Rob Safuto

In October, Mitsubishi power systems announced it would bring 400 new jobs to Fort Smith with a new $100 million wind turbine plant. Now, the U.S. International Trade Commission may rule against that move. It's because of an ongoing battle between two companies. Bloomberg News reported that General Electric, Mitsubishi's top competitor, is trying to block the plant. - Rob Safuto

Solyndra, a Fremont solar-panel maker that received a $535 million federal loan guarantee in March to build a massive new factory, filed Friday for a $300 million initial public stock offering, one of the largest such offerings in the past few years. - Rob Safuto

"Interesting. I wrote a post just yesterday about 3rd party commenting and characterized IntenseDebate as the dark horse after Disqus and Echo. http://awakenedvoice.com/lPK I'll be interested to see how your experience with IntenseDebate shapes up compared to Echo." - Rob Safuto

When tiny Fisker Automotive Inc. hit a financing glitch last year, threatening its plan to build a fancy gasoline-electric hybrid car in Finland, it turned to the U.S. Department of Energy. The DOE had a bolder idea. Why not also step up the company's plans to develop a less-expensive model, and assemble it in a closed U.S. auto plant? - Rob Safuto

Vestas Wind Systems, which committed to building four factories in Colorado, is going to furlough the 500 workers at its Windsor plant, company officials said Monday. The furloughs will take place in the first half of 2010, said Andrew Longeteig, a spokesman for Copenhagen-based Vestas. The length of the furloughs was not disclosed. - Rob Safuto

"It looks great Mark but here's the problem. Why invest any time in the service if the chances are that it won't make it? Seriously. We've seen FriendFeed, which was well capitalized and well staffed, basically get folded into Facebook because they weren't gaining mainstream adoption. And no matter what FriendFeed may say the fact is that they weren't getting the traffic to justify continuing as a free service. And now the traffic over there is steadily declining. Storytlr was a very promising, and very similar, service to Flavors.me and they're shutting down at the end of the year. So what I need to know from new services before I put in the time setting it up, and tweaking it, and telling others about it is how they plan to survive the first couple of years. It sounds like a harsh assessment I know but we've seen enough social services come and go to realize that most aren't worth the investment of time. And with so many services (Tumblr, Posterous, Netvibes and Facebook to name some..." - Rob Safuto

Is saving $40,000 at the showroom enough to get drivers behind the wheel of an electric car? With a program in the works to add easy access to charging stations, Denmark is about to find out. - Rob Safuto

New York Power Authority (NYPA) President and Chief Executive Officer Richard M. Kessel announced today the release of a request for proposals (RFP) for the development of offshore wind power projects in the New York State waters of Lake Erie and/or Lake Ontario. Not only will this represent the first initiative in the Great Lakes, it will be the first wind power development of any kind in a fresh water body in the nation. - Rob Safuto