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Tesla Motors on Wednesday is expected to announce a planned $250 million investment in a facility in San Jose, Calif., to manufacture its Model S all-electric luxury sedan.

To pay for the operation, Tesla intends to raise $100 million in a series E round, which the company plans to announce in the coming months, according to the Tesla representative. It also expects to get a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy worth $150 million, she said.

People eager to buy a Tesla Roadster now can get on a waiting list, but the company has not started a waiting list for the Model S.

The San Jose operation will house a factory, research, and development center, and become Tesla corporate headquarters, the representative said.

The plant will be capable of turning out 15,000 Model S sedans a year, which can be ramped up to 30,000 units, she added.

(Credit:
Tesla Motors)

The Tesla Roadster, a $109,000 all-electric sports car which began shipping earlier this year, is made at a Lotus plant in the U.K.

The Tesla Roadster

The city of San Jose is expected on Wednesday to list the incentives it offered Tesla to locate its headquarters there.

The company plans to break ground on the installation next summer and begin to deliver
cars in late 2010, a company representative said Tuesday. It has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday to detail the move.

The Model S will be a five-person luxury car with a range of 240 miles per battery charge. The projected cost is about $60,000.

On-demand indexing lets Google Site Search customers tell the search engine when to update its index. (Click to enlarge.)

Site Search costs $100 a year for an company with up to 5,000 Web pages and 250,000 searches per year, with prices gradualling rising to $2,250 a year for up to 300,000 pages and 500,000 queries per year. Beyond that, customers have to set up a custom relationship with Google.

(Credit:
Google)

Google has launched a feature called On-Demand Indexing that lets customers of its Google Site Search service more rapidly include new pages in search results.

With Site Search, Google indexes customers’ publicly available Web sites and powers a search engine on those customers’ sites. With the new option, customers get an “index now” button that will direct Google to index specific pages so they’ll be available in search results within hours, Google said Thursday.

The move extends the greater customer control Google began offering in June with Site Search. To see how it works, check the screenshot below, in particular the “index now” button at the bottom.

Before we all start with the “who cares,” I’ve found myself liking Twitter more and more, as I’m distracted by other things and can’t write long blog posts. IM was my preferred way to use Twitter, which bums me out personally, but it also limits the ability for the service to become the “communication utility” the founders want it to be:

Getting adoption for a product is very difficult. Once you get users addicted, and they start to form a community, you want them to stay with you. The more ways you keep them involved, the more likely you are to make money somewhere down the line.

While I don’t know the statistics surrounding how users interacted with the system (through technologies such as SMS texting, IM, and the Web), I have to think that IM would offer the biggest possibility of more adoption–let’s say integrated with something like Adium, as well as a business model layering on top of existing services or selling ads (or buying your way out of ads) as a chance to make money.

Based on our analysis, the cost-to-benefit for IM for the most users is not as high as some other things–so it will be a while before we tackle it. Like any budget (in this case, the budget of our limited engineering time), tough calls need to be made–especially in these times. And while we don’t expect everyone to agree with this decision, we at least want to be straightforward with you.

You can still find me at daveofdoom on Twitter.

Tech journalist Steve Gillmor noted that a recent Twitter status post says the company isn’t bringing instant-message posting back anytime soon.

Also consider the enterprise aspect; most enterprises allow some kind of IM usage, even if it’s an internal-only client. Adoption possibilities in this space are also limited by the dropping of IM support. Or, maybe IM will get fixed for the enterprise, which will ostensibly pay for the service, but not for the casual user?

To summarize, we want to bring IM back. We intend to bring IM back. But we’ve officially moved it from our Things That are Broken list to our Things We Want to Build list.

Click here for more news on Windows 7.

Since Monday, I have been running a prebeta copy of Windows 7, the next operating system from Microsoft.

I mentioned this feature to one major security vendor, which responded by saying it couldn’t imagine running its product side by side with Windows Firewall. Also, if Microsoft had a compelling component in its firewall, this vendor said it would just build its own version, not use Microsoft’s.

Windows 7 extends BitLocker drive encryption support to removable storage devices, such as flash memory drives and portable hard drives. This means that users can keep sensitive data on all of their USB storage devices.

In Windows 7, users can adjust consent prompt behavior using a slider control, if they have administrative privileges. Microsoft says they’ll still be protected against malicious software, even if they never see another alert. I’m wondering if that’s actually a bad idea: if people never see an alert, they might think nothing bad ever happens to their computer. We lose an element of user education.

In Windows 7, the Windows Security Center will be replaced with the Windows Action Center

This information could change, as Microsoft nears the final build. Microsoft still expects to ship Windows 7 “within three years of Windows Vista,” which means that it could be available sometime before January 2010.

Biometrics enhancements include easier reader configurations, allowing users to manage the fingerprint data stored on the computer and control how they log on to Windows 7.

(Credit:
Robert Vamosi/CNET Networks; Microsoft)

Gone is the Security Center, introduced in Windows XP SP2. Instead, there will be an “Action Center” that incorporates alerts from 10 existing Windows features: Security Center; Problem, Reports, and Solutions; Windows Defender; Windows
Update; Diagnostics; Network Access Protection; Backup and Restore; Recovery; and User Account Control.

At first glance, build 6801 of Windows 7 appears very much like Windows Vista; that’s because enhancements to the look and feel part of the operating system typically come late in the development process. Right now, the core programming is being set, and there are already some changes in how
Windows 7 will handle computer security.

Other security features have been tweaked in the current build of the next Windows operating system. Scrollbars were removed in the configuration settings screen, as has the Software Explorer feature, and real-time protection in Windows 7 has been improved to reduce the impact on overall system performance.

Returning from Windows Vista are Kernel Patch Protection, Service Hardening, Data Execution Prevention, Address Space Layout Randomization, and Mandatory Integrity Levels.

And System Restore includes a list of programs that will be removed or added, providing users with more information before they choose which restore point to use. Restore points are also available in backups, providing a larger list to choose from, over a longer period of time.

Changes to the User Account Control (UAC) may raise an eyebrow or two. While vastly unpopular in Windows Vista, the dialog boxes that pop up whenever a user tries to install new software, among other reasons, served a purpose.

Windows 7, which Microsoft unveiled at its PDC 2008 event this week, also introduces something called the Windows Filtering Platform (WFP). The idea is that third parties can take advantage of aspects of the Microsoft Windows Firewall in their own products. Microsoft says “third-party products also can selectively turn parts of the Windows Firewall on or off, enabling you to choose which software firewall you want to use and have it coexist with Windows Firewall.”

Back then gas was a little over $1.50 a gallon.

(Credit:
AOL Inc.)

Unlike the changes in oil prices, those four years have amounted to little more than what was offered in previous iterations of the program, or Apple’s iChat application which comes pre-installed in every Mac computer. In the new version users can change emoticon sets and tweak background chat wallpapers–all things that you can’t do with the current version of iChat. There’s also tabbed browsing and contact search which the previous version did not have. Otherwise, it’s largely playing catch-up to the PC version, which has received the most attention and is currently on version 6.8.

Also worth noting is how much the market has changed since the latest Mac release. iChat and third-party applications like Adium, Digsby, and Pidgin have the upper hand with compatibility for other protocols. AIM for Mac is currently limited to AOL and Yahoo contacts, while the others support things like Jabber, ICQ, and XMPP. In a more frequently fragmented market, with newcomers like Facebook and Google, these open platforms simply end up being more appealing.

[via Macrumors and Ars]

AIM for Mac looks quite similar to iChat, although without the audio and video logos to let you know who is ready for media chatting.

AOL on Monday quietly released a brand-new version of its instant-messenger application for
Mac users. Called “AIM for Mac beta 1,” it’s a replacement for version 4.7, which has remained untouched since February 2004.

Back in mid-November, one source familiar with Yahoo’s thinking noted the company sought:

And prior to his role as Vodafone CEO, Sarin had previously served a brief stint of less than one year as CEO of InfoSpace in 2000 to 2001. He resigned due to the rigors of commuting between InfoSpace’s offices in Washington state and his family’s home in the Bay Area, the company said at the time.

The company expects to come up with a pool of about a dozen candidates and settle on one within six months, though there’s no hard deadline.

Yahoo’s search for a new CEO is narrowing, with former Vodafone Group chief Arun Sarin reportedly on the list, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

And earlier this year, Sarin delivered a keynote speech at
CTIA, where he touted the increasingly popular notion of the mobile Internet.

For Yahoo, which has seen its search market share heavily eroded over the years by Google and faces investor wrath for failing to seal a buyout deal with Microsoft at $33 a share, this CEO search could very well be one of its most important search projects to date.

Sarin apparently has a number of the qualities that Yahoo is seeking in a CEO.

Someone with prior CEO experience who’s got both operational and strategic skills, someone experienced in technology, and somebody energetic and young–which apparently means in his or her 40s or 50s.

Yahoo has authorized reference checks for a few candidates in order to narrow the field even further so the informal search committee can make a recommendation to the board of directors, according to the report.

Sarin, 54, retired from Vodafone Group in May, after serving approximately five years as CEO of the European telecommunications giant. While at Vodafone, Sarin was credited with realigning the company’s focus on emerging markets, such as India.

And while the CEO selection process has moved at a rapid clip since co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang announced in mid-November he would step down as soon as a replacement is found, the process could very well spill into the New Year, the Journal noted.

Bojam can be thought of as the Wikipedia of music-creation. Musicians from around the world can add and tweak compilations piecemeal for profit or for play. The online mixer lets musicians from anywhere lay down tracks, produce, and distribute music asynchronously. It’s a cool concept, but the input and output quality had better be flawless if it’s going to keep the interest of talented professionals.

Sharing your music, videos, and opinions with other people online is the drive of many Web companies, each striving to make experiences more interactive, and to bridge the gap between the anonymous Web and face-to-face reality. Three companies peddling their wares Thursday afternoon at Plug and Play’s Fall 2008 Expo in Sunnyvale, Calif., are taking online music-making, video conferencing, and content-sharing a step further.

Koollage’s Web app lets you arrange your digital media–photos, video, songs, and text–into mini Web sites, then shrink them into small form factors for embedding onto social networking profiles and for playing on mobile phones. The “Pods,” as Koollage calls them (it stands for packages on demand) are customizable, and could therefore become a popular way for the MySpace generation to produce and share their stylized media.

ViVu is a video conferencing tool that lets viewers chime in to live conferences or Internet shows using their own Web cameras. Instead of watching the panelist or host’s face while listening to a caller’s question, ViVu puts the spotlight on the audience member–a good way for viewers to connect with the host and with each other. A queuing system lets producers screen, switch, and queue callers. They can also pull the plug in cases of abuse. I could see this adding spice and inspiration to shows like CNET’s own live tech program.