More and more vehicles are being made to handle the much hyped E85 fuel but the infrastructure still hasn't caught up as a USA Today story points out. For the 6.8 million E85 compatible vehicles in the U.S., there are just 1,490 stations that offer it, with most of them in the Midwest.

In the Los Angeles area, there's only one station that serves E85 and a recent GM promotion brought drivers out in droves for specially priced E85 at 85.9 cents per gallon.

Promotions like this one have been staged around the country to raise awareness of E85, plugged as a home-grown, environmentally sound fuel. But even officials of GM, which makes the most flex-fuel vehicles that can burn E85, say they are frustrated by the slow rollout of pumps around the country.

Years ago, when I was still representing Chevrolet at auto shows, people would always ask about green vehicles and the response was we have many capable of handling E85 fuel. Unfortunately, consumers back then (and now) would respond by saying, "Great, but where I can buy it?" The answer to that question isn't much better now and that's partly due to government regulations, such as in California where permiting for vapor recovery systems has created hurdles.

M&Ms Australia has come up with a pretty clever ad campaign. They've fashioned their very own election. The five M&Ms characters each support a particular political campaign based on their personalities. Each M&M has a slogan, a poster and a five second commercial to get their platforms across.

You can also visit the election's website and get "breaking news" on your candidates progress, i.e "Blue buys bigger jet with bigger jacuzzi."

Fnac.com, France’s largest retailer of cultural and consumer electronics products, (basically equivalent to our Amazon.com), have come up with an ad campaign that borrows from the mantra that “music never dies.”

Fnac has newly introduced a vinyl section to its website. To market that, they have photographed models posing behind famous album sleeve art, making them look as if they were a continuation of the actual photograph from the album sleeve.

For a true coffee fan, there's nothing worse than a bad cup of java. On the heels of complaints about hit or miss service at Starbucks, the company has decided to close its doors Tuesday, February 26th, for a massive retraining effort.

According to The Seattle Times:

"We will have all new standards for how we create the drinks," said spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil. "They will be trained in creating the perfect shot, steaming the milk and all the pieces that come together in a drink."

More than 7,000 Starbucks locations will be shut down for the three hour sessions later this month. They start at 5:30 p.m., so coffee fans may have to forget about heading out for an after dinner espresso. But maybe they'll be able to look forward to better quality coffee down the road. Now if Starbucks could just switch back to manual espresso machines...

Hip hop performer and producer Timbaland is making history with a Verizon Wireless deal. Throughout 2008, Timbaland will be producing a mobile album, one song at a time. Each month, he'll be working with a new artist on a track and traveling the country in a mobile recording studio bus. Verizon V Cast subscribers will have access to the tracks as well as footage of the recording sessions. At the end of the year, a compilation of the songs will be available through Verizon.

Timbaland says the deal will let him reach more fans because "every place don't get a CD [but] everybody has a mobile phone." Plus, there's history to be made. "Just producing a mobile album has never been done. I'm the first to ever do it," he tells Billboard.

It's also notable because the songs will be available within days of production as opposed to the lengthy process a regular album can take.