Toyota announced earlier today that they plan to start selling a plug-in Prius hybrid in 2011. Toyota is currently the biggest gas-electric hybrid vehicle manufacturing company. However Toyota was never big on plug-in hybrids up until now. Hybrid technology will be added to all of their cars by 2020.

General Motors plans to build at least 60,000 Chevy Volt hybrid vehicles every year starting in 2010. Ford, Volkswagen, and Nissan plans to mass-produce fully electric cars in 2010 too. Toyota EVP Takeshi Uchiyamada said that the car company was waiting until 2011 to begin selling plug-in hybrids because they wanted to hear feedback from users.

The plug-in Prius vehicle is the first vehicle made by Toyota that will use a lithium-ion battery. The Prius hybrid vehicle will have the ability to travel at 23.4 kms. (14.5 miles) on a single charge before the gas-electric hybrid system takes over. The Prius will have 134 miles per gallon. Charge tie for the plug-in system is about 100 minutes.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has sold a decent number of iPhone devices in South Korea. Korean telecommunications company KT claims that they have about 90,000 subscribers so far. The 90,000 subscribers include 53,000 pre-ordered phones. The iPhone started selling in South Korea around November 28. In South Korea, about 400,000 people use smartphones in total.

That number is growing at a faster pace. “Triggered by iPhones’ debut in South Korea, the market for smartphones offering e-mail and Web browsing is on a healthy track, giving us a need for more iPhones,” stated a KT representative. KT expects to sell about 700,000 iPhones in 2010. The population of South Korea is about 48.6 million.

Rocket Fuel Inc. has raised $3 million in funding led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. Rocket Fuel is developing an ad platform to understand consumer habits and interest. The company will use the $3 million in funding to keep building the corporate infrastructure, scaling, and engineering team expansion.

“With this recent investment, we see a clear path to profitability in late 2010, and we’ll be scaling to better address the demand we see for optimized display advertising,” stated Rocket Fuel CEO George John.

Michael “Monty” Widenius, the creator of MySQL is not happy with Oracle’s treatment of the open source database. The European Commission is currently investigation regulatory concerns about Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, parent company of MySQL.

“Oracle claims that it would take good care of MySQL but let’s face the facts: Unlike ten years ago, when MySQL was mostly just used for the web, it has become very functional, scalable and credible. Now it’s used in many of the world’s largest companies and they use it for an increasing number of purposes. This not only scares but actually hurts Oracle every day,” stated MySQL founder Monty Widenius. “Oracle have [sic] to lower prices all the time to compete with MySQL when companies start new projects. Some companies even migrate existing projects from Oracle to MySQL to save money. Of course Oracle has a lot more features, but MySQL can already do a lot of things for which Oracle is often used and helps people save a lot of money. Over time MySQL can do to Oracle what the originally belittled Linux did to commercial Unix (roughly speaking).”

Monty added that Oracle has not promised to keep MySQL under an open license. He also said that Oracle does not promise to update patches in a timely manner for MySQL or to improve the open source database language to compete with Oracle’s own offerings. Oracle responded to Monty in the form of a press release where they insisted the proper maintenance of MySQL. Below is the full press release:

FitnessKeeper is the company behind RunKeeper Pro, an iPhone application that uses the GPS technology in the phone. RunKeeper is used for tracking fitness activities, map integration, and there is a personal dashboard. FitnessKeeper has support for simultaneous music too. Photos taken while running using the application can be geotagged as well.

As a result of the successful application, FitnessKeeper has raised $400,000 in seed funding from several investors. FitnessKeeper founder and CEO Jason Jacobs said “There are some real proof points we think we can hit with this money so that we can be in position to either never need another dime, or to raise another, much larger round from a position of much greater strength.”

The $400,000 in funding is provided by LaunchCapital as well as Don McLagan (CEO of Compete.com), Dave Balter (CEO of BzzAgent), and Will Herman (founder of Viewlogic). Balter and McLagan are advisors at FitnessKeeper.

[RunKeeper Pro $9.99-iTunes App Store]

Atari has a new CEO as the company is aiming to reach profitability. Former COO Jeff Lapin is replacing former CEO David Gardner. Gardner will be taking on a Director role at the company. Lapin previously worked at RazorGator Interactive Group, Take-Two Interactive Software and THQ.

“For the last two years, first as a Director of the Board and then as COO, I have contributed to the transformation of Atari,” stated Lapin. “It has been a challenging time, which resulted in a new publishing strategy with a strong online focus and a shift of the operations to the U.S.”

In this past fiscal year, Atari lost about $319 million. The company hopes to return to profitability in the second half of the year. The company is also in transition to MMO games. Atari acquired MMO game developer Cryptic Studios last year and plans to launch Star Trek Online in February 2010.

Private equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners acquired The EMI Group for $4.9 billion in 2007. However Terra Firma feels that Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) duped them by saying that there is a bidding war happening for the music company. Terra Firma believes that all potential bidders had dropped out including Cerberus Capital Management.

Thinking that there were other buyers, Terra Firma raised their bid for EMI. And the private equity firm wants damages related to the increased bid from Citigroup. Citigroup Inc. spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apsilos said that the lawsuit is happening without merit and the company plans to defend themselves vigorously.

Accenture Plc (Public, NYSE:ACN) is the first corporate sponsor to cut off Tiger Woods because of the events that transpired over the last 2 weeks. Woods’ sponsors that are left include AT&T, EA Sports, Gatorade, Gillette, NetJets, Nike, TAG Heuer, Tatweer, TLC Laser Eye Centers, and Upper Deck.

Below is the full the press release:

NEW YORK – (Business Wire) Accenture (NYSE: ACN) today announced that it will not continue its sponsorship agreement with Tiger Woods.

For the past six years, Accenture and Tiger Woods have had a very successful sponsorship arrangement and his achievements on the golf course have been a powerful metaphor for business success in Accenture’s advertising. However, given the circumstances of the last two weeks, after careful consideration and analysis, the company has determined that he is no longer the right representative for its advertising. Accenture said that it wishes only the best for Tiger Woods and his family.

Accenture will continue to leverage its “High Performance Business” strategy and “High Performance Delivered” positioning in the marketplace. The company will immediately transition to a new advertising campaign, with a major effort scheduled to launch later in 2010.