to the public in November 2008. You can read my review of Evernote here and my news articles about Springpad here, here, and here.

If you’re the kind of computer user who spends a lot of time grazing for information online, or if you’re just a busy person juggling a lot of plans and commitments, a cloud notekeeper would probably be helpful. Both Evernote and Springpad let you capture information in multiple ways—whether you’re at your computer using a Web browser or you’re out and about with your mobile device—and they both make stored notes easy to find it later. But when it comes to what you can do with your notes, and how the companies earn money, the two services couldn’t be more at odds. Today I thought I’d compare the two tools, with a focus on the major similarities and differences rather than the specific features (which are many; Evernote’s product overview page is here and Springpad’s intro video is here).

If I were forced to cut to the chase, I’d have to say that Evernote is great for geeks and serious info-hoarders while Springpad is better for shoppers, cooks, soccer moms, and other average folks doing everyday stuff. But for the details, read on.

1. Evernote costs money if you use it a lot; Springpad is free forever. You can sign up to use Evernote for free, but non-paying users have a file upload limit of 40 megabytes per month. That might be enough if you’re only saving Web clips, but if you’re uploading stuff like Word documents or Powerpoint presentations, you’re going to exceed it fast. A premium Evernote subscription, which raises the ceiling to 500 megabytes per month, costs $5 per month or $45 per year. Springpad, by contrast, is totally free and solely advertising-supported. Spring Partners makes money through lead generation—for example, by …Next Page »

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

“Don’t drink the water,” that’s what Oliver Outerbridge is telling his neighbors.

It’s ironic because Outerbridge is a restaurant owner in Portland, Maine-a state which has some of the best tasting drinking water in the country.

“We are literally consuming a toxic substance,” Outbridge said, “we are medicating everyone.”

His issue is obviously not the taste, but what Portland adds to its municipal water – fluoride.

“[Fluoride] causes multiple diseases,” he said. “It’s been shown study after study to cause cancer as well as many other debilitating diseases.”

Outerbridge’s claims are echoed by anti-fluoride activists across the country, but are vehemently denied by most dentists and government scientists.

“There is absolutely no science to this,” said Edmond Hewlett, a spokesperson for the American Dental Association. “There is a preponderance of evidence on this,” Hewlett added. “Not only is [fluoride] safe, but it’s extremely effective in preventing tooth decay.”

What Hewlett can’t explain is why the anti-fluoride movement has recently gained such traction. In the last two years, dozens of communities in 10 states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas, Vermont, Washington, Maine, New York, Massachusetts, and California,) have rejected water-fluoridation.

Outerbridge points to the warning on the back of any fluoridated tooth-paste. “It says right there if you swallow more than a pee-size, contact poison control. This stuff is poison.”

Hewlett, on the other hand, compares fluoride to other substances like Vitamin A and Vitamin D. “All of these things in high concentration can be toxic, “ he said. “But when they are controlled and monitored, not only are they not toxic, but they are safe, and can actually make us healthier.”

Fluoride has been added to drinking water (about one-part per-million) for over 65 years. Currently 70 percent of Americans drink fluoridated-water.

Hewlett points out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently honored fluoridated-water as one of the great public health achievements of the 20th century.

Outerbridge remains unimpressed, calling fluoride “mass-medication.” “Fundamentally,” he said. “I have a problem adding any form of medication to a water supply. I feel medical decisions should remain between individuals and their doctors. What’s good for one person is not good for another.”

But apparently not all of Outerbridge’s neighbors agree. Last year he tried and failed to get a similar initiative on Maine’s state ballot. He also failed in a bid for a seat on Portland’s Water District Board on the issue of halting water-fluoridation.

However, Outerbridge believes the tide is turning in his favor, pointing to a spate of national stories on the anti-fluoride movement, “The more public press we get on this issue, the more likely it’s to become an issue for the average person.”

The scientific consensus on geoengineering — a manipulation of the environment to counteract climate change — has come a long way in the past few years. As recently as 2006, it was unthinkable to many climate scientists that leaders in their field would seriously consider the idea of shooting reflective particles into the atmosphere or dumping massive quantities of iron into the oceans.

“When I first started looking into this in 2006, it was like talking to an insurance salesman about his porn habit,” said Jeff Goodell, whose book on geoengineering, “How to Cool the Planet,” was published on Thursday. “Nobody wanted to talk about it openly.”

These days, however, a growing number of scientists are devoting their careers to researching geoengineering, defined by the British Royal Society as “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming.” But while most scientists may agree on the need to study this worst-case approach to addressing the climate crisis, a political consensus on the issue remains a long way off, as liberals and environmentalists have been reluctant to consider this radical solution that some conservatives have been quick to embrace.

Geoengineering takes two principal forms. One involves increasing the planet’s reflectivity in some way, so that less sunlight warms the earth and temperatures drop. This approach can be as simple as Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s proposal to paint roofs white (although that would barely make a dent in global warming) or as complex as replicating the effects of a volcano by shooting sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere. It can be done rather inexpensively — some experts say a sulfur dioxide injection would cost under 3 cents per ton of carbon negated, compared to the $10- to $30-per-ton pricetag that comprehensive climate legislation would likely impose — but it’s only a patch: Carbon levels would continue to rise, and if geoengineering efforts stopped, temperatures would shoot up.

The other form involves sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, potentially by adding iron to the oceans to encourage carbon-absorbing algae blooms or by pulling carbon out of the air and sending it deep underground. This approach would actually reduce our carbon levels and could avoid some of the ethical issues of reflectivity engineering, but it’s likely to be much more expensive and slower to take effect, and it presents its own host of practical concerns.

In either case, nearly all climate scientists agree, geoengineering should not be regarded as a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but rather a backup plan in case other efforts fail to prevent a climate crisis. Many hope that geoengineering theories remain just theories: There are far too many unknowns, and after all it was our manipulation of the planet that led to global warming in the first place. But with temperatures continuing to rise and the prospects for cutting carbon emissions uncertain — particularly after the failure of last December’s international climate conference in Copenhagen — some argue that it would be foolish not to explore our options.

“One of the greatest misapprehensions about the climate crisis is the notion that we can fix all this simply by cutting emissions quickly,” writes Goodell. “We can’t. Even if we cut CO2 pollution to zero tomorrow, the amount of CO2 we have already pumped into the atmosphere will ensure that the climate will remain warm for centuries.”
“To be responsible, you really have to plan for the worst,” said Eli Kintisch, whose own book on geoengineering, “Hack the Planet,” is scheduled for publication on April 22.

Heading the push to explore geoengineering is what Kintisch calls the “Geoclique,” led by climate scientists Ken Caldeira of Stanford’s Carnegie Institution for Science and David Keith of the University of Calgary. Partly thanks to their efforts, geoengineering has rapidly moved into the scientific mainstream.

“The change is stunning,” said Keith in an interview. “I keep walking into meetings where I expect everyone to be opposed, and they’re not.”

But a scientific consensus has yet to translate into a political one. As many liberal environmentalists have sought to avoid debate on the issue — “for fear that talking about it would reduce the pressure for cutting emissions,” according to Keith — some Republicans have signed onto the notion of geoengineering, creating an unlikely union between climate scientists and conservatives who often put little stock in what climate scientists have to say.

“It’s definitely an alliance of strange bedfellows,” Caldeira told TWI.

For conservatives who oppose efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, geoengineering provides an opportunity to shift the debate over global warming from its causes to its effects — from carbon levels to rising temperatures. This serves multiple purposes: It allows some of them to maintain their argument that global warming is caused by changing solar patterns rather than human activity, and it creates an opportunity to control climate change without placing limits on polluting industries.

“Conservatives can use it to bolster arguments they’ve made all along,” said Kintisch, “but I don’t think in the end, we’re going to be able to study this if it’s a conservative or liberal issue. If that happens, it just won’t go anywhere.”

Still, there are signs that the political mainstream is beginning to embrace the idea of “planethacking,” as Kintisch sometimes refers to it. Energy Secretary Chu, who as a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and a member of President Obama’s cabinet has served as a link between the scientific and political communities, told Goodell that “geoengineering is certainly worth further research.” In November 2009, the House Committee on Science and Technology held the first-ever hearing on geoengineering, although committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) insisted, “My decision to hold this hearing should not in any way be misconstrued as an endorsement of any geoengineering activity.” And last month, the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy created a task force that includes leading scientists like Keith and Caldeira to make recommendations on geoengineering to Congress and the administration this summer.

But one thing that’s still lacking is funding from Congress for geoengineering research, which Keith calls “crucial.” Caldeira has also advocated a federally funded “Climate Emergency Response Program” to explore our options if we need to cool the planet in a pinch.

Of course, if and when we reach the point of climate crisis, political disagreements are likely to subside. “If there end up being widespread crop failures and famines and that kind of thing, people are going to be willing to do something dramatic,” said Caldeira.

Still, even most advocates of geoengineering research would prefer not to see their ideas put into action. “I hope that we never launch particles into the stratosphere, dump iron into the oceans, or brighten clouds,” Goodell writes in his book. “I hope that the whole notion of geoengineering looks in retrospect exactly how it looks at first glance: like a bad sci-fi novel writ large.”

But while Keith and Kintisch both think there’s a chance we can avert a major climate crisis without resorting to geoengineering, Goodell disagrees.

“I think that it’s inevitable,” said Goodell, “and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. What I think is really important is the idea of us, meaning Western civilization, having a discussion about the kind of world we want to live in. Geoengineering forces that discussion.”

In the past month, Red Tape Chronicles readers have taken on a long list of consumer booby traps – laid by phone companies, pay TV companies, banks and others – and WON! The mountain of success stories from the Red Tape Fight Pledge group on Facebook is so high we decided to pick a top 10 list and share them with you here in the hope that you’ll be inspired to use some of the same techniques.

But before we get to that, The Red Tape Fight Pledge has been so successful that we’ve decided to keep it going, with only a small change. The group is now being called the Red Tape Fight Club. Already, more than 1,000 super-consumers are signed up, and they will form the backbone of a self-help group designed to be a standing army of consumer advocates, ready to help any victim get economic justice when locked in a battle with a stubborn company. Group members will share tips, tricks, phone numbers and any other technique that can be used to help you get a fair deal.  Anyone can join and post questions, looking for help. Some members will prove themselves to be subject matter experts and volunteer to be captains.

The Red Tape Fight Club is designed to be self-sustaining, run by members.  I will chime in often if I have helpful advice. But 1,000 brains are better than one. Click here to join, or just to see what’s going on.

 

Now, on to some individual success stories.

1. DirecTV

Linda Keith is a 55-year-old single mom of five (only one left at home) from Varina, Virginia, looking to keep control of her expenses. When her monthly TV bill with DirecTV hit $70, she took action.

 

“(I) told them I was going to cancel and they gave me a $50 credit and lowered my bill from $69 a month to $29 for a year. Then it will zoom back up but for now this is a deal," she said. “They also gave me Starz free for 6 months. … it took me no time at all. All I did was ask.”

 

Keith apparently has money-saving genes.

 

“My daughter also did the same thing with a different cable company and is saving $70 per month  on telephone, cable and internet,” she said.

 

2. Credit card annual fee

Melissa Triemstra of Dyer, Indiana, is one of millions of consumers who’ve seen their credit card costs raised through higher interest rates, lower credit card limits or new fees. But she didn’t stand for it.

 

“I noticed the annual fee charge — $39 – on my online account balance so I called them up right away,” she said, referring to the card issuer, First Financial Bank. “(I) nicely told them that I had other cards and really didn't feel that I needed to pay an annual fee on any of them. They put a note on my account saying not to ever charge me an annual fee. They were real nice and quick about it.”

 

3. No late fees = $2,000 slush fund

Russell Luepnitz of Winfield, Alabama, canceled his cable service and saved $40 per month. But he took an even bigger step – he used technology to help him avoid penalty fees.

“I have already saved $300 over the last year because I have paid on time or switched to electronic withdrawal on small bills like water,” he said. The savings add up to $300 over last year. As a reward, he opened a new savings account for all the saved cash. Adding up the cable, late fee savings and his self-imposed restrictions on “ridiculous purchases,” he’s got $2,000 in that slush fund now.

 

4. Kept talking to get unlimited minutes deal

Ray of Taylorsville, Utah, 63, ran into typical trouble when upgrading from a “dumb phone” to a “smart phone.”  He was spending $70 per month for 1,500 minutes and was about to add pricey Web services to his phone. He didn’t want a triple-digit phone bill, but $120 per month was staring him in the face.

“(I had to) continually pester T-Mobile and finally resort to a threat of leaving their customer herd before they began offering me plans with unlimited minutes and unlimited Web access,” said Ray, who asked that his last name be withheld. “After discussing the issue with several reps and finally telling them that I'd look elsewhere, they seemed to find that there was a ‘long-term customer option’ that gave me unlimited minutes for $50-a-month and then the standard unlimited Web access for $25. The bottom line being that for $5 more per month I no longer have to worry about limits on either type of connection. … I ended up with a better package for close to what I was already paying.”

 

5. Worth it to cancel home phone service

Shana Martin, 30, of Centerville, Indiana, decided to take the plunge and cut her home telephone cord after realizing that she could live with cell phone service only. It wasn’t easy, but it will save her more than $200 a year. 

 

“I called Verizon once or twice a week for two months trying to cancel my land line,” she said. “I first tried doing it online, but they said I had to call. But I would be on hold for so long — 30 minutes or more — that I would hang up frustrated.” She finally had luck by calling at night.

 

“I asked to cancel the line and they asked why but didn't offer any incentives to keep it. It only took about 3 minutes to get it canceled. I saved about $18 a month by getting rid of the phone. … My advice for others would be to not stop trying. It's hard to find time to stay on hold or call back repeatedly, but in the end the money saved is worth it.

 

6. From VOIP to Skype to save

Michelle Brinkman Stevens of Austin, Texas dropped one new-fangled phone service for another and and will save $228 in the next 12 months. 

 

“We dropped cable VOIP phone and went with AT&T basic service,” she said.  “Now (we) pay Skype to do calls to domestic land or cell phone.” Their $45-a-month bill is now a $20 local phone bill and a $6 monthly Skype bill. “Monthly savings of $19. Works for me.”

 

7. Comcast phone and Internet savings

Stephen Ham of Nashville knocked $10 per month off his phone and Internet service bill with a call to Comcast. He threatened to cancel service if he didn’t get a better deal.

“Not as much as I had hoped but worth the effort.” he said.

 

8. Keep the ‘promotional price’ after trial period ends

Zohar Laor, like most pay TV consumers, signed up when the cable company was offering a discounted trial offer.  But when the trial period ended and his rate went up, he got on the phone.

 

“I lowered my cable bill by about $20 a month,” he said. “I called and they gave me the ‘current promotion’ price and I put my name on a list to be called if a better promotion is available.”

 

Gregory Yurevitch has a similar experience with Comcast.

 

“(I) asked Comcast to lower my bill, which they wouldn't do. However, they would extend existing promotional pricing, which is the same thing,” he said.  He saved $25 per month, or $300 per year.

 

9. Don’t stand for FIOS rate increases

Timothy Thorn of Wilmington, Delaware, called Verizon after the firm raised his monthly fee $10. He ended up saving money and getting better service.

 

“I explained I was a good, pay-on-time customer and would have to cancel service unless I got my old rate back,” he said.  “The service person hemmed and hawed but I was firm about having to cancel service. Finally she came back with my old rate – $44.99 – and double the current speed. I did have to commit for a year.”

 

10. Discount on set-top boxes

Skip Frank of Flower Mound, Texas, used the threaten-to-cancel tactic with Verizon for his TV and Internet service package.  He had mixed results, but still came out ahead.

 

“The best I got was a $4.99 credit per month for one of our set-top boxes,” he said. “Not what I'd hoped for, but better than a sharp stick in the eye.”
 

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Google is not done with adding new features to Gmail. Having just introduced a nifty invite option that integrates Google Calendar with Gmail and makes it easy to create an event while sending an email, it is now announcing another very cool feature, drag-and-drop attachments. It’s exactly what you think it is, just drag a file or even… (read more)