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Good news today for General Motors: it generated its highest annual profit ever in 2011. That’s $7.6 billion. and yes, you read that first sentence right: highest annual profit ever. Higher than when GM owned half the U.S. market. Higher than when it was the largest industrial concern on the planet.

This is remarkable for two reasons, one obvious, one not. First the obvious: three years ago, GM had to be bailed out by the taxpayer before entering bankruptcy. it was under fierce attack in North America from Toyota and others. The future looked, if not completely dim, then not exactly luminous.

Now the not-obvious. most of GM’s 2011 profit came from North America. some analysts have pointed to this as a problem and highlighted GM’s struggles with its main European division, Opel, which it decided to hold on to rather than sell, post-Chapter 11. (Other observers, notably Slate’s Matt Yglesias, have complained that all the rah-rah around GM suggests that America is still too close to the auto-industrial business model that built the country in the 20th century.)

However, that’s throwing cold water on GM needlessly. The fact that it made nearly $8 billion in the U.S., while maintaining an 18-20 percent market share, is stunning. North America is the toughest auto market there is. While in China or South America GM might be facing off against Volkswagen or Fiat, and in Europe against the Germans and Ford, at home it has to do battle with EVERYBODY.

Ford and Chrysler. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, and Subaru. Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen, and Audi. Hyundai and Kia. Even Fiat is back. Making money against that level of competition is a brutal undertaking.

And yet GM has done it, consistently now. The big question is: will this result finally move the needle on the company’s stock, which has been languishing at around $25 per share, and enable the U.S. Treasury to sell its remaining equity stake in the New General. Ideally, GM needs to go to $50 for that to happen. and that’s at long last within the realm of possibility for 2012.

Follow Matthew DeBord and the DeBord Report on Twitter.

Tagged: nissan, north america, ford, toyota, audi, honda, chrysler, general motors, bmw, mercedes

<a href="http://www.scpr.org/blogs/economy/2012/02/16/4704/gm-posts-record-2011-most-coming-toughest-auto-mar/tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.scpr.org/blogs/economy/2012/02/16/4704/gm-posts-record-2011-most-coming-toughest-auto-mar/Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:59:30 GMT”>GM posts record 2011 profit, with most coming from toughest auto market

What they do: LinkedIn is one of the premier professional social networks. Users create profiles that list business skills and professional accomplishments, and then add trusted business world contacts to connect with colleagues, previous co-workers, business peers, etc. LinkedIn also offers paid accounts, which adds more social networking tools to let users expand their network beyond just the people they know personally.

Why you should buy: LinkedIn is used to find and keep in touch with clients, service providers and experts. the site also lets users search for jobs and gain the insider connections that make getting a job easier.

-Ads can be targeted by industry, type of job, user seniority, company size, geography, number of connections and gender.

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Contact:http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=advertising_contacthttp://site.www.adbrite.com/mb/commerce/purchase_form.php?other_product_id=17036

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<a href="http://www.adotas.com/2012/02/video-the-future-of-engagement-looks-at-audis-solongvampires-campaign/tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.adotas.com/2012/02/video-the-future-of-engagement-looks-at-audis-solongvampires-campaign/Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:26:00 GMT”>LinkedIn

BMW is the first automaker to integrate an online music selection service into a production car.

(Credit:James Martin/CNET)

MyiPhone, with 8GB of memory, can hold about 1,700 tracks. A BMW’s internal hard drive has room for almost 3,000 tracks. Now, BMW’s new Mog integration puts 14 million tracks at a driver’s fingertips.

I sat in the driver’s seat of a 2012 BMW 650i, with Robert Passaro, the head of BMW’s App Center, in the passenger seat. But we weren’t going anywhere. Our entire focus was on the stereo.

Passaro slotted aniPhone 4S into the BMW’s cradle, nestled in the console compartment. Tapping the Mog icon on the phone, the app launched, but showed a custom graphic with the BMW logo instead of the standard Mog iPhone interface.

On the wide, 10.2-inch LCD mounted in the 650i’s dashboard, a Mog entry asserted itself among the list of onboard audio sources. with thecar‘s iDrive controller, I selected it and was treated to a screen showing cover art for the current track, along with a set of icons on the left for search, track skipping, marking a track as a favorite, and reviewing the current playlist. The icons of this screen were all arranged in the familiar BMW iDrive format.

BMW integrated the Mog app with its latest cars late last year, making it the first automaker to integrate an online, on-demand music selection service. Many automakers have or are starting to integrate Pandora, but that service uses a radio paradigm. Similar to Rhapsody and Spotify, Mog lets you pick specific artists and albums.

Using iDrive, I chose the search option and was given the options of search for an artist, album, or specific song. I was pleased to see this particular screen, because I’ve long complained about BMW’s standard iPod integration, which forces you to go through a set of filters to dig through your music library. The type of search in the Mog interface made much more sense.

Selecting artist search, another screen came up showing BMW’s standard rotary letter selector. I inwardly groaned, as it is very tedious turning the dial around to find each letter. It is actually worse than the old rotary phones, as those only had nine digits. But as I began selecting the letters in the artist name Dr. Dog, a list on the right of the screen immediately began to populate with suggestions. By the time I had entered D and R, Dr. Dog appeared on the list. that wasn’t so bad after all.

Once I had a track queued up, Passaro pointed me to the Options menu, where I was able to tell Mog whether to continue playing every song it could find from Dr. Dog, or mix in tracks from what it thinks are similar artists. The similar artists option makes it a more Pandora-like stream, so I wouldn’t be forced to search for a new artist when I got bored with Dr. Dog.

Another icon, which I think is supposed to represent books on a shelf, led to other Mog music lists, such as Editors’ Picks and new Releases. both of these were welcome for exploring new music, especially when I could not think of a particular artist I wanted to hear.

Spending a little time driving around and listening to the Mog stream, I was not all that impressed with the audio quality. I switched back and forth between music stored on an iPhone and the Mog stream, and the latter was noticeably inferior. Mog streams music in AAC format at 64kbps to the phone by default, which is just enough to be listenable. The high quality of the stereo system in the 650i probably made the compression more obvious.

When using Mog’s Web interface on a computer, the music is streamed at 320Kbps. There is a setting on the iPhone app to switch to the higher bit rate, but even 64Kbps would challenge most 2GB data caps for a heavy listener.

For now, BMW only supports Mog and Pandora integration on the iPhone, although the company is working on Android integration. and the system will only work in BMW models that have been updated to read music digitally off an iPhone.

<a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-57367624-48/take-a-tour-of-bmws-new-mog-online-music-system/tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-57367624-48/take-a-tour-of-bmws-new-mog-online-music-system/Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:02:45 GMT”>Take a tour of BMW’s new Mog online music system

According to Autospies.com, Chattanooga has been scratched from the list of possible locations to build a new manufacturing plant for Audi.

Autospies.com reports that Audi has given the green light to its first vehicle-assembly plant in North America; it’s just a matter of when and where, confirms a top U.S. official.

Chattanooga, home to parent Volkswagen’s new Passat plant and a onetime front-runner site for an Audi facility, appears to have been scratched from the list, while Mexico is beginning to loom large.

Supplier sources told WardsAuto in November that Audi was zeroing in on Mexico as its chosen locale, and CEO Rupert Stadler cites that country’s labor flexibility and lower-wage advantages in a Jan. 8 interview with a German newspaper.

According to the same website, Volkswagen has overtaken Toyota to become the second-largest automaker in the world, after reporting a full-year 2011 sales figure of 8.16 million vehicles.

Volkswagen is aiming to hit 10 million annual sales by 2018, and wants to overtake 2011 top-seller General Motors to gain the number one position.

<a href="http://www.newschannel9.com/news/autospies-1008166-audi-plant.htmltag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.newschannel9.com/news/autospies-1008166-audi-plant.htmlMon, 16 Jan 2012 17:49:50 GMT”>Autospies Says Chattanooga Scratched from Audi List

It has been revealed that the perpetrator of the recent horror massacre in Oslo may have been influenced by a right-wing South African blog, reports online publisher News24.

It has come to light that Anders Behring Breivik, the man behind the Oslo bombings and mass shootings, borrowed heavily from several sources, including the controversial blog iluvsa. the blog is hosted by Google’s blog service, Blogger.

In Breivik’s rambling 1 500-page Manifesto on Western Civilisation, there is a link to what he calls the “democratic struggle against the Islamisation of Europe” with arguments made by iluvsa against multi-culturalism in the South African, and global, context.

The iluvsa site features a blood-spattered banner, with the words “I Luv South Africa .. But I Hate My Government” emblazoned across it.

A Memeburn search revealed that Brevik was particularly interested in a post from the blog entitled “from Titans to Lemmings: the Suicide of the White race part II”.

At one point the post asks:

If all races are equal, why aren’t the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Arabs, the Pakistanis, the Indians, the Africans all accepting masses of immigrants into their lands and allowing alien cultures and religions to be of equal importance to their own?

The bio of iluvsa’s Facebook page explains “ILuvSA was conceived as an online space where South Africans both home and abroad could come together to discuss the issues of the day in a political correctness-free environment”.

The blog’s first post explains why iluvsa is “needed”.

“we pledge therefore to reveal to the world the true horror of the “rainbow nation” under the repressive, Marxist, socialist, black-nationalist, racist regime that is the ANC government.”

<a href="http://memeburn.com/2012/01/volkwagen-follow-up-to-2011-viral-success-involves-star-wars-dogs-video/tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://memeburn.com/2012/01/volkwagen-follow-up-to-2011-viral-success-involves-star-wars-dogs-video/Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:01:08 GMT”>Link between Norwegian killer and right-wing South African blog unearthed