Michael Ramses

Try writing a successful program for the iPhone.

Last August, Ethan Nicholas and his wife, Nicole, were having trouble making their mortgage payments. Medical bills from the birth of their younger son were piling up. After learning that his employer, Sun Microsystems, was suspending employee bonuses for the year, Mr. Nicholas considered looking for a new job and putting their house in Wake Forest, N.C., on the market.

Then he remembered reading about the guy who had made a quarter-million dollars in a hurry by writing a video game called Trism for the iPhone. “I figured if I could even make a fraction of that, we’d be able to make ends meet,” he said.

Although he had years of programming experience, Mr. Nicholas, who is 30, had never built a game in Objective-C, the coding language of the iPhone. So he searched the Internet for tips and informal guides, and used them to figure out the iPhone software development kit that Apple puts out.

Because he grew up playing shoot-em-up computer games, he decided to write an artillery game. He sketched out some graphics and bought inexpensive stock photos and audio files.

For six weeks, he worked “morning, noon and night” — by day at his job on the Java development team at Sun, and after-hours on his side project. In the evenings he would relieve his wife by caring for their two sons, sometimes coding feverishly at his computer with one hand, while the other rocked baby Gavin to sleep or held his toddler, Spencer, on his lap.

After the project was finished, Mr. Nicholas sent it to Apple for approval, quickly granted, and iShoot was released into the online Apple store on Oct. 19.

When he checked his account with Apple to see how many copies the game had sold, Mr. Nicholas’s jaw dropped: On its first day, iShoot sold enough copies at $4.99 each to net him $1,000. He and Nicole were practically “dancing in the street,” he said.

The second day, his portion of the day’s sales was about $2,000.

On the third day, the figure slid down to $50, where it hovered for the next several weeks. “That’s nothing to sneeze at, but I wondered if we could do better,” Mr. Nicholas said.

In January, he released a free version of the game with fewer features, hoping to spark sales of the paid version. It worked: iShoot Lite has been downloaded more than 2 million times, and many people have upgraded to the paid version, which now costs $2.99. On its peak day — Jan. 11 — iShoot sold nearly 17,000 copies, which meant a $35,000 day’s take for Mr. Nicholas.

“That’s when I called my boss and said, ‘We need to talk,’ ” Mr. Nicholas said. “And I quit my job.”

To people who know a thing or two about computer code, stories like his are as tantalizing as a late-night infomercial, as full of promise as an Anthony Robbins self-help book. The first iPhones came out in June 2007, but it wasn’t until July 2008 that people could buy programs built by outsiders, which were introduced in an online market — called the App Store — along with the new iPhone 3G. (The store is also open to owners of the iPod Touch, which does everything that the iPhone does except make phone calls and incur a monthly bill from AT&T.)

There are now more than 25,000 programs, or applications, in the iPhone App Store, many of them written by people like Mr. Nicholas whose modern Horatio Alger dreams revolve around a SIM card. But the chances of hitting the iPhone jackpot keep getting slimmer: the Apple store is already crowded with look-alike games and kitschy applications, and fresh inventory keeps arriving daily. Many of the simple but clever concepts that sell briskly — applications, for instance, that make the iPhone screen look like a frothing pint of beer or a koi pond — are already taken.

And for every iShoot, which earned Mr. Nicholas $800,000 in five months, “there are hundreds or thousands who put all their efforts into creating something, and it just gets ignored in the store,” said Erica Sadun, a programmer and the author of “The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook.”

The long-shot odds haven’t stopped people from stampeding to classes and conferences about writing iPhone programs. At Stanford University, an undergraduate course called Computer Science 193P: iPhone Application Programming attracted 150 students for only 50 spots when it was introduced last fall.

“It completely surpassed our expectations,” said Troy Brant, a graduate student who helped teach the course. Turnout has been equally strong this semester, he said.

As early as the summer of 2007 — a week after the iPhone first hit the market, and long before Apple let outsiders sell software for it — Raven Zachary, a technology consultant, decided to organize an informal get-together for fans of the device. The event, held in San Francisco, drew nearly 500 people.

Since then, he said, dozens of similar conferences have taken place around the world. “The concept has spread quite far and wide,” said Mr. Zachary, who boasts on his Web site that he “directed the launch of two top-20 iPhone applications,” including one for the Obama campaign. He expects the turnout at his conference this summer to be huge. “We may have to find a larger venue and hold simultaneous satellite events to accommodate attendees,” he said.

The two companies have been negotiating for weeks, ironing out terms of an agreement that would turn I.B.M. into the dominant supplier of high-profit Unix servers and related technology.

I.B.M. is offering $9.50 a share, down from a bid of $10 a share, said people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly. The new agreement would restrict I.B.M.’s ability to walk away from the deal, these people said.

Even at $9.50 a share, the deal would value Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., at close to $7 billion. It is close to a 100 percent premium based on Sun’s value before rumors of an acquisition spread last month.

Representatives of I.B.M. and Sun declined to comment. People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. I.B.M.’s board has already approved the deal, they said.

I.B.M., based in Armonk, N.Y., has spent weeks poring over Sun’s patents and licensing agreements. Some 100 lawyers have been working in a hotel in Silicon Valley on intellectual property matters.

Although in a slump of nearly a decade, Sun is one of the largest sellers of server computers and is known for systems based on its Sparc chips. It has a vast software portfolio, including the Solaris operating system , the open-source MySQL database and the Java programming language.

“Sun has obviously been a lost child for many years, but they have some great assets,” said Rebecca Runkle, director of technology research at Research Edge, an equities analysis business. She said that Sun and I.B.M.’s cultures would mesh in their commitment to large research and development projects.

Sun’s software assets would fit into I.B.M.’s long-term strategy of chasing higher-profit software and services sales. It could also give I.B.M. more strength in competing against Oracle, which has sold its database software on top of Sun systems for years.

I.B.M.’s acquisition of Sun would disrupt that long partnership with Oracle. I.B.M. could also undercut Oracle by more actively promoting the free MySQL software, which has become the most popular database software with Internet companies.

Hardware inherited from Sun could present antitrust concerns. I.B.M. faces an antitrust complaint from T3 Technologies over its dominance in the mainframe market. By buying Sun, I.B.M. would gain close to total control over robotic tape storage devices used to file data on mainframes.

Sun has a sales and technology partnership with Fujitsu for the sale of Unix servers. If I.B.M. buys Sun, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard will be the combined company’s only major competitors in the Unix market, a possible concern for regulators here and in Europe. Sun faces a patent infringement lawsuit from the storage maker NetApp and has countersued. NetApp has a sales pact with I.B.M.

Silicon Valley executives, including Paul S. Otellini, chief of Intel, have said that Sun has spent months seeking a suitor.

Shares of I.B.M. rose more than 3 percent on Thursday, to $100.82, and Sun’s shares rose more than 2 percent, to $8.21

Texas Instruments has sued Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of New York Mellon, accusing the banks of misleading the company into buying $524 million of auction-rate securities that have become illiquid.

In a complaint filed Wednesday in a Texas state court in Dallas County, Texas Instruments said the banks falsely marketed the securities, which were backed by student loans, as a low-risk, liquid alternative to other short-term investments. It said the banks also failed to disclose the extent to which they participated in auctions to support the market.

Texas Instruments, a chip maker based in Dallas, is seeking to rescind its auction-rate purchases and be awarded interest.

A Citigroup spokeswoman, Danielle Romero-Apsilos, and a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman, Christy Pollak, declined to comment. Bank of New York Mellon did not immediately return a request for comment.

Auction-rate debt has rates that reset in periodic auction.

State and federal regulators have accused many brokerage firms of misleading investors into thinking that the debt was safe and the equivalent of cash. In February, an arbitration panel of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ordered the Credit Suisse Group to pay the semiconductor company STMicroelectronics more than $406 million to settle similar auction-rate claims.

The blogger is boss, a salon host with wit and whip. Certainly a blogger thrives on commenters — who wants to declaim to an empty e-room? But let’s be clear: blogger, sovereign; commenters, courtiers.

That’s why the bloggerati pounced gleefully last week on the news that one of their own had fallen in love with a commoner, er, commenter.

Reader, she is going to marry him.

Ann Althouse, 58, is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who blogs about politics, law and cultural whatnots in a sharp, occasionally ribald tone. She admires Rush Limbaugh, voted for George Bush in ’04 and Barack Obama in ’08. She attracts derision and applause from 500,000 monthly visitors.

The jeers spiked ever since the March 22 announcement on her blog that this divorced mother of two adult sons, stalwartly single for more than 20 years, is engaged to a commenter known simply as “Meade.” Except for her closest readers, the blogosphere was taken by surprise.

“Does she know the guy?” sniggered Mickey Kaus, the Slate blogger, in a bloggingheads.tv interview.

In a phone interview, Ms. Althouse shot back, “If a male blogger found women to consort with by going into his comments, I think he’d be congratulated.”

The tale of Meade and Ms. Althouse is a cross between the studiedness of a Victorian epistolary courtship —a modern-day Robert Browning googling his dear Elizabeth Barrett — and the wackiness of 21st-century life online. The Althouse commentariat would log into the virtual local pub of the blog, gossiping and fantasizing about their queen’s offline love life, and even egging the couple on. When the announcement finally came, the commentariat cheered, bursting with hometown pride that a humble, anonymous son of the Internet could win the hand of the blogger.

Until now, Meade liked his online anonymity just fine. But at his fiancée’s urging, he agreed to be unmasked here. He is Laurence Meade, 55, divorced, father of a college student and a garden designer and caretaker for a Cincinnati estate.

About four years ago, Mr. Meade happened upon Ms. Althouse’s blog, by clicking through a series of Web links originating on the popular blog written by Andrew Sullivan (who also snickered at her betrothal last week).

Intellectually smitten, Mr. Meade read Ms. Althouse’s blog daily, becoming a regular commenter. “He would write jokingly as if he was in love with me,” Ms. Althouse said. “You couldn’t tell if he was fooling around or not, but it warms your heart.”

Mr. Meade even followed a blog kept by Ms. Althouse’s ex-husband, Richard Cohen, a writer in Austin, Tex. Once, about three years ago, when Ms. Althouse and her ex had a blog-spat, Mr. Meade, whose marriage was then unraveling, commented on Mr. Cohen’s behalf.

Over the years, Mr. Meade developed a blog-crush on Ms. Althouse. His wry, eloquent commenter persona became even more flirtatious.

In December, in a private e-mail message, he asked whether they might meet. Nothing came of it.

Turns out that the way to a blog-woman’s heart is through the comments.

In a January post, Ms. Althouse listed lessons from Clint Eastwood’s film “Gran Torino.”

No. 5: “A young man should perceive when a girl likes him and he needs to ask her out to dinner and a movie before somebody else does.”

In front of the eyes and fingertips of thousands, Mr. Meade made his move.

Mr. Meade: “OK. Want to have dinner with me and see it again?”

Ms. Althouse: “Yes, but you’ll have to come to Madison.”

On the phone last week, Mr. Meade recalled that exchange. “It was a throwaway,” he said. “I didn’t expect Ann to answer. Even so, I thought, that’s the end of that. But then Knox noticed.”

That is, Knox, another commenter, who wrote: “Meade, this is HUGE! Meade …? He must be packing.”

Emboldened, Mr. Meade wrote privately to Ms. Althouse. After he offered his Social Security number, in case she wanted to run a criminal check, they made a date.

He was intimidated by her. “I don’t have the education she has,” he said. He had studied history and horticulture in college but never graduated. “I don’t have the social status she has. But I was powerfully drawn to her. And I thought, what do I have to lose?”

Mr. Meade drove 10 hours to Madison. At the theater, they met — and spoke — for the first time. Alas, the film was “The Wrestler.”
As a blogger, Ms. Althouse gives the illusion that readers are privy to her personal life. But she is actually circumspect. The next morning, she posted a harsh review of “The Wrestler,” but didn’t mention the date itself.

But Mr. Meade did: “it didn’t ruin your appetite for dinner, did it? I hope not.”

No response.

Mr. Meade kept writing to her on the blog and through e-mail. Writing was the comfort zone through which they had come to know each other over the years. They began to relax.

Ms. Althouse agreed to meet him once more, halfway.

That would be West Lafayette, Ind.

On Friday, Feb. 13, the couple and their laptops met at a cafe there. They chatted, she wrote; literary libidos soared. “I loved the kissing in public,” Ms. Althouse recalled last week. A car had passed and someone hooted. “No one has ever yelled, ‘Get a room’ at me before!” she said, with evident delight.

That evening, the commentariat buzzed with suspicion. “I think the professor has a boyfriend.” Another wrote: “Has anyone seen Meade lately?”

The next morning, Valentine’s Day, Ms. Althouse posted a photograph of the cafe with the caption, “In the Heartland.”

The commentariat speculated madly.

The couple spent two more weekends and 10 days’ vacation together. Ms. Althouse blogged as usual, but did not disclose the romance. She did drop hints and puns like bread crumbs, alluding, for instance, to mead, the honeyed drink. On Feb. 28, Ms. Althouse posted a photo of a skillet on a stove, with the headline: “You cook breakfast. I’ll blog it.”

Mr. Meade wrote: “Nice steamy reflections.”

A prosaic commenter: “Using a metal fork in a nonstick pan?”

Two weeks ago, Ms. Althouse put up a series of photos. The final was a close-up of her hand, trying on Tiffany sparklers.

The commentariat went wild.

Freeman Hunt: “if they’re engaged, they actually got pretty much engaged on the second date.”

Finally, Meade himself stepped forward and made the announcement: “Althouse said yes! I am the happiest man in the world.”

Mr. Meade plans to move to Madison in August, when the couple will become legally wedded blogger and commenter.

Knox, the commenter who sent Mr. Meade on that first movie date, sobbed with virtual joy: “Couldn’t be happier for two people I’ve never met!”

Toyota is introducing a plug-in hybrid with next-generation lithium-ion batteries in Japan, the U.S. and Europe by 2010, under a widespread strategy to be green outlined Wednesday.

The ecological gas-electric vehicles, which can be recharged from a home electrical outlet, will target leasing customers, Toyota Motor Corp. said. Such plug-in hybrids can run longer as an electric vehicle than regular hybrids, and are cleaner.

Lithium-ion batteries, now common in laptops, produce more power and are smaller than nickel-metal hydride batteries used in hybrids now.

The joint venture that Toyota set up with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic products, will begin producing lithium-ion batteries in 2009 and move into full-scale production in 2010, Toyota said.

Toyota also said it’s setting up a battery research department later this month to develop an innovative battery that can outperform even that lithium-ion battery.

Japan’s top automaker, which leads the industry in gas-electric hybrids, has said it will rev up hybrid sales to 1 million a year sometime after 2010.

Hybrids reduce pollution and emissions that are linked to global warming by switching between a gas engine and an electric motor to deliver better mileage than comparable standard cars. Their popularity is growing amid soaring oil prices and worries about global warming.

“Without focusing on measures to address global warming and energy issues, there can be no future for our auto business,” Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe told reporters at a Tokyo hall.

He said developing breakthrough technology was critical to allow Toyota and other automakers to continue to grow while avoiding damage to the environment.

The Prius, which has been on sale for more than a decade, recently reached cumulative sales of 1 million vehicles. When including other Toyota hybrids, the company said it sold 1.5 million hybrids so far around the world.

Toyota said it is also working on fuel cell vehicles, which produce no pollution by running on the energy produced when hydrogen combines with oxygen in the air to produce water.

It is also improving mileage of all its models, including gasoline engine and clean diesel vehicles, it said.

The company plans to set up more environmentally friendly factories that will produce fewer carbon gas emissions and develop production techniques that require less energy, using solar energy and planting trees, Watanabe said.

On Tuesday, Toyota said it will start making the Camry hybrid in Australia and Thailand as part of its efforts to step up production of “green” cars around the world.

The two plants were only Toyota’s second and third overseas production point for the Camry hybrid after its Kentucky plant in the U.S. The only other nation where Toyota manufactures its hybrids besides Japan is China.

Toyota, close to overtaking General Motors Corp. as the world’s No. 1 automaker, faces competition from rivals, which are also all working on ecological technology.

For 2010, General Motors is planning a Chevrolet Volt plug-in electric vehicle, while Nissan Motor Co. is planning electric vehicles for the U.S. and Japan. Honda Motor Co. is also developing new hybrid models, targeting sales of 500,000 hybrids a year sometime after 2010.