As gas prices continue to march toward $4 a gallon, cars on display this weekend at the Portland International Auto Show offer a range of new, fuel-efficient models that not only are easy on the environment but also on the wallet.

The 2012 vehicles include dozens of fuel-efficient cars that get 35 miles or more per gallon; high-end hybrids; all-electric cars that travel 80 to 100 miles between charges; and even a car powered by natural gas.

With the job market more competitive than ever, job hunters are forced to become more savvy. In fact, 77 percent of job seekers now use mobile job search apps to land new gigs, according to a recent Mashable.com survey.

Luckily, there are tons of great on-the-go tools available that not only give you an edge, but also guide you through every step of the employment search process.

How do you start your workday? Do you hop onto Facebook or Twitter for a few minutes to see what's up?

There's nothing wrong with that -- unless a few minute turns into half an hour, then an hour, and before you know it, half the morning's gone and you haven't accomplished anything.

Maria Peagler, founder of Social Media Online Classes, has spent years teaching businesspeople to harness the power of technology. She started out when PCs were new, working for an Atlanta-based computer training company that helped Fortune 500 companies make their employees productive on PCs. In 2009, Peagler saw a need for small-business owners to learn how to harness the power of social media, so she began developing online courses to teach them. In her first month as an online course provider, Peagler made more money than she'd made the entire previous year in her second career as a book publisher.

"I'm a lifelong learner myself and would much rather take an online class from an established small-business owner than have to schlep to a university or take their courses on the semester schedule," Peagler says.

Bing Crosby used to croon about silver bells ringing and "busy sidewalks dressed in holiday style," but a lot of this year's shoppers are only hearing mouse-clicks and the beep of their laptops. According to this Associated Press article, the week that ended Dec. 18 was the busiest seven days of online holiday shopping in history (or at least since the inception of the web in the early 1990s). Shoppers spent a hefty $6.3 billion on Amazon, eBay and other e-commerce sites. That includes $1.04 billion that shoppers spent last weekend, the last full one before the Christmas holiday.

That shopping spree added to the $32 billion that American shoppers have spent online since November, according to the Reston, Va.-based research firm comScore. That represents a robust 15 percent increase over 2010, and analysts are now expecting total holiday online sales to reach $38 billion by the end of December.

Children's book author Katie Davis (left) published her first book in 1998. Thirteen years and 10 books later, she's learned a lot about the world of publishing and children's literature. In August of 2010, Davis launched Brain Burps About Books, a weekly podcast to share her knowledge of the business of children's literature.

Davis says her passion for children's literature and literacy, and the dearth of podcasts about the topic, led her to launch the show. Now with 73 one-hour episodes under her belt, Davis doesn't just enjoy her weekly broadcast -- she profits from it.

30 Rock star Alec Baldwin apparently is the latest middle-aged celebrity to struggle with addiction -- not to booze, pills or sex, but to a game on his smartphone.

The 53-year-old actor was kicked off an American Airlines flight about to depart from Los Angeles this week, when he apparently didn't turn off his electronic device despite an admonition from a flight attendant, as this MSNBC report recounts.

While there still are some holdouts who grumble that books can only be truly appreciated when they're printed on paper, many of the forty- and fifty-somethings I know seem to be increasingly enamored of e-books and portable devices for reading them.

According to this Mashable.com report, people over 45 now own more than half of all e-reader devices, and those age 55 and older are the largest single age demographic, owning 29 percent of them. For middle-aged readers, the devices have at least one significant plus: You readily can adjust the type size to one that your eyes are comfortable with, or even pick a different font. (Here's a great 2010 Minneapolis Star Tribune article in which older readers -- including a poet with limited vision in one eye -- talk about how the technology has made reading more pleasant for them.)

'Tis the season for shopping -- and often, overspending. This year, with the economy still sputtering, staying within budget is important for many people. One-third of consumers plan to spend less money on gifts than they did during last year's holiday season, according to Consumer Reports.

While the sales may be tempting, have a strategy in place before you dive in. With plenty of tools to keep you on track, your smartphone is a good place to start. Here are five apps to help you save money this season.

I just downloaded Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson's just-released biography of the recently deceased Apple co-founder, to my Kindle Reader. I can't wait to dive in. Judging from the reviews appearing across the web over the past few days, the prosaically titled 656-page tome seems sure to be provocative reading.

Here's a sampling of the buzz:

The Washington Post: Reviewer Michael S. Rosenwald leads with a startling anecdote from the book, depicting Steve Jobs awakening from liver transplant surgery in a Memphis hospital in 2009. Even as he drifted in and out of consciousness, the tech mogul displayed his impatient, often-dictatorial fixation with technological perfection, by criticizing the design of the oxygen mask on his face and ordering his caretakers to bring him the five best alternatives so he could chose the one that suited him. Overall, Rosenwald praises Isaacson's biography as a well-crafted, meticulous account that works on multiple levels. "It is on the one hand a history of the most exciting time in the age of computers, when machines first became personal, and later, fashionable, accessories," Rosenwald writes. "It is also a textbook study of the rise and fall and rise of Apple, and the brutal clashes that destroyed friendships and careers. And it is a gadget lover's dream, with fabulous inside accounts of how the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad came into being."