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By Times Staff Writer
Published November 16, 2007

Gas gluttony won't abate for holiday drivers

Gas prices near record highs at a time of year when they typically decline will not deter drivers from hitting the road this Thanksgiving, AAA said Thursday. The travel agency expects a record 38.7-million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from home over the five days beginning Nov. 21. That is a 1.6 percent increase over last year. Roughly 80 percent of those trips will be by car, and motorists will pay about 90 cents a gallon more for gas than they did last year. Gas prices traditionally fall in the winter months as demand ebbs from summer highs, but oil prices flirting with $100 a barrel and low fuel stockpiles have reversed that trend this year. Still, demand for gasoline over the four weeks ending Nov. 2 was 0.8 percent higher than a year earlier, averaging more than 9.3-million barrels a day.

Who's that calling? Keep watching TV

Couch potato alert: If you get telephone service through your cable TV provider, you don't have to get up while watching TV to see who's calling. Several cable companies have been experimenting with a feature that will display an incoming caller's name and number in a little box in the corner of the TV screen. Cablevision Systems Corp., which operates around the New York City area; Comcast Corp., the largest cable TV operator in the country; and Time Warner Cable Inc. are either unveiling such a service or already offering it, with plans to expand.

Stamp price hikes affixed to inflation

Starting now, the price of a stamp won't go up faster than the rate of inflation, the U.S. Postal Service said Thursday. Under a law passed last year, the post office would have been allowed one more rate increase under old rules that could have permitted a larger increase, but which would have involved longer, more complex procedures than the new system. The postal board of governors decided to forgo that last increase and said that when it seeks rate changes it will follow the new procedures adopted Oct. 29 by the independent Postal Regulatory Commission. Under the new rules the post office will have to keep its rate increases at or under the rate of inflation for first-class and standard mail and periodicals, but will have greater flexibility in setting rates for parcels and Priority and Express mail. The agency also announced it finished the fiscal year Sept. 30 with a smaller loss than expected.

CBS casts Web over Manhattan

CBS Corp. will set up a network allowing New Yorkers with wi-fi-enabled mobile phones and laptops to surf the Web and make free calls in midtown Manhattan. The "CBS Mobile Zone" will span from Times Square to Central Park South between Sixth and Eighth avenues, CBS said. The service, already available in certain places, will be extended to the entire area by the end of the month. CBS, the owner of the most-watched U.S. television network, will sell advertisements on the page users see when they connect to the Web. The site, sponsored by Citigroup Inc. and Salesgenie.com, will have news, sports and weather reports.

[Last modified November 16, 2007, 00:51:53]