The Panamera is the storied automaker's fourth model, and it comes on the heels of the Cayman's debut in 2006 and the Cayenne SUV that appeared in 2002. There's a lot riding on it. Beyond providing a toehold in the luxury GT market, Porsche hopes the car will boost sales that have stagnated at about 100,000 vehicles annually. With the Cayenne accounting for nearly half of all Porsches sold, it's clear there is a market for a Porsche with room for the kids and a set of golf clubs.

Porsche says the Panamera "follows the design philosophy refined over decades on the 911 and successfully implemented on the Boxster, Cayman and Cayenne." Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we'll tell you about the hardware and let you sound off on the design.

Porsche is positioning the Panamera as a proper GT, so the engine is up front and it drives the rear wheels (although all-wheel drive will be an option). Power comes from a V6 or V8 engine and flows through a six-speed manual transmission or Porsche's new seven-speed dual clutch PDK (don't ask, because you won't be able to say it anyway) gearbox. Output starts at 300 horsepower and goes up from there. Go nuts with the turbo'd V8 you're looking at 500 ponies.

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US use of TV, the internet and mobile — the so-called "three screens" — continues to increase across the board.

In each month during Q3 2008, the average American watched approximately 142 hours of TV, viewed three hours of mobile video, and went online for 27 hours, according to research from The Nielsen Company, reports MarketingCharts.

The "A2/M2 Three Screen Report," which details key findings from the research, also states that the average time a US home used a TV set during the 2007-08 TV season was 8 hours and 18 minutes per day, a record high since Nielsen started measuring television in the 1950s.

With regard to specific age groups, users age 65+ watch the most TV each month, while those age 35-44 use the internet most.

"Americans keep finding more time to spend with the three screens," said Susan Whiting, vice chairperson for The Nielsen Company, referring to the fact that many of the three-screen-watching activities were found to be taking place at the same time. "TV use is at an all-time high, yet people are also using the Internet more often - 31% of which is happening simultaneously."

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If Google delivers useless search results, just erase them and you won't see them again.

That's possible under a new system Google Inc. unveiled Thursday. Hoping to give its search engine a more personal touch, Google now lets users reshuffle results so their favorite Web sites get top billing and disliked destinations get discarded the next time they enter the same request.

It marks the first time that the Internet's most popular search engine has allowed its audience to alter the order of search results.

Although the revisions won't affect Google's closely guarded formulas for ranking Web sites, the Mountain View-based company isn't ruling out eventually tapping into collective wisdom of the crowds to tweak its Internet-searching algorithms.

For now, Google simply wants to make specific sets of results more useful to each individual that comes to its search engine, said Marissa Mayer, who oversees the company's search products. Users will have to have a personal login to take advantage of the editing feature.

"It should make the search results more dynamic," she said.

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By Gabriel Madway

Recognizing the limits of traditional advertising, established technology companies are diving headlong into the sometimes chaotic landscape of social media to promote their products.

Companies ranging from PC maker Dell Inc to storage equipment maker NetApp Inc are increasingly turning to outside blogs, viral videos and websites such as FaceBook, Twitter, FriendFeed and Digg -- and their tens of millions of users -- to reach consumers.

These social networking sites harness the age-old power of the word-of-mouth recommendation and can be potent marketing tools. If nothing else, they demand a higher level of consumer engagement than conventional ads.

"This is 180 degrees from that sort of advertising," said Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer. "Having a conversation with them (consumers) is a very new skill."

For tech companies with big marketing budgets, the shift to social media is an implicit acknowledgment that television and print are not necessarily the most effective ways to reach buyers, particularly younger ones.

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