California,United States

I just thought this was kind of funny: A boutique finance firm in California called Solutions 4 Solar Finance (S4SF) is offering a free Lexus RX 400h hybrid SUV… with an investment of $1 million. But it’s a $50,000 value! And they are promising an 8-13% return on investment!

I just thought this was kind of funny: A boutique finance firm in California called Solutions 4 Solar Finance (S4SF) is offering a free Lexus RX 400h hybrid SUV… with an investment of $1 million. But it’s a $50,000 value! And they are promising an 8-13% return on investment!

Just a few years ago, 52 inch televisions didn't exist. Now, thanks to dozens of innovations, they're almost boring, and not even that expensive. Oddly enough, they're more efficient than the old CRT televisions...per square inch. The bad news is, as we've been exponentially increasing the square-footage of our televisions, so have we been exponentially increasing their energy use.

As the much-anticipated Macworld Conference & Expo begins, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is putting rumors of his health to rest. In a letter addressed to the Apple community, Jobs said he is still in charge and will be the first to inform Apple's board if his health should get in the way of running the Cupertino, Calif.-based company.

Jobs posted the letter after speculation about his health ran rampant following a December announcement that he would not keynote Apple's last appearance at Macworld. Vice President Philip Schiller will deliver this year's keynote on Tuesday.

Apple secured a larger piece of the operating-system pie in December. Mac OS X, which hasn't been a threat to Microsoft's Windows operating systems in the past, is gaining traction.

The market share for Mac OS X rose nearly 10 percent last month, according to Net Applications, a research company based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., which tracts Internet browsers and operating systems.

In December, Apple's Mac OS X had 9.63 percent of the market. While that's not great in comparison to Microsoft's 88.68 percent, it's increasing.

The latest data from Net Applications indicates that Internet Explorer lost market share in December to browsers from Mozilla and Apple.

According to the Web metrics provider, Microsoft's browser market share has declined by more than six percent since February 2008. The browser held a 68.15 percent market share in December -- its lowest in years.

By contrast, Mozilla Firefox's market share rose one-half of a percentage point from November and has climbed more than four percent since February to reach 21.34 percent in December.

Following a recent report that an algorithm for creating secure Web-site certificates could be vulnerable, VeriSign has announced it will no longer use the algorithm.

On Wednesday, the provider of Internet trust assurances said it was transitioning from MD5 to the SHA-1 algorithm for its new RapidSSL brand certificates. It also pledged to reissue any RapidSSL certificates created with MD5, using SHA-1.

Fake Certificates in Three Days

It can sometimes be a little unclear (especially first day of a new year) how the previous year changed the world. No one guessed in 1946 that the Magnetron Spencer Percy was developing for use in a RADAR system (and that subsequently melted a candy bar in his pocket) would one day become the microwave oven. But I like to think that we can make some pretty good guesses about which of this year's innovations are going to be with us, and changing our world, for a good long time.

California is now making car buyers even more aware of how their car affects the environment in 2009. All new car models will bear an Environmental Performance sticker that rates the car based on smog and global warming emissions.

California cars have carried the smog rating since 1998, but the new global warming rating is part of a bill that was signed into law in 2005. With both ratings, the higher the score on a scale of 1 to 10, the more environmentally friendly the car.

British retailer Tesco entered the U.S. market only last year but already it has managed to put Wal-Mart, the world's No. 1 retailer, on the defensive. Tesco fired the first salvo, in a battle that retailing analysts expect will intensify, by launching Fresh & Easy, a chain of 10,000-square-foot convenience stores, in cities across California, Nevada, and Arizona in November 2007. Eleven months later, Wal-Mart returned fire, taking on Tesco in Arizona with the debut of the similar-size Marketside, its first new store format in a decade.