Regional General Motors dealer ad groups will once again pick their own creative or media agencies in a "back-to-the-future scenario," as Brent Dewar, vp-field sales, service and parts for GM in North America, describes it. GM's goal is more effective advertising at the local level. GM eliminated dealer ad groups in 1999 only to re-form them in 2000. While participation was voluntary, the local marketing groups, or LMGs, had to use GM's national agencies and the automaker controlled the accounts. Under the new system, the agencies will report to the dealer groups--a move that should give the retailers more …

A year after its debut, Nintendo's popular videogame console Wii remains a hard product to obtain. While Nintendo's problem illustrates how tough it is for companies to try to predict demand for a product, it also is emblematic of the Japanese company's native caution. Nintendo said earlier this year that it is making its best efforts to ramp up manufacturing. Still, this holiday season is seeing a repeat of last year's Wii frenzy, including lines of shoppers forming outside stores and bidding battles for the consoles on eBay. The frustration of U.S. shoppers could become a problem for …

Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe says robotics--a natural extension of the automaker's use of robots in manufacturing--will be a core business for the Japanese automaker in coming years. Toyota will test out its robots at hospitals, company-related facilities and other places starting next year, he says, and hopes to put what it calls "partner robots" to real use by 2010. At a demonstration yesterday, a 5-foot-tall, all-white robot played a pretty solid "Pomp and Circumstance" on the violin, using its mechanical fingers to press the strings correctly and bowing with its other arm. Watanabe also presented a vision of the …

Coke is introducing its online island within a larger virtual world site called there.com where visitors create an avatar to shop for Coca-Cola products. At CC Metro--the name of the island--visitors can shop and dance at the Coca-Cola diner, visit a movie theater to watch short films and soar around on a hoverboard like the one in the 1989 movie, "Back to the Future Part II." The company that operates there.com, Makena Technologies, uses software to censor user postings for foul language and employs a team of people to filter out content that might infringe on copyrights …

BetaBlue, a JetBlue airliner equipped to provide free in-flight email and instant-messaging services, will take off Tuesday on the first flight of a projected months-long test to solicit passenger feedback on a new Wi-Fi system. If all goes well, the nation's No. 8 airline by traffic says it hopes to install Wi-Fi on its entire fleet. JetBlue passengers who have Wi-Fi-enabled laptops and Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Messenger accounts will be able send and receive messages with friends on the ground. Passengers who have new Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry smartphones will be able to access their BlackBerry email and …