YouTube expands movie rental service with 3,000 NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, and Warner Brothers titles.

Tumblr gets more social with share button. Meanwhile, Tumblr says today's rumored 4Chan attack was really hardware failure.

Maker’s Mark launches first TV ad campaign.

Microsoft opens a PC store in user’s home.

All Prius models will be plug-in starting 2014.

Bristol Palin lands own reality show.

IHOP launches frozen foods to be sold at Wal-Mart.Continue reading...

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock dropped by The Colbert Report to hype The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, opening next week. We'll have a review in a couple weeks as well as an interview with the director.

Nothing Spurlock said about advertising was as shocking as this billboard for AMC's zombie series The Walking Dead — on the side of a building housing a funeral parlor.

As for this weekend in product placement, we begin with Keanu Reeves in a hit — literally — by a Prius.Continue reading...

Among the many medium-term ripple effects from the disaster in Japan are the disruptions it has only begun to cause for automotive brands in the American market – and in others worldwide – as automakers cope with breaks in supply of the many components and complete vehicles made in that country.

A continuum of effects is developing. At one end are, for example, U.S. Mazda dealers, who have had to suspend orders for their vehicles built in Japan. At the other end is Ford, which can’t paint more of its F-150 trucks in the U.S. in its Tuxedo Black now because of a lack of pigment for the color that is supplied by Japan.

There’s no telling yet how all this is going to sort itself out in the availability of models for various brands in the U.S. market. Some data will emerge in the industry’s monthly sales report for March, scheduled for Friday. But this saga will be unfolding over the next several weeks and months.Continue reading...

GM sold 281 Chevrolet Volts last month, and just north of 600 of the “extended-range hybrid” vehicles so far this year. The company has to hope that none of those customers are devotees of Consumer Reports.

The April issue, the magazine's annual automotive special issue, puts Chevy's Volt on its cover — but not because it's their car of the year.Continue reading...

On its heels for more than a year, Toyota is coming out swinging today with a new advertising campaign to join with its aggressive program of sales incentives to attempt to take back some of the U.S. market share that it lost during its annus horribilis of 2010.

In addition to national spots breaking today, the brand's new “#1 for a Reason” tagline is already in evidence in local dealers' President Day spots such as the one above.Continue reading...

Over 1.8 million votes were cast to decide the plural form of Prius, and the winner is indeed ... "Prii."

American consumers appear to be warming up to Chevrolet Volt, which is mostly an electric car without being all-electric.

So now, using similar logic, General Motors has created a new brand of almost-hybrid technology called eAssist that helps the internal-combustion engine rather than taking over for it at times, as regular hybrids do. Buick already appropriated eAssist for its 2012 LaCrosse, and GM just announced that its “light-electrification” system would be available on the 2012 Buick Regal as well. The new car is on display at the Chicago Auto Show this week.Continue reading...

Toyota is on the hunt for the correct plural of Prius, as we noted last month. The brand's marketing team is inviting the public to vote on plural variations and will announce the winner on Feb. 20 at the Chicago Auto Show. 

As of this morning, Prii is in the lead as the model's plural name (with 25% of the vote — good news for the Winklevii), followed by Prius (24%), Priuses (20%), Prien (19%), and Prium (12%).

The naming contest is being promoted with a campaign dubbed Wordliness, a series of web shorts hosted by James Lipton, the inquisitive host of Bravo TV's Inside the Actors Studio.Continue reading...