Patagonia opens second isle store

Patagonia, a green clothing manufacturer, has opened its second Hawaii store at Ward Centers.

The retailer, which operates a store in Haleiwa, will host a community event at the new location Sept. 18 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. featuring local environmental groups, including Surfrider Oahu, Kahea, Blue Planet Foundation and North Shore Community Land Trust, to encourage volunteers to get involved in local sustainability activities.

Patagonia sells branded clothing, footwear and children’s clothing for the outdoors. Products include 100 percent organic cotton apparel and recycled fleece, nylon, and Capilene base layers.

Island Air marks 30th anniversary

Island Air celebrated its 30th year in business yesterday with festivities at the Honolulu Commuter Terminal that included a lei greeting upon check-in, Hawaiian music and hula dancers.

The airline was launched in 1980 as Princeville Airways with scheduled service between Honolulu and Princeville, Kauai. The company now serves all major islands with 328 weekly flights using de Havilland Dash 8 turboprop aircraft.

Island Air employee Sterling Kalua composed a song for the anniversary, which he performed at the event with co-workers Fred Reyes and Thomas Zamora-Castro. The song was recorded on a compact disc, and copies were distributed to boarding passengers.

Hawaiian and Delta will share code

Hawaiian and Delta airlines announced a code-sharing agreement yesterday that will offer Delta’s customers access to connecting flights on one ticket within the islands for the first time. Delta passengers can connect to 70 daily interisland flights operated by Hawaiian Airlines beginning Wednesday with a single ticket, the airlines said.

The code-sharing agreement expands an earlier frequent-flier agreement between the two carriers that allows their respective frequent-flier members to earn and redeem miles for travel on either carrier.

AT&T invests $11M in Hawaii

AT&T said it invested $11 million in capital improvements in Hawaii during the first six months of this year, the bulk of which was for its wireless network.

Additions included adding three new cellular sites, two on Oahu and one on Maui, AT&T said. Three additional sites were upgraded to accommodate mobile broadband service, and the company’s wireline network was improved to include additional Wi-Fi hot spots and extended reach of broadband services. Nationwide, AT&T said there were plans to invest $18 billion to $19 billion in capital improvements this year, about 10 percent more than in 2009.

Help offered to Thai farm workers

A group of low-income Thai farm workers involved in a local human trafficking case can get job training and licenses from a federal program known as the National Farmworker Jobs Program.

Funds are available for low-income farm workers statewide to obtain professional certificates and licenses including certified nurses assistants, commercial drivers licenses and Green Jobs Training, according to Maui Economic Opportunity Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides social services for low-income people.

The job training and employment assistance program also offers money for the training of spouses and children of qualified farm workers statewide. The workers must receive green cards by the time the application process is completed.

For more information, contact Maui Economic Opportunity at 249-2990 or toll-free at 877-795-4354.

Google boosts searches with Instant results

SAN FRANCISCO » Google Inc. is stepping on its Internet search accelerator by adding a feature that displays results as soon as people begin typing their requests.

The change, called "Google Instant," is the closest that the 12-year-old company has come yet to realizing its founders’ ambition to build a search engine that reads users’ minds.

The achievement wasn’t lost on Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who jokingly told reporters that the company’s lightning-quick computers are morphing into the "other third" of people’s brains.

"I think it’s a little bit of a new dawn in computing," Brin said.

The shift means Google users will begin to see an ever-evolving set of search results appearing on their computer screens, potentially changing with each additional character typed. That means a satisfactory set of results could take just one keystroke. For example, a person who types "w" in Google’s search box could see the weather results in the area where the request was entered.

Google will also try to predict what a person really wants by filling out the anticipated search terms in gray letters. Below that, in a drop-down box, Google will still offer other suggested search requests, as the site has been offering for the past two years.

The feature will be gradually rolled out throughout the U.S. this week and will be offered in other parts of the world later this year.