A helpful search for my favorite hard-to-find brew.

(Credit: BeerMenus)

BeerMenus.com, I’ve been dreaming about you at night. And now you’ve jumped into my world. We’re a match made in heaven.

Here’s how it works. Much like a boozier version of Menupages, BeerMenus aggregates bars’ …

Source [The social]

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I’m sure my family would enjoy our backyard campfires just fine if we’d paid for our fire pit. But the fact that the hammered-copper disc landed in our backyard for free adds luster to those starry evenings. I also get a warm feeling when I see the same model for sale at Smith & Hawken for $300. 

Getting stuff through a Freecycle group is satisfying that way. It’s like a shopping buzz without the hangover — or bill. You get the same thrill of the chase, the same satisfaction of telling the story behind your discovery. Each Freecycle item is one less deposit to the local landfill, which is good. 

And it’s free. All that’s required is effort. And not much at that. 

Instead of throwing out unwanted furniture, dishes, bikes, or electronics, people in “reuse groups” give them away to other people in their community who want them. The givers and takers find each other on the web. The first step is to sign up for the reuse group nearest you (minimizing travel time when spot something you want). 

The granddaddy of all reuse groups is Freecycle.org, with more than 5 million global members the globe and counting. Search here to find the Freecycle group nearest you. 

Other reuse groups are less well known, but are just as successful in putting perfectly good stuff in people’s happy hands. Yahoo! has compiled a master list of reuse groups around the world and plotted them on a map. Use it to find a reuse group near you. 

The next step? Check your email. 

Stuff you want to give away, you post as “offered.” Whoever wants it responds to you directly, and off you go. 

For stuff you see offered and want to go get, it’s the same process in reverse. Let the giver know you’re interested, and set up a time and place to make the handoff. Yes, the whole thing is based on trust. It also works. 

Reuse groups keep an estimated 300 tons of waste out of landfills every day, according to a University of Iowa study. This profile of Freecycle founder Deron Beal further illustrates the power of the idea in words and pictures. 

In our own home, we’ve given away golf clubs, children’s toys, and outgrown bicycles, clearing space in our garage. We’ve added: the fire ring, a garden hose, and a guitar that works fine but sounds awful. Talent is harder to pass around.

Sam Silverstein is the editor of Yahoo! Green.

For more visit Source:[green.yahoo]

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Drug Combo Could Lower Diabetes Complications and Costs ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 28, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — And, No-Cost, Noninvasive Tool Detects Risk for Undiagnosed Diabetes Plus: Diabetes-Affected Pregnancies Double in Past Seven Years A highly detailed mathematical simulation model can help people with undiagnosed diabetes identify whether they likely have the disease and can predict ways for dramatically reducing the […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

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This past week at the Web 2.0 Expo has been a great chance to meet up with other bloggers and come face to face with some of the companies we write about every day. It’s also a great time to see how other people work, as we’re all packed into small seats in big auditoriums, or scouring rooms for the last remaining outlet to get the necessary wattage to keep writing.

A side effect of that was seeing our own Caroline McCarthy in action, typing away. In case you’re wondering part of the reason she’s so productive, it’s her keyboard skills–which I think put her in the league of a court stenographer. If you’d like to know how you stack up in the typing world, there’s TypeRacer–a wonderfully simple game that pits you up against other typers, and of course your 100-plus key stead.

The goal is to type as well as you can to get your car from point A to point B. All the while you can compete with other users in real time and “race” across the landscape of the English language.

The one nice thing about TypeRacer compared with Keybr (review) is that it uses real words. It’s also a stickler about errors, requiring you to go back and make any fixes before continuing the race, keeping lead-finger slopsters from winning based on speed alone. I’m not really sure if TypeRacer really helps you type any faster, but it sure is fun.

What’s your score?

[via Kotaku]

See how your typing skills stack up with TypeRacer. And yes, in case you were wondering: Even the fastest cars are still VW Beetles.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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SAN FRANCISCO–”It turns out that the Internet has worked pretty well,” industry mainstay Marc Andreessen told an audience at the Web 2.0 Expo here Thursday morning.

Andreessen’s keynote interview with Federated Media chief John Battelle was somewhat of a history lesson into the distant past of the …

Source [The social]

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Last week I discovered I was using Twitter too much. After an hour on the internet with Twhirl, I got this message in the app: “Limit exceeded, paused 5 min.” The error condition cleared up shortly, but the next morning, after just a few minutes, it came back and did not resolve. I had to go back to accessing Twitter via the Twitter.com site, where I still had access.

I had been bitten by a deficiency in Twitter’s API (application programming interface) which allows alternate interfaces like Twhirl to work at all. The problem, it turns out, is temporarily fixable for end users, but Twitter is going to need to re-code its API if to make the Twitter platform for third-party apps and services more robust. And other Web 2.0 architects would do well to study this issue so they don’t fall into the same hole.

I was schooled on the ins and outs of the Twitter API in part by my followers on Twitter, but also by Oren Michels, CEO of Mashery, a company that offers API services to Web 2.0 companies. Here’s the lowdown:

The Twitter service limits the number of updates a user can get from it to 70 per hour. There’s no limit if you’re using Twitter.com, but if you want to use Twhirl or Friendfeed or Flock to read your Twitter account, the Twitter service keeps track of how many requests you’re sending it and cuts you off if you exceed the limit.

Who's stealing my Twitter updates? Oh, wait, it's me.

The problem is that all the Twitter apps you use count to your total. It’s cumulative. Once an app, or more importantly, a Web service, has your Twitter login credentials, it can keep requesting Twitter updates on your behalf even you aren’t using the service anymore. And that’s what happened to me: I use Twhirl heavily, but not that heavily. It’s the other dozen or so services I’ve signed up to over the past few months that were pinging Twitter for me and using up my allotment of updates.

There’s a temporary fix for people in my boat, and it’s very simple: Change your Twitter password. That’ll cause all the previously-configured connections to Twitter to break, and they’ll stop using up your API calls. Just re-configure that apps you do want to use with your new password and you’re back in business. Thanks to my Twitter friend Scott Mahan for this tip. But this is a hack, and an inelegant one.

A superior solution would be for Twitter to authorize access to its API by user and application, so users, or the Twitter team itself, could throttle or disconnect just the apps that hog the API without cutting people off from apps that are working fine.

The new OAuth protocol is designed specifically to solve this issue for all services. It combines user credentials with application keys to let developers and users control access to on the web services not just based on user ID, but which app wants to use the service. Fire Eagle, the new location caching service by Yahoo, uses OAuth in just this way, and it has some nice frills on top: It gives users a dashboard showing them which apps they’ve authorized to their Fire Eagle data. It also allows credentials to apps to expire after a certain time, so you’re not left with a lot of forgotten apps pinging your personal data.

OAuth is a lot like OpenID (and in fact is modeled after OpenID in some respects) except it’s designed to authorize program-to-program communication, not user-to-service logins.

Flickr, a pre-OAuth service, also makes for a good example. When you want to give an app access to your Flickr account, the app kicks off a process on Flickr itself in which you authorize the specific app to act on your behalf.

If Twitter is to survive (and potentially make money) as a service provider, it’s going to need some way to let apps get priority access to data via an API, and its current login-based throttle won’t cut it.

Since we’re moving towards a Web world in which services and social networks are far more important than their interfaces — and where the ideal interface builders are often not employed by the companies that make the services they’re writing apps for — getting APIs right is critical. Twitter, as much as I love it, got it wrong. I hope architects of new Web 2.0 services don’t repeat the same errors.

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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SAN FRANCISCO–”It turns out that the Internet has worked pretty well,” industry mainstay Marc Andreessen told an audience at the Web 2.0 Expo here Thursday morning.

Andreessen’s keynote interview with Federated Media chief John Battelle was somewhat of a history lesson into the distant past of the …

Source [The social]

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U.S. stocks set to face a less-friendly Fed First-quarter GDP, employment report, earnings could test market By Nick Godt, MarketWatch Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Apr 26, 2008 NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stocks will face renewed pressure next week, with investors facing not only another heavy week of earnings, but also key data that may confirm the U.S. economy is […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

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This post is by James Wang, Ph.D., a climate scientist at Environmental Defense Fund.

This month, while Arctic sea ice hits its annual wintertime high (such as it is; see previous post), Antarctic sea ice reaches its summertime low.

We’ve written before about the British Antarctic Survey’s report of a vast ice berg on the verge of breaking off the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Here’s more on what’s happening at the South Pole from NASA’s recent briefing on polar sea ice.

Even though the Arctic and Antarctic are both at the Earth’s poles, they’re not mirror images of each other. There are some fundamental differences between them. Antarctica is a land mass surrounded by an ocean, while the Arctic is basically an ocean surrounded by land.

Unlike the Arctic, the Antarctic typically has little perennial sea ice. There are two main reasons:

• Because there are no surrounding continents, Antarctic sea ice can float northward into warmer waters where it melts.
• Because it’s at a lower latitude, Antarctic sea ice receives more direct sunlight and heat in summer.

Nearly all the sea ice that forms during the winter melts during the summer.

  Click to view Windows Media Viewer streaming video.

Also unlike the Arctic, which is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth, surface measurements and satellite data in Antarctica haven’t revealed overall trends in temperature or sea ice area.

Warming and sea ice loss in some areas — notably the Antarctic Peninsula, where the iceberg is breaking from Wilkins Ice Shelf — have been balanced by little temperature change or even cooling and sea ice gain in other areas.

Still, that doesn’t prove there’s no warming trend in Antarctica. Satellite data has only been available since the 1970s. Earlier observations from whaling ships suggest that there was a greater sea ice area before satellite observations were available.

If Antarctica isn’t warming — or if it’s warming at a slower rate — it may be due to the atmospheric vortex circulation that surrounds it (from being a land mass centered at a pole and surrounded by ocean). This tends to hold in cold air. But that’s just one hypothesis that scientists are exploring.

For more visit Source:[green.yahoo]

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