A family’s journey from hand-set type to hand-coded hypertext

George M. Smith edits a story for the Wheaton Daily Journal sometime in the late 1940s.

The Internet killed the newspaper.

No, it’s the economy, stupid.

Or overleveraged publishing chains. Left-wing columnists. Whatever the cause, change is in the air of the publishing world, but it’s blowing faster than ever.

From the cover of Time magazine to a slew of bloggers, the changes sweeping the news business are an untiring meme lately.

Newspapers big and small are stopping their presses, not to replate with the latest breaking scandal, but to lay off their staffs, shutter the doors, retire the nameplates.

It may be news, but it’s not new. My family has been involved, off and on, in the newspaper game for more than a century. Each generation saw shifts in society and advances in technology challenge their publishing acumen.

My great-grandfather got into journalism in 1900. George M. Smith began writing for the Naperville (Ill.) Clarion fresh out of high school. After attending Wheaton College, just outside of Chicago, where his father taught, he worked his way through a succession of reporting jobs.

In 1913, he purchased the Du Page County Tribune, a weekly in Wheaton, setting himself up as editor and publisher.

Printing a newspaper in those days was a labor-intensive operation. Every line of type was set by hand, using individual die-cast metal letters, thousands per page.

Hot lead and Linotypes

In 1915, the Tribune purchased a new typecasting machine – a Linotype. Headlines still had to be made up by hand, but the body text of stories was cast in lines – slugs – by molding hot lead. Linotypes were complex mechanical contraptions, prone to breakdown, with 90-character keyboards.

The paper was successful under George’s leadership. To speed production, he invested in another. In 1933, in the midst of the Depression, it became a daily, and the nameplate was changed to the Wheaton Daily Journal. A subscription to the solidly Republican paper ran 5 cents per week.

My grandfather, Robert Smith, followed in his dad’s footsteps, writing a column for the Journal, and studying journalism at South Dakota State College – where he met my grandmother Eileen.

She’d been active in her high school newspaper, which was a full page in the local Milbank (S.D.) Herald Advance, printed every week. She studied printing and journalism at South Dakota State before graduating in 1938.

“There were not that many women in printing – really just a few of us in the whole field of journalism.

“At the college, we set some type by hand, but mainly with the Linotype. Working the hell box (where miscast slugs and wrongly-set type were discarded, to be sorted out later) wasn’t much fun. We had to go through and pull out all the letters and put them back.

“Everything was done by hand. The letterpress was hand-fed, which was a lot of work.

“Bob was very good at setting type. I suppose it came easy to me. I’ve been able to do a lot of computer work – at the museum and such – because of it, using a different keyboard than a typewriter.”

They both put themselves through college working for the college press – writing, proofreading, making up pages.

World War II came soon after my grandparents graduated, interrupting Bob’s endeavors in journalism with a stint in the South Pacific for him and California for Eileen. Two boys also arrived, my uncle Joel and my dad, Steve.

After the war, the Wheaton Daily Journal responded to its growing market.

“Everybody brought two papers – the Chicago paper (Tribune) and the Journal. People were working in Chicago, taking the train in.”

Many commuters began to identify more as Chicagoans than as members of their formerly sleepy suburbs. The ubiquity of radio and growing television market – pioneered in the ’30s by The Chicago Daily News – challenged the small suburban publishers.

George Smith died in February 1949, having spent his life putting ink on paper, telling stories.

My grandfather and his two brothers stepped in to run the family business. Bob took over as editor, the others managing the business side.

Hand-set to high-tech

While the presses weren’t hand-fed anymore, pages were still cast in hot metal. Steve Smith – my dad – recalls the press room as a noisy, messy place.

“My father used to come home with burns” from working on the Linotype, he recalls. “You talk about a complicated machine. And that was a tough bunch of guys. He had a crown on one tooth from getting hit with a wrench by a pressman.”

The changing business and inevitable conflicts among the brothers led to a sale of the Journal in 1953.

Bob went into teaching, first for a local high school, eventually becoming a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. Before he died in 1975, he was working to move the college’s program to a new computerized system.

From hand-set to high-tech, in a lifetime.

My dad went to college to study printing just as technology was shifting.

In the late ’60s, newspapers were moving to more-efficient platemaking processes and high-capacity web presses.

Colleges were still teaching outdated photoengraving techniques, even as the new technology penetrated the business. A career based on a fading process didn’t seem too viable.

Besides, the art department held more attraction. It didn’t take long for my dad to drop his journalism and printing courses.

My journey through journalism began in high school, where I learned how to type, badly, and paste up a news page by hand, using hot wax and type output from a primitive computer system at the local Prescott Courier.

After some schooling at the University of Arizona, I wrote and edited copy for a string of Tucson alternative papers whose names are mostly lost to history.

I served a stint as editor and publisher of ¿K? Magazine, an arts and culture monthly, in the mid-1990s. Despite the streamlining of the desktop publishing revolution, print publishing remained an expensive proposition.

Learning the code

In the late’ 90s, I moved into Web design, learning an alphabet soup of languages: html, xml, js, css and more.

A few years ago, the Citizen was kind enough to take me on, and eventually let me manage the Web site.

In the short time I’ve been here, the technology we use has dramatically shifted. From basic html pages to rich applications that feature video and databases, the addition of reader comments and forums, the focus of the Citizen online has changed along with the culture of the Internet.

But the impressive values of the Citizen staff have remained: accuracy, fairness, truth.

This may well be the last piece I write for a daily newspaper. It leaves me with a bit of an empty feeling, sitting at my desk, preparing for the Citizen’s last edition, knowing that my family’s history with the printing press has stopped rolling.

The family paper, having changed hands several times through the years, continues as the Wheaton Sun – a suburban weekly that’s part of the Sun-Times group.

Yes, they’ve got a Web page.

And like many newspaper chains, the Sun-Times recently filed for bankruptcy.

I hope to carry on my ancestors’ legacy of reporting. Given the trend, that will have to be in some online-only capacity. I’ll miss the smell of fresh ink, but I enjoy the 24/7 challenge of keeping the news fresh.

No matter if it’s delivered by a paperboy on a bike, or via the never-ending stream of the Internet, it’s all about telling stories.

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Ink in the blood

Many Citizen staffers have families with long histories in the newspaper business.

Alan Fischer’s father, George Fischer, was in the newspaper industry his entire life. He started as a carrier for the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald as a youth, and held a number of jobs there before becoming a pressman. He brought his skills here, working as a pressman for Tucson Newspapers from 1965 until his retirement in the late 1980s.

B. Poole’s mom, Norma Poole, and sister, Cathy Rowe, were typesetters for newspapers in Illinois during the ’60s and ’70s.

PK Weis’ grandfather PK Weis Sr. was a reporter for the Moberly (Mo.) Monitor in the early 1900s. Senior began his career as a printer’s devil when he was a young boy.

Polly Higgins’ grandfather Rathbun R. Higgins wrote a column called “The Stamp Man” for the Chicago Heights Star from 1948 to 1960 and resurrected it for the Columbus (Ind.) Republic 1967-82.

Garry Duffy’s father, Joseph L. Duffy, was an assistant to Roy Howard, of Scripps-Howard newspapers, in the late ’40s and early ’50s.

Fernanda Echavarri’s great-grandfather Jesús María Benítez Martínez, was a columnist for the local daily in Querétaro, Mexico, from 1973 to 1997.

Randy Harris’ grandfather was circulation manager of the Danville (IL) Press-Democrat from the age of 15. His mother was women’s editor for the Marion (IN) Chronicle-Tribune in the ’60s and ’70s.

Bruce Johnston descends from three generations of journalists on both sides of his family. Both of his great-grandfathers owned weekly newspapers in Canada; one of them brought the first Linotype into the country. The papers passed on through the next two generations in his family. One still publishes today, although no relatives still work for it.

Ray Suarez’s grandfather Edgar worked for TNI in the mailroom and advertising. Grandmother Beatriz was a switchboard operator, while Ray’s father, Stephen, worked in the composing room. Aunt Selina works in circulation for Gannett, while another aunt, Eloina, worked the switchboards. All told, Ray says that his family has put in 117 years working for TNI and the Citizen.

KINGMAN – A new solar plant is planned for Mohave County, the fourth and largest now slated to be built in Arizona’s northwest corner.

The 340-megawatt plant would be built about 27 miles northwest of Kingman by Mohave Sun Power, LLC, on land it plans to buy from Las Vegas developer Jim Rhodes. The facility will use a solar-thermal design, with parabolic mirrors concentrating the sun’s energy on tubes carrying oil. The heated oil is piped to a central facility to generate steam to turn generators. Some of the energy will be stored in molten salt tanks for use after dark, and a secondary heating system using oil, gas or biofuels can also keep the plant running on cloudy days.

The $2.1 billion plant will be one of the largest of its type in the world, project director Greg Bartlett said Tuesday.

Another plant using the same technology is planned south of Kingman. That 200-megawatt facility is being developed by Albiasa Solar. A Mohave County housing development called The Ranch at White Hills is building a solar facility to power its homes, and a smaller solar project is slated for the Yucca area.

“This is proof that our (Arizona’s) renewable energy standard is finally bearing fruit,” said Arizona Corporation Commission Chairwoman Kris Mayes.

The company looked all over the Southwest before settling on Mohave County, Bartlett said. Some of the benefits to locating the project in Mohave County, as compared to Maricopa County, included a higher elevation, the remote area, the amount of water and the ability to acquire 4,000 acres from a private landholder. The company has a lease purchase agreement with Rhodes for the property.

According to information from Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson’s office, the plant will use about 1,500 to 3,000 acre-feet of water per year to wash the mirrors and generate steam. The plant intends to recycle some of the water. The company says it’s well aware of the water concerns in the county and is spending a lot of time upfront on the issue, Bartlett said.

The ACC is watching the water issue carefully, Mayes said.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – An unknown number of people were cut off from Google Inc.’s search engine, e-mail and other online services Thursday, sparking a flurry of frustrated venting that served as a reminder of society’s growing dependence on Google’s technology.

Without providing specifics, Google said technical problems had prevented a “small subset of users” from getting into their e-mail accounts. The e-mail issues also had a ripple effect on other services, including the Google’s search engine, according to the Mountain View-based company.

The intermittent trouble lasted for hours before the issues were fixed by early afternoon EDT

Before the repair, many people locked out from Google went elsewhere on the Internet to express their dismay and despair.

Multiple messages posted on Twitter, a popular information-sharing forum, indicated that people all over the world had trouble with the Google search engine and e-mail. But other Twitter users said their Google services have been running smoothly.

Because Google is used by hundreds of millions of people, even a breakdown affecting a small percentage of its audience can have a major impact. Google’s search engine, by far the most popular on the Internet, fields more than 9 billion monthly search requests in the United States alone.

As part of its effort to retain its current users and expand its market share so it can sell more Internet ads, Google has invested billions of dollars to create a vast network of computers to lessen the chances of breakdowns.

Although its search engine is renowned for its reliability, Google isn’t fail-safe. Its 5-year-old e-mail service, in particular, has been susceptible to periodic outages.

As first wind farm goes up in state, others likely to follow

The Dry Lake Wind Project, Arizona's first wind farm, is scheduled to begin sending electricity to Salt River Project customers late this year.

Thirty big wind machines rising off a little-used highway between Holbrook and Heber are a curiosity for now in a state that lags its neighbors in alternative energy. But that soon will change.

The 412-foot turbines, Arizona’s first, will begin sending energy to Salt River Project customers later this year, and many more turbines are on the way.

Utilities are rushing to develop alternative energy because of state requirements mandating more renewable sources and because of federal taxes being proposed on activities tied to fossil-fuel burning and global-warming pollution.

Developments such as the Dry Lake Wind Project are attractive to utilities because, if there is room for the energy on existing power lines, the turbines are quick to build, use no water and generate electricity more cheaply than solar-power plants.

“We are going after wind because it reduces emissions,” SRP Energy Manager Charlie Duckworth said.

Of the 19 states west of Texas, only Arizona and Nevada still lack operating wind farms to help meet growing energy demands.

SRP already buys wind power from turbines in New Mexico.

At Dry Lake, every time the wind tops about 7 mph, the turbines will spin and send energy to the power grid.

The turbines hit their maximum efficiency at a sustained breeze of about 26 mph. Brakes keep them from spinning when storm winds top 55 mph.

The 30 turbines will have a maximum capacity of 63 megawatts when conditions are right. In a steady wind, each massive turbine can generate enough electricity to power about 500 homes. When the wind hits them all at once, they’ll generate enough power for more than 15,000 homes.

More on the way

Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish company with U.S. headquarters in Oregon, is building the $100 million Dry Lake project. The company has plans for 209 more turbines at the Navajo County site in subsequent phases.

If all are built, the turbines will stretch about 15 miles across the northern Arizona plains.

Dry Lake is not the only wind-power project planned for Arizona.

With Arizona utilities striving to generate 15 percent of their power from renewable sources such as wind turbines and solar panels by 2025 to meet state requirements, wind farms have also been proposed from Flagstaff to Bisbee.

Arizona Public Service Co., the other big utility in the state, announced last week that it plans to pursue an in-state wind farm.

The Navajo Nation, which stretches across parts of several counties in three states, has been trying to develop a wind farm north of Flagstaff in Coconino County.

Wind is classified based on the average speed and consistency, and most of Arizona’s windy land is classified as moderate.

any locations would require new power lines to deliver the energy to the power grid, so it’s unlikely every windy hilltop and valley in the state will see turbines.

A rancher’s initiative

Navajo County and Iberdrola officials give rancher Bill Elkins credit for researching the area’s wind potential and attracting the first wind farm to Arizona.

About six years ago, Elkins started working with Northern Arizona University to build towers on his ranch to gauge wind speeds. He studied the power-line capacity in the area to determine whether wind power could transmit to the power grid.

His research proved to Iberdrola that a wind farm on the site was feasible.

The Dry Lake turbines are being built in three curvy rows of 10 each, crossing land owned by Elkins, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the state.

Landowners lease their land to wind-farm operators. A typical agreement pays the owner $3,000 to $5,000 annually, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Elkins declined to say what his family expects to earn.

The BLM will earn $36,966 in leases this year for the 10 Dry Lake turbines on its land and should get $87,255 a year after that, officials said last year when they approved the project.

The state, which has a different deal with Dry Lake tied to the amount of energy generated by the nine turbines on its land, could earn $4 million during the 50-year agreement.

“It’s worked out real well,” Elkins said. “There’s test towers on all the ranches surrounding us now as other companies are trying to move in.”

Positive impact

Now that Elkins has successfully attracted turbines to his ranch and President Barack Obama’s policies are strongly supporting the development of alternative energy, many more turbines are expected to rise over the landscape.

“We’re very happy with what has happened in the economic-stimulus package,” said Jan Johnson, an Iberdrola spokeswoman.

The package allows developers who start building wind-power plants before 2011 to receive Treasury Department grants worth 30 percent of the cost.

“It will be a huge impetus for 2009 and 2010 projects,” Johnson said.

Not only does Iberdrola plan to expand the Dry Lake project, but Navajo County has been busy approving new testing stations that will guide developers to the gustiest swaths of the county, Assistant County Manager Dusty Parsons said.

“We’ve been waiting to see this happen,” Parsons said.

With an unemployment rate reaching into the double digits, Navajo County is embracing the Dry Lake project.

Most of the 200 construction workers are living, shopping and eating in Holbrook. Once the plant is finished, about 10 operators will hold permanent jobs at the plant.

“Even that helps,” said Rod Ross, government-relations administrator for Navajo County. “The county is going through hard times just like everybody else. And we have a pretty good supply of wind up here.” Few Holbrook residents seem bothered by the turbines on the horizon.

Rusty Long, pointing to the coal-burning Cholla Power Plant nearby, noted, “They’re just a little shorter than those stacks on that power plant.”

As advertisers spend more online, brand name firms increasingly are seeing their names, customers and millions of dollars in sales hijacked by shady marketers.

Instances of deceptive marketing to build traffic for rogue sites or to sell faux-branded products rose 17 percent last year, according to MarkMonitor, whose software tracks digital marketing infringement.

Shady marketers are using so-called cybersquatting to do their digital stealing. They drive people to a “squatted” site via e-mails or through paid search. Once they’ve led someone there, they hope to steal credit card information, spur clicks on ads to skim revenue from online ad networks or sell fake products, such as pharmaceuticals or pricey handbags.

The tactics target electronics, sports apparel, luxury brands and pharmaceutical brands the most and cost marketers about $175 billion worldwide in lost revenue, says Fred Felman of MarkMonitor.

“When the economy goes south, white-collar criminals don’t quit,” Felman says. The company’s “Brand Jacking Index” report shows that daily incidences of cybersquatting against 30 of the top global brands rose to 449,484 last year vs. 382,246 in 2007. A first-time study coming out today in conjunction with industry group Chief Marketing Officer Council addresses how marketers are coping with the surge in cybersquatting.

“We’re at a point in which marketers need a wake-up call in what’s happening to their brand,” says Liz Miller, vice president, programs and operations for the council. “Marketing is in the dark, and cybercriminals are ramping up their game.”

Incidents are up as marketers increasingly use search engine optimization to reach consumers online, where ad spending is expected to top $24 billion this year. While ad expenditures overall are expected to fall by as much as 10 percent, digital advertising in 2009 is expected to be up about 4.5 percent over 2008, according to online marketing tracker eMarketer.

As businesses fight for a share of dwindling dollars, rogue marketers are getting more aggressive. The CMO study says that marketers see their brands as more vulnerable to infringement online than in other media, with 29.5 percent of the 300 marketers reporting brand infringement on the Web vs. 22.6 percent in other media.

Despite the big cost to marketers, few of them invest in protecting their brands online. The CMO study reports 52 percent of respondents spend less than $100,000 on brand protection annually. Just 2.7 percent say they spend $5 million or more.

The Microriver 1GB iSecure Biometric USB Flash Drive is one option for grads. It sells for about $34 online.

Family, friends and loved ones of soon-to-be high school and college graduates want to give them gifts that will aid them in the next chapter of their lives.

For some that chapter will include furthering their education. For others it will entail entering the job market. Regardless of the road ahead for these graduates, there are many affordable tech gifts to make that road a little smoother.

Whether on campus or in the corporate jungle, USB flash drives seem to be commonplace. A particular flavor of USB flash drives that don’t seem to be everywhere are biometric or fingerprint scanning USB flash drives.

These drives have been around for a few years, but haven’t really caught on in mass numbers. But the fact remains that these are among the best USB drives to own. Biometric USB flash drives allow access to the drive only after a user has been authenticated by running a fingerprint over a biometric scanner embedded on the drive.

The benefits of biometric USB drives are numerous, but among the top reasons for considering them as a gift for graduates is their security features. The information stored on them is not only secure, but the fact that the information cannot be accessed acts as a theft deterrent and may even serve to increase the odds of the drive being returned if it where lost. Biometric USB drives are more expensive than regular USB drives of equal storage capacity, but there are plenty of lower capacity biometric drives priced below $50.

If your graduate is heading into the work force, you may want to consider paying for a professional subscription as a gift. Careerstrides.com is one of many Web sites that offer a professional résumé service to people new to the job market. Popular employment Web sites such as Careerbuilder.com and Monster.com offer upgraded résumé posting, a feature that is supposed to give placement preference so employers will view them before the non-upgraded résumés. This, too, could help recent grads looking to test the job market. In the current employment environment, every advantage helps.

For those who are leaving the high school campus for the larger and much greener college campus, the Digimemo may be ideal. The Digimemo is a digital tablet that allows users to write notes, draw or doodle and save it all to the device. Having a device that can save 999 individual pages of notes without the need for special paper that some other devices require will lighten the backpack of any college student. At a cost of $99, it won’t lighten the gift giver’s wallet too much, either.

Quincey Hobbs is a team member at the University of Arizona’s Center for Computing and Information Technology and an instructor at Pima Community College. Send questions to quinceyresponds @yahoo.com.

ASU among schools that might go to e-texts

NEW YORK – Amazon.com Inc. hopes a bigger version of its Kindle electronic reading device can be a hit, even if it’s more expensive, and the company is aiming it in part at college students who are eager to save money on their textbooks.

Since the Kindle debuted in 2007, it has jazzed many users and technophiles, but electronic readers from Amazon and rivals such as Sony Corp. are still in an early stage. Amazon has not disclosed Kindle sales figures, and the publishing industry has said e-books account for less than 1 percent of book sales.

Now, by offering the larger, $489 version of the Kindle and the smaller $359 Kindle 2, Amazon will try to open more avenues for digital versions of books — and other kinds of content. The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post plan pilot programs in which they will offer the new Kindle at a discount to some readers who sign up for subscriptions to read the news on the device.

In an interview, Amazon founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said that because the newest Kindle has a 9.7-inch screen, it will be better suited than the 6-inch regular Kindle at showing “complex layouts” in everything from cookbooks to travel guides.

“Things like those that have a lot of layout, structure, look really good on a big screen,” he said on the sidelines of a press event Wednesday at Pace University in New York.

The Kindle already had features that could aid textbook reading, like the ability to highlight and bookmark passages. Users could tap the Kindle’s typewriter-layout keyboard to look up words and annotate text. But in addition to a larger screen, the new version also offers more data storage — room for 3,500 books instead of 1,500 on the Kindle 2.

Three textbook publishers — Pearson PLC, Cengage Learning and John Wiley & Sons Inc. — have agreed to sell books on the device. Collectively, they publish 60 percent of all higher-education textbooks, Bezos said.

At least six universities have agreed to run Kindle pilots in the fall — Pace, Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. The schools will work with publishers to make sure books assigned for courses are available in the Kindle format, and some colleges might subsidize the devices for their students.

Case Western President Barbara Snyder said her school will be looking to see whether the device changes how students take notes, study and communicate with each other and their professors. Using the Kindle DX “opens a new world of educational opportunity,” she said.

For students, the biggest advantage could be the lower cost of electronic textbooks. Reading material on the Kindle is consistently less expensive than printed versions, with new releases of mass-market books typically costing $10, for example.

A 2005 Government Accountability Office report said the average cost is $900 per year for students at four-year public colleges, though the textbook industry argues the figure is closer to $625. Typically the prices are high because publishers are trying to capture as many sales as possible in the first year of release, before students can buy used versions.

Though Amazon currently sells physical textbooks, Bezos believes electronic versions will eventually dominate. “It just makes so much sense,” he said.

Whether portable, electronic versions of newspapers make sense will remain to be seen. But publishers that have struggled to get people to pay for digital versions of news stories in Web browsers are exploring the Kindle and similar devices.

“Ultimately, this is about providing our readers with what they want and need,” said New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who joined Bezos on stage for the event.

When the Kindle 2 was unveiled, NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin predicted that for e-book readers to reach broader audiences, the price would have to come down — something he didn’t expect to happen until must-haves like textbooks became available for the devices. Since the Kindle DX actually costs quite a bit more than the Kindle 2, “it makes sense to explore … other forms of distribution, such as subsidization by newspapers,” Rubin said.

Bezos said another potential improvement in the Kindle — a color screen — is being explored but is “many years away from commercial readiness.”

“The electronic paper display we’re using now, that was in the lab for 13 years,” he said.

Amazon shares dropped 92 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $80.98 in afternoon trading.

WAYNE, Mich. – Ford Motor Co. will invest $550 million to convert its old Michigan Truck Plant into a facility that will build small compact modern cars, the car maker said Wednesday.

The retooled facility, which once built sport utility vehicles like the Lincoln Navigator, will now build Ford’s next-generation Focus, expected to roll off the line next year.

The plant will also build a new battery-electric version of the Focus for the North American market. That vehicle is expected to debut in 2011.

The struggling automaker says roughly 3,200 jobs will be created in Michigan because of the plant conversion.

The majority of Ford’s investment will be spent on manufacturing at the site and the remainder on engineering and launch costs.

Ford says it will also consolidate operations at its Wayne Assembly plant and transform two other truck and SUV plants — the Cuautitlan Assembly in Mexico and the Louisville Assembly in Kentucky — as part of the retooling.

“We’re changing from a company focused mainly on trucks and SUVs to a company with a balanced product lineup that includes even more high-quality, fuel-efficient small cars, hybrids and all-electric vehicles,” said Mark Fields, Ford’s president of The Americas, in a statement.

The Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker will also build the same Focus it is offering its North American customers in Europe and Asia.

In addition to Ford’s zero-emission Focus battery-electric car, the company is working on several other product plans. The company is working with Smith Electric to sell a battery electric commercial vehicle for North America in 2010. It also plans to introduce in 2012 a next-generation hybrid vehicle and a plug-in hybrid vehicle.

Michigan, Wayne county, and the city of Wayne have contributed more than $160 million in tax credits and grants to support Ford’s expansion.

Scientists at the University of Warwick show a formula 3 racing car - the WorldFirst Formula 3 racing car - which is powered by chocolate, has a steering wheel made out of plant-based fibres derived from carrots, has bodywork made from potatoes, and can still do 125mph. The race car was designed and made from sustainable and renewable materials. The car meets all the Formula 3 racing standards except for its biodiesel engine which is configured to run on fuel derived from waste chocolate and vegetable oil. Pictured with the car are it's creators Kerry Kirwan (left), Steve Maggs and James Meredith.

LONDON – Scientists unveiled on Tuesday what they hope will be one of the world’s fastest biofuel vehicles, powered by waste from chocolate factories and made partly from plant fibers.

Its makers hope the racer will go 145 mph and give manufacturers ideas about how to build more ecologically friendly vehicles.

The car runs on vegetable oils and chocolate waste that has been turned into biofuel. The steering wheel is made out of plant-based fibers derived from carrots and other root vegetables, and the seat is built of flax fibre and soybean oil foam. The body is also made of plant fibers.

Scientists at the University of Warwick say their car is the fastest to run on biofuels and also be made from biodegradable materials. It has been built to Formula 3 specifications about the car’s size, weight, and performance.

Their claims cannot be independently verified.

They hope it can reach speeds of over 145 mph when it is tested on a racetrack in a few weeks time. They have driven it at around 60 mph and are now making final adjustments to the engine before driving it at top speed.

Warwick’s project manager James Meredith said their model shows that it is possible to build a fast, efficient, environmentally friendly car.

The car, named the “WorldFirst Formula 3 racing car,” will go on display at several races including the European Grand Prix and Britain’s Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Nine Inch Nails vocalist Trent Reznor performs during a concert at Key Arena in Seattle last July. Reznor won a Webby award for releasing his 2008 album as a free download.

NEW YORK – Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show hasn’t been on the air three months, but he’s already got an award. The comedian was chosen as person of the year by the annual Webby awards for being “one of the most ardent online evangelists.”

The 13th annual Webbys were announced Tuesday. A special achievement award was also given to Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who released his 2008 album, “The Slip,” as a free download.

Seth MacFarlane, the “Family Guy” creator, was honored as film and video person of the year for his Web franchise “Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.”

Nation Public Radio led winners with seven awards, including wins for its music division, mobile news and podcasts. The New York Times’ online unit — last year’s Webby leader — earned six awards, the same total that NBC.com also received.

Twitter, the fast-growing microblogging site, won the Webby for breakout of the year.

Two well-known comedians were also singled out.

Sarah Silverman was honored as best actress for her performance in the viral video “I’m … Matt Damon” and for her contribution to a voting initiative video. Lisa Kudrow won for outstanding comedic performance as the star of the series “Web Therapy” on lstudio.com.

The awards will be presented in New York on June 8, hosted by Seth Meyers (“Saturday Night Live”). The Webbys are known for their brief acceptance speeches, where winners are limited to five words. (Stephen Colbert, a special achievement winner last year, said: “Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.”)

Since “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” began in early March, the comedian has augmented his NBC broadcast with Web videos, blogging and tweeting on Twitter.

Reznor’s online fervor was evident Sunday, when he posted in a Nine Inch Nails forum that he was frustrated with what he called Apple’s inconsistent standards. He criticized the company for not making the band’s album “The Downward Spiral” available on its iPhone app even though it’s for sale on iTunes.

The Onion won for best humor Web site and its television news parody, Onion News Network, won for best writing. The Huffington Post won for best political Web site.

Best individual comedy short went to “Prop 8: The Musical,” a video from the Will Ferrell co-founded site FunnyOrDie.com. The star-studded video (Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris) suggested that gay marriage (which was then being voted on in California as Proposition would save the economy.

Best comedy series went to “Childrens’ Hospital,” the medical drama parody for TheWeb.com by Rob Corddry (“The Daily Show”).

PBS won four Webbys, including best news and politics series for its “Frontline/World iWitness.” Others with multiple awards included the BBC, Sundance Channel, YouTube Live, Next New Networks and Wired.com.

The Webbys are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member group of Web experts. Every category has two winners: one picked by the Webbys and the other chosen by online voting.

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ON THE WEB

http://www.webbyawards.com

Q I recently upgraded from dial-up to high-speed DSL. One question that I have concerns the DSL modem. I always shut down my computer at the end of the day. Should I also turn off my modem or leave it on? Whatever the answer, why is that the correct answer?

Norma I.

A: This question is one that has been around just about as long as home broadband connections. DSL connections, like all broadband connections, were meant to always be connected.

There are three prevailing opinions to this question. One is that you should turn it off. Another is that you should leave it on, and the final is that it doesn’t matter either way.

Those who say you should turn the modem off often cite potential security risks as the primary reason. It is argued that leaving your modem on opens the door for people to use your Internet signal to cause mischief online or on your home network.

I can see the truth in this, but it is built on several assumptions. One assumption is that every home network is wireless. Some home networks are still hard-wired or networked through the electrical outlets. There is also the assumption that all home wireless networks are open and do not have the requisite security in place to prevent spurious intrusions.

Those who support leaving the modem on use many of the previous viewpoints to strengthen their own position. They also expound the notion that the number of people who are technically proficient enough the circumvent most home network security measures is rather low. If someone who falls into that category wants to get into your network and cause havoc, then you are limited in your options for securing your computer.

The third position uses combined and ancillary retorts to support their viewpoint. Some of the circumstantial information factored in includes the location of the modem, network, the computers, the manner in which the computers are used and the number and level of the users who have access to the computers.

These factors serve to paint a broader picture that can lend itself to a more situation-specific solution. If the computer connected to the modem is in the middle of nowhere and is used only for updating a blog or reading news links from Google, then it really doesn’t matter if you turn the modem off or leave it on.

Personally, I am of the last school of thought. It is a situational call and you must weigh as many factors as possible. If your modem broadcasts wirelessly, is unsecure, and you are concerned about people picking up your signal and using your wireless to go online, then you may want to turn it off. Otherwise, there may be no harm in leaving it on.

The correct answer depends on your specific situation.

Quincey Hobbs is a team member at the University of Arizona’s Center for Computing and Information Technology and an instructor at Pima Community College. Send questions to quinceyresponds @yahoo.com.

Dell and Hewlett-Packard are pouring millions into a competition to win over smaller companies – and not just to sell them tech gear.

The world’s two largest PC makers have rolled out dueling initiatives to deliver a plethora of services – many of them free – to help small and midsize businesses, so-called SMBs, prosper. Smaller companies “will be the catalyst for the economy recovering,” predicts Paul-Henri Ferrand, Dell’s vice president of global strategy for SMBs.

Dell and HP ultimately hope to broker lucrative management services along with their hardware, much as IBM does with big corporations. “This is all about being more efficient and finding access to new pockets of money,” IDC analyst Ray Boggs says.

IDC defines small businesses as those with one to 100 employees; midsize ones have 101 to 999 workers. SMBs last year spent $513 billion on hardware, software and tech services, and by 2013 should spend $674 billion, IDC says.

And that gets Dell and HP excited. Sales growth of computers, monitors and printers has been slowing for several years.

So now each has made catering to SMBs the linchpin to a revamped growth strategy. “It’s a shift from a transactions model to a relationship model,” says Stephen DeWitt, HP’s senior vice president of its personal systems group.

In recent months, each has begun offering special lines of PCs, backed by zero-percent financing, for SMBs. And each has launched websites and blogs with guidance on everything from how to get started to how to connect with clients.

Dell dedicates 10,000 of its 80,000 employees to SMBs. For a subscription fee, Dell technicians will use the Internet to take over day-to-day management of a firm’s internal network. “We want to become the No. 1 IT vendor to SMBs worldwide, period,” Ferrand says.

HP has authorized independent tech resellers to bundle HP hardware in package deals with e-mail services from USA.Net, software from Microsoft, and accounting and sales management programs from NetSuite.

“If we can help deliver a sustained set of capabilities to drive growth into their businesses, then this is a good thing for our business,” DeWitt says.

The big challenge: how to meet SMBs’ diverse needs. “You just can’t put a smorgasbord out there and hope they choose something,” says Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, which has catered to SMBs for a decade. “It’s the “Fortune” 5 million, not the “Fortune” 500. You have to really understand what they need.”

Miller turned this Sam Hughes neighborhood dwelling into the only existing masonry home to qualify for Tucson Electric Power's Guarantee Home Program, which offers discounted rates.

Green builder John Wesley Miller wanted to prove a point.

So he plopped down $450,000 for a leaky, inefficient 1962 home in the Sam Hughes neighborhood and started adding things like solar panels, a solar water heater, a super-efficient heat pump and double-pane windows.

When he was finished, Miller had the only existing masonry home to qualify for Tucson Electric Power’s Guarantee Home Program, which offers discounts and heating and cooling price guarantees to energy-efficient houses.

The program is designed for new homes.

“We wanted to show that you could take an old house and turn it into a superefficient home,” Miller said recently during a tour of the 2,000-square-foot ranch home at 3002 E. Hawthorne St.

TEP worked with Miller throughout the renovation, said Dan Hogan, the company’s supervisor of residential new construction programs.

For new construction there are normally three inspections required for a home to qualify – for framing, insulation and airflow – but inspectors visited the Miller house an extra time, Hogan said.

The program gives a roughly 10 percent discount on electric rates for the life of the home and a guarantee from TEP that your heating and cooling costs won’t rise above a certain level for five years. That cost is custom-set for each home, Hogan said.

Miller’s isn’t the first existing home to qualify for the program, but the others required far more extensive upgrades.

“It’s the first one we didn’t strip to the studs,” Hogan said.

Though the lift was lighter than the previous attempts, getting the masonry house up to the TEP standard was not easy.

“Practically everything you see is new,” Miller said.

That includes extra insulation on the outside of the burnt adobe walls, which was then covered with a layer of plaster.

New windows ($6,000), a rooftop solar electric panel and water heater ($15,000-$20,000), insulation and new stucco ($10,000-$15,000) and a new heating and cooling system ($6,000-$8,000) are among the improvements that helped earn the TEP guarantee, Miller said.

The roof was topped with an extra 4 inches of insulation, too.

The changes were not a good investment. Miller put about $300,000 into the house and has it listed for $699,000, he said.

“I won’t even get my money out of it,” he said.

Originally, Miller thought he could make money from the renovation, which includes custom woodwork and solid cherry doors, Corian countertops and all new tile throughout.

But ultimately he simply wanted to encourage recycling on a new level, he said.

“This is the ultimate recycling. You recycle a whole house.”

Renovations that meet the Guarantee Home standards will continue to be rare, Hogan said.

“It’s just too expensive. Until it can be done much cheaper, I don’t think it’s going to be done too frequently,” he said.

“But it’s good to know it can be done, because then you can look for ways to make it economical.”

Green builder John Wesley Miller shows the tankless water heater and the blower for a high-efficiency heat pump at the home. Miller has put about $300,000 into the house.

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On the Web

TEP Guarantee Home Program: www.tep.com/Green/GuaranteeHome

It is often said that everyone has a twin somewhere in the world; what many people may not know is that the twin is likely to be located online.

Because this is not given the attention it deserves, it is often overlooked and misunderstood. Protecting and managing your digital self is often confused with taking steps to prevent identity theft.

Although taking measures to protect yourself against identity theft is important, protecting your digital self casts a broader net. This may be an oversimplification, but identity theft prevention, from an online perspective, focuses on securing passwords, account numbers and sensitive financial information. Managing your digital self should include these tasks, but it goes a step further and requires that you frequently stay abreast of the information publicly available about you.

I use the phrase “manage your digital self” because that’s all you can do – manage the information. The source of the online information about you may not necessarily be you. It can range from publicly available government records and documents to opinions written about you from friend and foe alike. Following are some tactics to successfully manage your digital self.

The Internet never closes, so neither does the opportunity for information to be uploaded about you. Something to keep in mind is that unless you catch some of it almost in the instant it appears online and have it removed, you can expect that information to long outlive you. The rate at which information is copied, backed up and stored in multiple locations online would amaze most people.

The next thing to keep in mind is that even if you don’t use the Internet frequently, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a significant amount of information about you online.

One of the first steps you want to take is to see what is out there about you. An easy way to do this is to do what’s called a vanity search. This means that you essentially Google yourself. I would suggest that you use slight variations of your name and quotation marks on both ends of your name. This will ensure that only the exact name between the quotations appears. You can also set up Google news alerts to e-mail you whenever something containing your name appears.

You also will want to hit the social networking circuit. This means MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Ning and other Web sites of that ilk. If you find information that is incorrect, you do have a recourse. Most times it involves contacting the owners of the Web site and asking them to remove it.

The problem is that by this time it is likely to have been populated in other places online. An easy solution is to use the same social networking Web sites and other Web resources to cast yourself in the light that you would like to be viewed.

Quincey Hobbs is a team member at the University of Arizona’s Center for Computing and Information Technology and an instructor at Pima Community College. Send questions to quinceyresponds @yahoo.com.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised a new era of science and technology for the nation, telling the National Academy of Sciences on Monday that he wants to devote more funds to research and development.

America has fallen behind other countries in science, Obama said.

“I believe it is not in our character, American character, to follow — but to lead. And it is time for us to lead once again. I am here today to set this goal: we will devote more than 3 percent of our gross domestic product to research and development,” Obama said in a speech at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences.

That 3 percent would amount to about $420 billion.

“We will not just meet but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race,” he said.

That pursuit of discovery a half century ago fueled the nation’s prosperity and success, Obama told the academy.

“The commitment I am making today will fuel our success for another 50 years,” he said. “This work begins with an historic commitment to basic science and applied research.”

And he set forth a wish list including solar cells as cheap as paint; green buildings that produce all the energy they consume; learning software as effective as a personal tutor; prosthetics so advanced that you could play the piano again and “an expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge about ourselves and world the around us.’

“We can do this,” Obama said to applause.

In recent years, he said, “scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas.”

He then drew chuckles, commenting: “I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions, not the other way around,” Obama said.

“At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at a moment defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree,” Obama said.

“Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been,” he said.

Obama said he plans to double the budget of key science agencies over a decade, including the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology.

He also announced the launch of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. It is a new Department of Energy organization modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, that led in development of the Internet, stealth aircraft and other technological breakthroughs.

And he said the Energy Department and the National Science Foundation will offer programs and scholarships to encourage American students to pursue careers in science, engineering and business related to clean energy.