In a move that could shake up the American solar industry, General Electric plans to announce on Thursday that it will build the nation’s largest photovoltaic panel factory, with the goal of becoming a major player in the market. “For the past five years, we’ve been investing extremely heavily in solar,” said Victor Abate, vice president for G.E.’s renewable energy business. “Going to scale is the next move.” [Full Article]

Like everyone else, government officials want to look good. That often leads them to enact policies that promote favorable movements in the indexes by which they are judged. But when those indexes are imperfect, bad choices often result. And that’s nowhere more evident than in economic policy. [Full Article]

Matt Paxton likes to refer to himself as an “extreme cleaning specialist.” Over the years, the president of Clutter Cleaner—a Richmond (Va.) business that’s often featured on the A&E reality show Hoarders—has witnessed a lot of bizarre behavior. He’s cleaned homes littered with, among other things, dead cats and human excrement. Yet one Rochester (N.Y.) house sticks out most. It belonged to a retired office assistant from Eastman Kodak—and it was filled with office supplies. [Full Article]

Are You an Office Hoarder? So you like collecting staple removers? This nonclinical quiz will determine whether you need an intervention. [Take the Quiz]

The toy maker Mattel is revamping its best-selling Barbie franchise by emphasizing her longtime beau, Ken. The company is bolstering awareness of Barbie’s companion—who celebrated his 50th birthday on March 11—using social networks like Facebook and Twitter and a series of just-completed webisodes in which wholesome-looking young male contestants vied to be the new symbol of a modern-day boyfriend. [Full Article]

Because electronic information seems invisible, we underestimate the resources it takes to keep it all alive. The data centers dotting the globe, colloquially known as “server farms,” are major power users with considerable carbon footprints. Such huge clusters of servers not only require power to run but must also be cooled. In the United States, it’s estimated that server farms, which house Internet, business and telecommunications systems and store the bulk of our data, consume close to 3 percent of our national power supply. Worldwide, they use more power annually than Sweden. [Full Article]

Ed Davis wanted to have a word with his customers. He was shepherding his small California manufacturing company, Ceilume, through a transition from a custom job shop to a maker of vinyl ceiling tiles, and he needed to begin selling directly to consumers. That raised a perception problem: many people associate ceiling tiles with the ugly, dusty and stained mineral-fiber tiles that have loomed over offices for generations. Mr. Davis, Ceilume’s president, wanted to tell consumers that his company’s vinyl products were different. He decided to try online video. [Full Article]

Social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been embraced by Madison Avenue as effective new ways to reach consumers. But what happens when behavior on social media is deemed antisocial?

Two large marketers, Aflac and the Chrysler Group, are struggling to answer that uncomfortable question in the wake of incidents that took place within days of each other. The incidents, involving remarks on Twitter that were judged to be tasteless, inappropriate and insensitive, point out some inherent risks of social media. [Full Article]

With small and fast laptops, powerful smartphones, tablets and readily available Wi-Fi, working on the road — on planes, in airports and hotel rooms — has never been easier. But security experts say these conveniences also make the offices away from home more vulnerable to serious security threats.

“It’s a huge, huge issue for companies and employees and growing more each day,” said Bruce McIndoe, president of iJET Intelligent Risk Systems, a travel risk management company. “It’s a ripe environment for hackers and criminals.” [Full Article]

A new study shows that readers find their minds wandering when using iPad versions of magazines. Publishers had always figured that the iPad magazine, being an interactive experience, would necessarily be different from the print incarnation, with readers bouncing around a bit. But the reality exceeds even that expectation. [Full Article]

David Autor, an M.I.T. economist who has done excellent research on the labor market, has been the focus of blogosphere discussion lately. Tyler Cowen says he deserves much more attention than he gets. Paul Krugman discussed his work in a blog post and column. Michael Luo featured Mr. Autor’s work in a Times article last summer. The very brief version of Mr. Autor’s argument is that the middle of the American job market is being hollowed out. [Full Article]

Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family? That simple question is the basis for a burgeoning new area of psychological research called self-compassion — how kindly people view themselves. People who find it easy to be supportive and understanding to others, it turns out, often score surprisingly low on self-compassion tests, berating themselves for perceived failures like being overweight or not exercising. [Full Article]

The Oscar show on Sunday was predictable, dull, formulaic and repetitive. And that was just the commercials.

For the third year in a row, most of the sponsors of the Academy Awards broadcast on ABC played it safe rather than broke new ground. For instance, many spots were recycled from other live television events this month, like Super Bowl XLV; some even made their debuts last year. [Full Article]

Royal weddings can generally be counted on to produce plenty of pomp and circumstance, not to mention — later on, of course — a possible future king or queen. In Britain, the approaching wedding of Prince William, second in line to the throne, to Kate Middleton, his longtime girlfriend, comes with a whole new set of expectations. [Full Article]

Drivers who see a 32-foot shoebox rolling down the highway over the next few weeks should not be alarmed. The large white box is part of a new national marketing campaign for the sneaker company Keds.

The campaign, called “How Do You Do?,” is intended to reach millennials, who are generally in their 20s, by taking the shoebox on wheels on a cross-country tour of college campuses. [Full Article]

Borders, the 40-year-old chain that helped define the age of the book superstore, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, a widely expected move after years of increased competition, declining sales and months of missed payments to its vendors. [Full Article]

Minka Kelly, the “sexiest woman alive,” slides a fork into a tangle of spaghetti carbonara. Zoë Saldana has a basket of fried calamari. Jennifer Lawrence, an Oscar nominee for her leading role in “Winter’s Bone,” wants it known that a skimpy morning repast is not going to satisfy her.

“I’m freakish about breakfast,” she explains to an Esquire magazine writer there to interview her. “You’re not gonna order, like, fruit or something, are you? Because I’m gonna eat.” [Full Article]

In the new version of Monopoly, the game’s classic pastel-colored bills and the designated Banker have been banished, along with other old-fashioned elements, in favor of a computer that runs the game.

Hasbro showed a preview of the new version, called Monopoly Live, at this week’s Toy Fair in New York. It is the classic Monopoly board on the outside, with the familiar railroads like the B.& O. and the development of property. But in the center, instead of dice and Chance and Community Chest cards, an infrared tower with a speaker issues instructions, keeps track of money and makes sure players adhere to the rules. The all-knowing tower even watches over advancing the proper number of spaces. [Full Article]

If you feel like your cubicle walls are closing in around you, you may be right.

A combination of the troubled economy and the influx of mobile technology is changing the workplace landscape. Literally.

Companies across the country are shrinking those boxed-in work areas or scrapping the notion of the once-ubiquitous cubicles altogether. [Full Article]

Walk into my apartment and you’d most likely be hard-pressed to find a book or dish towel out of place. This is, in part, because I live in a studio in New York but also the residual ripples of growing up the youngest of five girls, which ingrained in me an obsessive compulsive disdain for clutter.

My online life, however, tells a completely different story. [Full Article]