Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are making their case on the Web as well as in Congress. The Big Three have launched campaigns making their individual cases for a federal bailout on several Web sites, including Google and its YouTube video site, blogs, Facebook and Twitter, Emily Steel reports. Ford last week placed a video on YouTube featuring CEO Alan Mulally and launched a Web site, TheFordStory.com, that differentiates itself from GM and Chrysler. A Google search for such terms as "auto bailout," and "cash flow" brings up a link to the site. The company also …

Honda Motor is withdrawing from all Formula One racing activities, making 2008 its last season for participation. Honda president Takeo Fukui made the announcement himself at a press conference that the BBC calls "emotional." "Honda must protect its core business activities and secure the long term as widespread uncertainties in the economics around the globe continue to mount," Fukui says. The company, which spent more than £300m a year on F1, says it will also no longer supply the sport with engines. It ran its cars with minimal advertising, meaning more funding had to come from its Japanese parent …

Starbucks executives, speaking at an analyst day in New York yesterday, warned that its results had not hit a bottom in the prior quarter, as they previously suggested would happen. CEO Howard Schultz noted that consumer spending patterns were erratic and said the holiday selling environment was tough. "We do not expect to meet current consensus estimates for this quarter," said Starbucks CFO Troy Alstead. Starbucks is more focused than ever before on cutting costs "out of necessity," Alstead said. It expects to save $200 million from cost cuts this year by making in-store labor more efficient, streamlining its …

Blogger Chris Abraham writes about a personal apology emailed to him by B. Bonin Bough, director-social and emerging media at PepsiCo, in response to a post on Twitter about the Pepsi ads that show a calorie committing suicide. "I saw your tweet and I just wanted to make sure I responded personally," Bough writes. "We agree this creative is totally inappropriate; we apologize and please know it won't run again .... My best friend committed suicide and this is a topic very close to my heart. So again I offer my deepest apologies. …

My wife attended a speech given last night by Jeffrey Zaslow, the co-author of Professor Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture." www.thelastlecture.com. Zaslow said that the initial 400,000 print run for the book was sold out by noon of its first day on the shelves. Sales, as you no doubt know, were largely driven by the video of Pausch's lecture -- "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" -- which was given after he learned he had pancreatic cancer. My wife's story left me feeling very good about how good ideas can catch fire and spread virally nowadays. And even sell books. …

If you're as much of a sucker for industrial history as I am, you'll love Michael Schrage's piece about the importance of defining the rules of the game for new technologies. He begins by recounting how James Watt not only invented the steam engine but also the term horsepower. It became the standard measure of what the newfangled contraptions could do, making it easier to make the sale to factory owners whose prior frame of reference was, quite literally, the power of horses. Watt's "remarkably persuasive marketing metric" has long outlived any of his engines, Schrage points out. …

I knew business was real bad in the luxury segment when an acquaintance of mine who sells Lamborghinis and the like told me that his favorite customers were journalists because they had such fascinating stories to tell. Let's ignore the fact that 99 and 44/100% of journalists don't have two $25,000 notes to rub together for a Lexus, no less a Lamborghini. When times are flush, the sellers of luxury goods don't have to resort to the lavish parties that Alana Semuels describes as becoming de rigueur for pushing top-end goods on the coast. But, this being L.A., the …