“2012″ marketing fomenting irrational fear

Via KurzweilAI.net — Just what mentally marginal need, another shove off the cliff via viral marketing and faked “scientific evidence.”

I’d say the reality challenged swing the Discovery Channel, National Geographic and other once science-based cable channels are doing plenty of damage on their own.

2012 Prophecies Sparking Real Fears, Suicide Warnings

National Geographic News, Nov. 9, 2009 Amid the hype — including a viral marketing campaign for 2012, the disaster movie opening Friday, with bogus scientific organizations, press releases, and 2012 whistle-blowers –some people are developing “end times” anxiety that has experts seriously concerned. NASA’s Nibiru and Doomsday 2012: Questions and Answersand 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won’t End? web pages seek to debunk stories about the fictionalplanet Nibiru and predictions of doomsday in December 2012. Scenes from the motion picture “2012″ (Columbia Pictures)   Read Original Article>>

2009 Wall Street bonuses …

… are not going to go over all that great. I understand the nature of compensation in the financial industry, but sometimes image is everything, and the industry has a pretty shabby image on Main Street.

From the link:

Ask yourself, in this day and age, with officially reported unemployment at 10.2%, the highest since 1983, should a 36-year-old derivatives trader get $10 million or $15 million in bonus money on top of a $400,000 to $1 million direct salary. It’s the hot-button money issue of our time, the only visible totem of Wall Street that the public can easily understand. The public sees headlines about stocks being up 62%, the Dow over 10,000, gold at $1,100 an ounce, interest rates at zero and a handful of financiers able to buy $40 million apartments.

It’s a great time to play the market, sure, but the overall effect on the economy is pretty hollow when small and medium businesses cannot borrow money. Treasury Secretary Geithner admits to this huge vacuum, but he has no concrete or meaningful solution.

Japan planning space-based solar power plant

Via KurzweilAI.net — Space-based solar collection gets a lot of ink and now it looks like it might even get a test run.

apan eyes solar station in space as new energy source

AFP, Nov. 8, 2009 The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to collect solar power in space and send it to Earth by 2030 using laser beams or microwaves, and has created a consortium (the Institute for Unmanned SpaceExperiment Free Flyer) that includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp. (Japan Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer)   Read Original Article>>

Do exchange-traded funds create investment bubbles?

More specifically, bubbles in emerging markets — short answer, no.

From the link, a bit more behind the short answer:

So what does all this mean for investors? ETFs probably haven’t caused a bubble, and they might even help a bit to prevent one from forming. But many will remain superconcentrated bets on very risky markets. If you invest in an ETF with most of its assets in a few stocks and think you have made a diversified bet, the real bubble is the one between your own ears.

Overdraft fees — consumer banks v. consumers

Consumer banking has largely been about screwing the customer for a long time — at least as far as the large, national, impersonal banks (you know, the ones that advertise on television) go. Long ago, something like 15 years ago, I wrote an article for a business magazine on some of the underhanded techniques consumer banks were using to gouge customers.

Back then one of the growing trends was charging a premium for what was called a “meatspace transaction.” Although it sounds vaguely pornographic, a meatspace transaction was anything that involved a living teller, either face-to-face or through drive-up banking. Happily that bit of foolishness didn’t have any legs. One troubling practice that did, and still does, is overdraft fees and how they are processed.

They are almost unavoidable in terms of the bank will happily let you go below your balance instead of declining the transaction.

From the link:

Ever write a check thinking you had plenty in your account to cover it? Make a debit card purchase before your paycheck cleared? How about the time you withdrew $5 too much from the ATM?

Sure, your bank was happy to cover the amount. Why not? Although touted as a customer “convenience,” overdraft fees have been soaring. Last year, overdraft charges generated nearly $24 billion dollars for banks and credit unions. That’s 35% more than just two years earlier, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

Warning! No Warning

The first problem with overdraft fees is that you don’t receive any notice that the transaction you’re about to make will exceed the balance in your account. If you did, at least you’d be able to choose whether you want to continue with it or not.

In some cases you can trigger overdraft charges even if your online statement shows you have plenty in yourchecking account! That’s because your balance is “theoretical” and doesn’t reflect the fact that a recent deposit may not have been in your account long enough for the funds to “clear.”

But the really dirty part of the process is how your incoming transactions are handled:

The Re-ordering Trick

Another criticism is that financial institutions can play games with your transactions in order to trigger a cascade of overdrafts.

For instance, say you make four debit card purchases in a day. Your available balance was $90. The first three transactions were for $25, $20, and $40. The last one was for $100. If taken in chronological order, there is adequate money in your account to cover the first three purchases. Only the last one would result in an overdraft charge.

But that’s not the way your bank computer system is programmed. Instead, it will change the order of your purchases in order to deplete your account sooner by subtracting the largest transactions first.

In the above example, your $100 purchase would come out of your account ahead of the other three. Since it exceeds your balance by $10, it generates a $35 charge. Next, with your account already under water (according to the bank’s math), your other three purchases are posted. You end up paying $140 (4 x $35) for the “convenience” of overdraft protection.

Quite the trick there. Consumer banks have been playing so dirty for so long, and were on the receiving end of so much government bailout money Congress is stepping up to the plate for the consumer at long last.

We’ll see where this ends up, but I think it’s about time Main Street was given a little protection from practices that should have been illegal from the get-go. I guess we ought to be happy consumer banks didn’t go around breaking kneecaps like Vinny from the corner might have. Because really, that’s about the only difference between usury and a typical consumer bank.

Also from the link:

Kathleen Day, a spokesperson for the Center for Responsible Lending, calls the current state of overdraft fees “ridiculous” and an “outrage.” The Center and other consumer protection organizations place the blame squarely at the feet of the Federal Reserve, which regulates most large financial institutions in this country.

“The Fed has known for years these practices are hurting customers and they’ve failed to act,” charges Day. The Senate Finance Committee has drafted the “Fairness and Accountability in Receiving Overdraft Coverage Act,” or the FAIR Act, which would limit overdraft fees banks can impose.

The HP DreamScreen 100 internet touchscreen

This thing looks pretty cool …

HP DreamScreen 100 Internet Touchscreen
Think of it as a digital photo frame on steroids. The HP DreamScreen 100, available in 10- and 13-inch models, does more than merely display family snapshots. Connect this sexy display (#98 in The PC World 100: Best Products of 2009) to your home network via Wi-Fi or ethernet, and you can then use the handheld remote to stream your favorite Pandora channels or up to 10,000 Internet radio stations, view your calendar, set alarms, see a five-day weather forecast, and catch up with your peeps on Facebook. Put this beauty on your nightstand, and you can finally toss your old clock radio.

Full review | $250 to $300 | Check prices

Protecting your privacy when using search engines

Sounds like a useful tool in this world of massive data collection by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and many others.

The release:

A new system preserves the right to privacy in Internet searches

		IMAGE: A new system preserves the right to privacy in Internet searches. Click here for more information.

A team of Catalan researchers has developed a protocol to distort the user profile generated by Internet search engines, in such a way that they cannot save the searches undertaken by Internet users and thus preserve their privacy. The study has been published in the Computer Communications magazine.

Just imagine someone from Company X who uses the Google search engine to obtain information about a certain technology. If Company Y, a competitor of X, should discover this situation, it could infer that the abovementioned technology is going to be used in X’s new products, and with that information it could obtain a competitive edge. In the same way, a mass media enterprise that finds out the searches undertaken by the competition’s journalists could infer what news items they are working on and beat them to it. A personal report could also be drawn up on someone based on their searches.

In order to solve these types of situations, a team of researchers from three Catalan universities (the Rovira i Virgili University, the Autónoma of Barcelona and the Oberta of Catalonia) has developed a system which preserves user privacy via a new computer protocol, whose details are published in the Computer Communications magazine.

“It is a model based on cryptographic tools which distort the profile of users when they use search engines on Internet”, explains Alexandre Viejo to SINC. He is one of the authors of the study and a researcher at the Computer Engineering Department of the Rovira i Virgili University, “in such a way that their privacy is preserved”.

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live search save the profiles of their users (via an analysis of the searches they undertake) with the argument that they are more familiar with their interests and offer a more efficient response.

There currently exist types of software which provide anonymous navigation, such as the Tor network, but the new system “offers a clear improvement in response time”. Nevertheless, Alexandre Viejo acknowledges that the application of the protocol delays searches slightly, “but it can be perfectly assumed by the user”.

The tool prototype has already been tried in closed (research centre intranets) and open (internet) environments, “and the results allow us to be optimistic with the global implementation of the model”. The researchers are now working on the development of a final user version and trust that it will soon be easily integrated into the main platforms and browsers.

###

References:

Jordi Castellà-Roca, Alexandre Viejo, Jordi Herrera-Joancomartí. “Preserving user’s privacy in web search engines”. Computer Communications32 (13-14): 1541�, 2009.

No more Sarb-Ox for small business?

This should be welcome news.

From the link:

Small businesses would be granted a permanent reprieve from complying with part of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform laws, under a draft U.S. House of Representatives bill discussed on Tuesday.

Small companies have not had to comply fully with the rules since the Sarbanes-Oxley law was approved in 2002 in response to the Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals.

Companies with a market capitalization below $75 million have argued that they faced disproportionately higher costs compared with larger companies and have convinced regulators to delay compliance at least five times.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is now requiring small companies to report on the effectiveness of their internal controls as of June 15, 2010.

But Republicans, hoping to thwart this SEC requirement, introduced an amendment on Tuesday to a House Financial Services Committee draft bill to do just that.

Here’s one way to work out health care solutions

Via KurzweilAI.net – I’d say the X Prize has moved private space travel a good ways down the path to commercial viability.

Peter Diamandis: the joy of taking risks

New Scienist Space, Nov. 4, 2009 Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, wants to use our competitive instincts to make the world a better place–his latest: a heath care prize.   Read Original Article>>

Fed sees overnight lending rates remaining around nil …

… for an “extended period.”

Google’s Dashboard feature

Apparently this thing rolled out today, but after a quick peek around I couldn’t find it.

From the link:

Google is offering a new privacy control that will make it easier for people to see some of the information being collected about them.

The “Dashboard” feature unveiled Thursday pulls together all the data that pour into Google’s computers whenever Web surfers log in to one of the company’ services.

That includes summaries of an individual’s e-mail, search requests and viewing habits on Google’s video site, YouTube. Before, a user would have to check multiple places for all that.

Update 11/6/09 — Here’s the Google Dashboard story with links straight from Mountain View.

China dominating solar manufacturing

If you follow the solar cell industry at all that fact should be very readily apparent. The Chinese government has put great emphasis o0n and money into solar. One major advantage Chinese firms have over U.S. and European competitors that’s not going away any time soon is labor costs.

From the link:

Solar companies presenting business plans to investors at a National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conference this week devoted particular attention to how they hope to compete with Chinese manufacturers. The audience at the NREL Industry Growth Forum in Denver consisted largely of venture capitalists and partners from private equity firms.

Stellaris, a company that assembles solar modules in Lowell, MA, has already received $6.1 million in funding to develop techniques for packaging silicon and thin-film cells. The company, represented at the conference by CEO James Paull, is seeking further financing in 2010.

Selectable Output Control — Hollywood v. the consumer

These battles are growing very, very old. You’d think Hollywood would’ve gotten the message from the RIAA’s brainless battles against the digital world that this is going to solve very little to nothing, but the blowback can and will be significant. Just another entertainment dinosaur howling and thrashing at the changing world of smaller, nimbler and smarter competitors.

From the boing boing link:

Alex sez,

The battle over your home entertainment equipment is heating up again and the time to make your voice heard is now. Hollywood wants the FCC to grant the studios permission to engage in so-called “”Selectable Output Control.” SOC is a tech mandate that would allow movie studios to shut off video outputs on the back of your cable box and DVR during the screening of certain movies over cable.

Also from the link:

Yes, you read that right. The studios want the right to randomly switch off parts of your home theater depending on which program you’re watching. And the FCC is taking this batshit proposal seriously.

So do something.

Tell the FCC to Say “No” to the Cable Kill Switch (Thanks, Alex!)

Improving Captchas

Via KurzweilAI.net — And really anything — anything — that improved Captchas would be very welcome.

Animated ink-blot images keep unwanted bots at bay

New Scientst Tech, Nov 3, 2009 Captchas, the scrambled images used to separate humans from software bots online, could become harder for bots to solve and easier for humans to handle by animating them, says computer scientist Niloy Mitra at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, who along with colleagues has devised a system that should separate the bots from the humans.   Read Original Article>>

Breakthrough in large-scale nanotube processing

Via KurzweilAI.net — These manufacturing breakthroughs aren’t as exciting and sexy as a groundbreaking medical application or replacing copper wiring with carbon nanotubes or graphene, but they are key to turning nanotechnology into a viable industry.

Breakthrough In Industrial-scale Nanotube Processing

ScienceDaily, Nov. 3, 2009 Rice University scientists have unveiled a method for high-throughput industrial-scale processing of carbon-nanotube fibers, using chlorosulfonic acid as a solvent. The process that could lead to revolutionary advances in materials science, power distribution and nanoelectronics.   Read Original Article>>

Public relations and web 2.0

The rules have forever changed.

The release:

Social media require ‘Community Relations 2.0′

Boston College researchers find real-time advocacy challenges long-standing corporate practices

Chestnut Hill, Mass. (October 30, 2009) — The rise of social media and real-time advocacy have re-written the community outreach rules companies followed for decades. But many American firms are dragging their feet as they approach “Community Relations 2.0,” Boston College researchers report in the November issue of Harvard Business Review.

Gone are the days when controversial projects were rolled out strictly along the corporate timeline. A worker’s blog rant unveiled major problems with a multi-billion dollar Kaiser Permanente IT initiative, putting the company in the spotlight and on the defensive.

Today, a disgruntled customer can take the world stage, as did a frustrated cable subscriber who videotaped a Comcast repairman snoozing on the couch and broadcast the now infamous nap across the world via the Internet.

Social media such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube, as well as tens of thousands of blogs and wikis have exponentially increased the speed of formation of these communities and magnified their impact and reach, report Carroll School of Management professors Gerald C. Kane, Robert G. Fichman and John Gallaugher and co-author John Glaser, the CIO of Partners HealthCare.

“These new social media tools let people organize extremely quickly around any issue or event that inspires them,” said co-author Kane, an assistant professor of information systems at BC. “Within hours, these virtual communities can grow to hundreds of thousands, potentially reaching millions more in short order. Companies and organizations caught unprepared can find themselves in a media firestorm, just ask companies like Domino’s Pizza, Amazon.com, Comcast, and many others have.”

These online communities form quickly, according to the researchers, and can disperse just as fast. They’re leadership can change often. Yet mobile platforms – from cell phones to PDAs to laptops – keep members on the alert, ready to push the agenda or spring into action. These communities vary widely in purpose, membership and tone – from friendly and collaborative to openly hostile. The same tools have also played central roles in recent international events, such as the 2008 Mumbai Terror Attacks and the 2009 Iranian election protests.

But for companies in this brave new Community Relations 2.0 world, executives must know that these real-time communities differ from their online predecessors – such as listservs and message boards – in critical ways, namely:

• Deep relationships form quickly online and information can be dispersed without delay.
• Rapid organization allows these communities to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people in a few hours.
• Knowledge creation and synthesis take place in a far more deliberate fashion.
• Information filtering tools like search, ratings and keywords allow people to identify information that is important to them and then act accordingly.

   

Companies need to understand these new social media – their benefits as well as their risks – and devote strategic resources to engage these communities in genuine discussions. For example, many physicians from Partners HealthCare are active on Sermo, an independently operated network for physicians, and more than 3,500 employees have joined an informal and unofficial Partners community on Facebook. Many patients belong to the social network PatientsLikeMe. For Partners, these online communities represent strategic opportunities to interact with stakeholders on issues of common interest.

“Whether or not managers, leaders, or politicians even know the difference between Wikipedia, Facebook, or Twitter, they need to begin learning how to monitor and respond quickly to trends in these social media communities,” Kane said. “Doing so, they may not only prevent the spread of damaging information, but they may also find valuable partners in their organization’s mission. Companies like Dell, Starbucks and Kaiser-Permanente have moved beyond purely reactive strategies to proactively reach out to customers as an important resource for customer service, marketing, and new product development.”

Printable electronics from Xerox

Via KurzweilAI.net — The entire concept of printable electronics is incredibly cool.

Xerox Claims Printable Electronics Breakthrough

PC magazine, Oct. 27, 2009   Xerox has announced a new silver ink that is apparently a breakthrough in printable electronics. The possibilities range from printing on flexible plastic, paper and cardboard, and fabric, to printing RFID tags on almost anything. Read Original Article>>

Crating options

Crating is a vital and not particularly easy task when preparing items for shipping, transport and storage. Done inadequately or worse still, poorly, your valuables, presentation materials, artwork or other item will likely not arrive at its destination in the condition it was in when originally packed up and crated. Because proper crating is so important when shipping or transporting items, leaving the task to professionals is a great option.

Navis Pack & Ship crating offers both individuals and businesses professional crating service for any item, including items with special needs. Here’s a partial list of items Navis is prepared to handle: antiques, fine art, computers & technology, equipment & machinery, medical equipment, furniture, household palletizing, engines & parts, and crates for glass, slate and marble.

Navis offers specialty crates including: ASTM-style crates, custom crates, ISPM-15 certified international crates, heat-treated crates, shipping crates, reusable crates, slat crates and wooden crates.

Your crating needs  may be as big as moving your personal household or maybe even an entire business, as simple as getting your trade show materials to the convention center, or as specialized as transporting a priceless Old Masters oil painting. Navis Pack & Ship crating services will pack your item and get it to the destination in the same condition the item was in before being shipped.

From the goNavis link in the first graf:

Thousands of businesses and residential customers have come to trust Navis Pack & Ship’s unique fine art, computer, trade show, furniture and equipment crating solutions–honed over 25 years of real world testing in packaging goods for safe transport and shipping. Navis Pack & Ship crating services include custom crates and/or palletizing any fragile, large, awkward or valuable item you have, onsite in your home or office or offsite at one of our well-equipped warehouses.

Improving dye-sensitized solar cells

Efficiencies are going up and costs and holding steady or falling. All this bodes well for the future of solar power.

From the link:

Dye-sensitized solar cells are flexible and cheap to make, but they tend to be inefficient at converting light into electricity. One way to boost the performance of any solar cell is to increase the surface area available to incoming light. So a group of researchers at Georgia Tech has made dye-sensitized solar cells with a much higher effective surface area by wrapping the cells around optical fibers. These fiber solar cells are six times more efficient than a zinc oxide solar cell with the same surface area, and if they can be built using cheap polymer fibers, they shouldn’t be significantly more expensive to make.

The advantage of a fiber-optic solar-cell system over a planar one is that light bounces around inside an optical fiber as it travels along its length, providing more opportunities to interact with the solar cell on its inner surface and producing more current. “For a given real estate, the total area of the cell is higher, and increased surface area means improved light harvesting and more energy,” says Max Shtein, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan who was not involved with the research.

Solar on fiber: An optical fiber (left) is covered in dye-coated zinc-oxide nanowires (closeup, right). Both images were made using a scanning electron microscope.
Credit: Angewandte Chemie

Finding small business grants

All you need to know about this linked article is in the subhead:

‘Small business grants are rare, but they do exist. Here’s how to find them.”

Business cards from the 1400s to today

The history of the humble business card can be traced back to China in the 1400s, but the story takes off in 17th century France with visiting cards, or visite biletes. These were introduced during the reign of the sun king, Louis XIV. The first use of a hand-sized card for business also dates to the 1600s in London with tradecards. These predecessors to the modern business card were used for advertisement and provided maps to shops distributing the tradecards.

Before printing technology made newspapers and periodicals widespread and cost-effective, business cards were a primary source for advertising and communication. Printing technology also worked in the favor of business and visiting cards by adding color and other options. In the mid-1800s visiting cards became popular in the United States and eventually led to a firm distinction between visiting and business cards.

Today business cards are a staple of business communication and introduction even with the advent of digital alternatives. If you are looking for an online business card, letterhead or customized envelope solution, hit the link way up there in the first sentence to head to Businesscards.com. You have free reign to create any design for your card using the Businesscards.com editing tool, and you’re offered multiple printing options.

From the link:

Create custom designs & print your business cards, letterhead and envelopes with our online editor. More than just an ordering system, putting creative control in your hands with powerful desktop publishing features. Start with our hundreds of layouts, graphics, logos, backgrounds and templates pre-loaded in our editor for your business card and stationery, or upload your own backgrounds and graphics to create professional templates that can be modified for endless possibilities.

A corporate housing option

Corporate housing is a fixture of the business world and at its best corporate housing is simple. Simple for the company providing the accommodations and simple for the person moving into the corporate housing.  PC Housing offers a corporate housing solution that meets both standards. PC Housing works to meet the specific needs of each of its corporate clients and is proud of its long-standing relationships based on that high level of service.

PC Housing even guarantees its service. If for some reason a PC Housing client is not not satisfied with the accommodations or service and the problem isn’t fixed within two days, that client gets $500 back.

From the PC Housing link:

Human Resource and Travel Managers Nationwide have relied upon PC Housing to provide their new employees and transferees consistent quality housing and superior service for over a decade.

To these industry professionals, PC Housing is not just another Vendor. Instead, we are a valued service partner they count on to assist their employees in getting settled in a new area and workplace.

Our apartments, condominiums, and homes are all fully furnished and accessorized with all bed and bath linens, a fully equipped kitchen, a comfortably set bedroom, all utilities, cable, local telephone service, high speed internet, and parking. Most of our accommodations even come with a washer and dryer. Housekeeping is also available.

PC Housing takes a lot of the hassle and headache out of corporate housing and makes the living part of relocation simple for both the person making the move and the company.

Pros and cons for trust deed investments

Are you looking for an investment vehicle combining strong return-on-investment and still considered a secure bet?  Trust deed investments may be the answer. Trust deed investments have the potential to offer high returns relatively safely, but this investment vehicle isn’t for everyone. Like with any investment you should take the time to learn about the pros and cons of trust deed investment.

Trust deed investments come with one major entry on the con side of the balance sheet — very little liquidity. If you need your investment money at a certain time or on short notice trust deed investments are not for you. Another potential con is you might end up owning the property behind your trust deed investment.

The pro side has its one major entry as well, and it’s pretty strong — trust deed investments are one of the safest high-yield investment vehicles out there. With trust deed investments your investment is secured by a deed of trust against a property owned by the borrower of your money. A trust deed investment allows you put money into real estate through an intermediary and typically you only deal with the outlay and return aspect of investing in property.

From the link, eight points from Federal Home Loans Corporation on trust deed investments:

Having provided all the pitfalls and negatives, you should not lose your money in trust deeds. Let’s recap:

1. Keep your money in the bank if you need it.
2. You may end up owning the property.
3. Keep your broker honest; use the title company.
4. Demand paperwork in your name.
5. Understand how value is determined.
6. Invest in first trust deeds only.
7. Be aware of the occasional requirement for the temporary investment of additional funds.
8. Adjust with the market.

But then again …

Right after this positive post, I hit you with this:

But while there is a growing consensus that the so-called Great Recession ended some point earlier this year, some economists think that one quarter of solid economic growth does not indicate that a Great Recovery has begun.

Unemployment continues to rise and about 30% of factory capacity remains idle. Credit for businesses is still tight and consumer confidence is falling.

It’s also worth remembering that the economy grew as recently as the second quarter of 2008, when rebate checks sent to most taxpayers created a sugar rush of economic activity and a 1.5% rise in GDP.

Of course, that growth wasn’t enough to prevent the meltdown in financial markets last fall that touched off sharp declines over the next three quarters.

This sounds like …

… some pretty promising news.

From the link:

For the first time since the recession began, the portion of companies planning to add employees in the next six months outnumbered those expecting to cut jobs, according to this month’s quarterly survey of economists at 78 firms by the National Association for Business Economics.

Stimulus money going to the power grid

Almost three and half billion dollars of stimulus money in fact. This ARRA cash will be stretched by a requirement for matching private investment.

From the link:

President Obama on Tuesday announced a $3.4 billion federal investment to modernize the country’s outdated power grid.

The money will go to 100 projects in 49 states to add automated substations, digital transformers, electric meters in homes and other high-tech equipment to create a “smart” grid.

“We’re going to create an energy superhighway,” Mr. Obama said when making the announcement at Florida Power & Light Co.’s DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Arcadia, Fla., one of the country’s biggest solar-power facilities.

Taking care of small moving needs

Sometimes moving doesn’t require the full-court press of relocated an entire household of possessions. Maybe you’re a student moving into a dorm or apartment at school, or a senior downsizing from a home to a retirement apartment or senior living facility, or possibly you have a second home by the lake or for vacations and need relocate some possessions to the second home. The answer for any of these scenarios is the goNavis Navis Pack & Ship for small moving needs.

Traditional full-household moving services can be expensive, and if you only have small moving needs you can end up paying for unused service if your total move comes in under a minimum weight fee. Navis’s Pack & Ship has no minimum because it’s designed for small moves. The service can even save money over do-it-yourself moves when you take the total cost into account. Costs such as time spent, moving vehicle rental, fuel and more.

Hit the link for the full story on Pack & Ship from goNavis.

Here’s a sample from the link:

Why large movers, residential customers, retirement communities, and commercial shippers look to Navis Pack & Ship for small moving solutions:

1. Safety: We ensure that your small move shipment of furniture, heirlooms, or other fragile, large, awkward, and valuable items are delivered intact, on time, on budget, and with the pick up and delivery options that best suit your needs.

2. Hassle-free: Moving is stressful. We take care of all your small move headaches from anywhere in the US and Canada to anywhere in the world.

3. Temporary storage: If you’re a student who needs storage for the summer, or a senior who needs storage during your transition, we can ship your small move to our warehouse and deliver your goods to you later.

4. No hidden charges: We never perform a small move or handle a shipment without providing you with a clear, written estimate of our price and services.

5. Protection: Transit insurance is available on everything we pack and ship.

ARPA-E

Government funded skunk works for energy.

From the link:

Its mission is to identify “revolutionary advances in fundamental sciences,” then translate these advances into “technological innovations,” particularly in areas where industry won’t do this on its own because the technology is considered too risky. In some ways ARPA-E is supposed to be for energy technologies what DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is for the military. That agency had its hand in the development of a number of revolutionary new technologies, including Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet.

The first batch of ARPA-E projects is certainly fascinating. It includes projects that could improve the performance of current energy technologies by many times, slashing the cost of solar panels and batteries, for example. If they succeed, the world could be a different place. Renewable energy could out-compete fossil fuels without the help of subsidies and long-range electric cars could become widely affordable, challenging the dominance of the internal combustion engine.

 

Digial Rights Management …

… illustrated

.

flickr / Martin Krzywinski

This image is great. For the life of me I remain astounded by the success of the iPod/iTunes. I understand the branding quick-to-market aspects, but the iPod is a terrible tech device and standard. Ridiculous proprietary files, a history of just crippling DRM and many, many, many better and less expensive options out there. I know multiple people who lost massive collections of iTunes music because of the non-consumer/non-user friendly backbone of the service.

Zinc-air batteries in the wild

These rechargeables  are expected to triple the storage of lithium-ion batteries.

From the link:

A Swiss company says it has developed rechargeable zinc-air batteries that can store three times the energy of lithium ion batteries, by volume, while costing only half as much. ReVolt, of Staefa, Switzerland, plans to sell small “button cell” batteries for hearing aids starting next year and to incorporate its technology into ever larger batteries, introducing cell-phone and electric bicycle batteries in the next few years. It is also starting to develop large-format batteries for electric vehicles.

The battery design is based on technology developed at SINTEF, a research institute in Trondheim, Norway. ReVolt was founded to bring it to market and so far has raised 24 million euros in investment. James McDougal, the company’s CEO, says that the technology overcomes the main problem with zinc-air rechargeable batteries–that they typically stop working after relatively few charges. If the technology can be scaled up, zinc-air batteries could make electric vehicles more practical by lowering their costs and increasing their range.