Food trucks have been fanning out across America, as the graphic above from the National Restaurant Association shows. But they're also starting to span the globe, bringing gustatory delight to Paris and London as artisanal food trucks, such as the Cantine California food truck in Paris, dispense tacos stuffed with organic meat (and brand USA) overseas.Continue reading...

Auto-industry observers didn't have to wait long to find out what Johan de Nysschen was going to do after announcing on Friday that he was leaving the helm of Audi of America for another job, following a stellar six years of advancing the cause of the German premium brand in the U.S. market.

Today, Nissan announced that De Nysschen will become SVP of the Infiniti luxury brand worldwide. The 52-year-old De Nysschen will assume the post on July 1st and will be based at Infiniti's new global headquarters in Hong Kong.

"We have exciting and ambitious plans for improving the Infiniti brand including introducing new models in all markets where premium customer demand exists," stated De Nysschen's new boss, Nissan EVP Andy Palmer. The choice of De Nysschen to head the Infiniti brand is a savvy move.

Nissan's luxury marque has been faring OK over the last few years and got through the supply disruptions of last year in better shape than Toyota's Lexus or Honda's Acura brands. Infiniti introduced the new JX seven-passenger SUV this year, which has gotten off to a solid start, and Inifniti sales overall in the U.S. market are about 7 percent above a year earlier.Continue reading...

GM pressures TV networks for discounts in upfront.

Ducati is booming in North America.

Facebook sees future in India, and explores access for under-13-year-olds as fallout from botched IPO continues.

Adidas sues Merrell over three-stripe design.

Apple/Motorola patent trial will feature Steve Jobs 'testimony.'

Big Tobacco goes to war in California.

BlackBerry-maker RIM victim of own 'identity crisis' (at least it's still cool with South African youths).Continue reading...

Hanes underwear has been serving the public’s undergarment needs since 1901 so it’s been through a few changes over the years. This company has rode through strong economies and plenty of tough ones. Tough is one way to define the company’s first quarter, during which it lost $26.8 million and revenue went down 3 percent.

Now Hanes is about to adapt again and make a number of changes. For one, HanesBrands is pulling out of Europe altogether, thanks to the economic instability and Eurozone crisis. It’s also getting out of the private-label biz in America. Not only that, any men who wear Hanes won’t have to deal with those itchy tags anymore. The North Carolina-based company is going entirely tagless. Who said you couldn’t make a good pair of underwear better?Continue reading...

‘It’s all about you!’ is the rallying cry for the new UEFA.com website, giving fans one-stop shopping for all things UEFA EURO 2012, delivering coverage of the upcoming Union of European Football Associations tournament in 12 languages and confirming the official 23-player squad lists.

Content for all UEFA digital/mobile platforms and publications for more than 160 journalists, correspondents, editors, photographers, coordinators, web producers, translators and interpreters working from eight host cities, combines with innovative features for the final tournament, kicking off June 8, including:

• Customisable MatchCentre - expert commentary, live photos and tweets, videos, polls, statistics, lineups and heat maps and a Tournament Map as an interactive guide to EURO.
• Player Browser - users can compare and contrast the 16 squads and browse the editorial and data profiles of all 368 players
• Facebook, Foursquare, Google+, YouTube and Twitter links, and fans can tweet questions in the continuing #Ask feature that has featured Xavi Hernández, Steve McManaman and Pierluigi Collina.

The International Broadcast Centre in Warsaw is the editorial, coordination and production hub, coordinating with UEFA HB and with ICT for hosting and live applications. The French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish sites are managed from the IBC and produced and monitored at respective agencies in Lyon, Munich, Milan, Lisbon, Riga and Madrid. The Chinese, Japanese and Korean sites will be taking the finals to Asian markets.Continue reading...

Water bottles have gotten a lot of bad press in recent years. Plenty of those plastics don’t get sent on for recycling and instead take up room at landfills. And there’s some debate about just how healthy it is to be drinking your water from plastic, anyway.

So enterprising folks have been finding plenty of good uses for old water bottles, and one of them has apparently been hired by Nike. The footwear giant has created new home and away uniforms for FC Barcelona that use recycled water bottles for the material. Each set of shirt and shorts uses up to 13 recycled plastic water bottles, according to a press release from Nike.Continue reading...

BMW this week launched a concept called Future Retail with the grand opening of its first new BMW Brand Store in a luxe pocket of metropolitan Paris this week. It also signalled that the brand is stepping up investments in its dealers and retail network to better equip them to win BMW's worldwide fight with Audi for luxury-vehicle sales leadership — and in the United States, with Mercedes-Benz for upscale-segment supremacy.

The Brand Store aims to be more than 'just' a brand experience or halo outlet. Much more important to BMW strategically will be how it executes the Future Retail concept in its dealerships worldwide. Among other things, the brand plans to increase the number of contact points with customers and prospects, increase the services and benefits offered in its retail channels, and enhance the retail experience "at all touch points."Continue reading...

Facebook may feel it has addressed privacy time and time again during its brief history, including recently addressing concerns about app privacy with the launch of Timeline.

But on the eve of its historic $96 billion (up to $104 billion) initial public offering, when it is expected to sell shares on NASDAQ starting Friday, Chief Privacy Officer for Policy Erin Egan hosted a live event today concerning the latest changes to its privacy policy in response to an audit by the Irish government.Continue reading...