Archive for May 11th, 2008

Swedish company Manodo, has developed a gadget you install at home to, as Gizmodo puts it, “tell you everything you’ll ever want to know (and maybe some things you don’t) about the resources you’re consuming,” thereby making you “OCD” about your energy habits.

As EcoGeek describes it,

The device gives household residents all the facts about how much and what’s being used, right down to the number of pounds of CO2 emissions from your last bath. Imagine having Al Gore living in your house reminding you each time you forget to turn off the lights. The intent is to keep residents aware of how much resources are being consumed through daily activities… and maybe guilt them into changing their ways. The monitor also provides current information like the weather and when the next tram is scheduled to arrive at the nearest stop. Now being tested in the hallways of 15 apartments, the Manodo project isn’t all about negative feedback. When good green levels in the apartment are reached, a green smiley face appears on the display.

TreeHugger calls it “the Huge Brother of energy saving,” and Ubergizmo says it “pulverizes your brain with facts about just how much power… your home currently sips.”

I’m a sucker for useful information, and if constant feedback could help me change my habits in ways that would save me money, I wouldn’t complain.

Don Willmott’s blog posts are provided by LifeWire, a part of The New York Times Company.

For more visit Source:[green.yahoo]

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Reuters is reporting that shares of Blinkx, a publicly traded video search site based in the U.K., climbed 50 percent on Friday following rumors that corporate giants Google and News Corp. may be vying for an acquisition.

On Friday morning, Blinkx shares were trading at 36.75 pence, their …

Source [The social]

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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — E-Trade Financial Corp. said it decided in April to exit the retail mortgage origination business, its last remaining loan origination channel, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late Friday. The company stated it will partner with a third celebration company to provide customers access to real estate loans after it exits the business. E-Trade […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

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This post was updated at 10:34 a.m. PDT.

News Corp.-owned social-networking site MySpace has announced a new initiative called Data Availability, a way for members to share profile data with other social and community sites across the Web.

Co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe, Chief Operating Officer Amit …

Source [The social]

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ROME (Dow Jones)–Italy’s newly appointed economy minister, Giulio Tremonti, Saturday stated the country’s banks would have to pay higher taxes unless mortgage costs for families are reduced. “Banks and oil companies must begin to make some sacrifices,” Tremonti stated during the recording of a say TV show to be aired on Sunday, when asked who would have to make sacrifices […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

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There are very few rules on microblogging platform Twitter. But if you use it for unsolicited “tweets” about male enhancement products, watch out: Twitter has started to shut down accounts that it has flagged as “spam,” reported blogger Jesse Stay.

Twitter employees confirmed the new tactic in their developer forum. “…

Source [The social]

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If you’re among the fraction of Facebook users who have bumped up against the social-networking service’s 5,000-friends cap, breathe easy: you might well soon be able to climb into the upper reaches of four figures’ worth.

That’s according to a Friday post on TechCrunch, where Michael Arrington reported that Facebook is getting ready to lift the limit.

As Arrington wrote, there are only about 1,000 Facebook users–out of 70 million–who have reached the cap, but “a disproportionate percentage of bloggers and press are at the limit, so the issue tends to get a lot more attention than it otherwise would.”

The news is not official yet, but TechCrunch recommended that Facebook imposed the limit because of scaling problems.

For most people, though, this will be a non-issue. As one of my colleagues put it, “Thank goodness. I was just 4,750 friends away from bumping into that ridiculous cap.”

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I’ll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South’s most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I’m doing on Twitter.

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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Weblin is a service that grants people to have avatars that appear on the Web pages they visit and communicate with any other Weblin users who are visiting the same pages.

(Credit: Weblin)

If you’re a social media addict but think that visiting regular Web sites is a lonely experience, you might want to take a look at Weblin.

Created by a German company, Weblin is designed to make the experience of surfing Web sites social–or make services like Facebook or MySpace.com more social. It does so by letting users create an avatar that they have the ability to then, effectively, take with them as they move around from site to site.

If they then find themselves on a site that’s being visited at the same time by other Weblin users, then they have the ability to communicate with each other.

Weblin’s main model is a small download, but it is also about to launch a light version that’ll require no downloads or plug-ins and will simply auto-assign users an avatar rather than them getting to choose their own.

(Credit: Weblin)

The main Weblin service is a small download that allows users to register and then create their own avatar. But next week, Weblin plans to launch a light version of the service that requires no download or plug-in and which assigns an avatar to everyone who uses it.

That means that users would have less control over the experience, but at the same time they’d be able to use Weblin without doing anything except use the Web. Additionally, the light version won’t require registration. Rather, users will just have to enter a URL into a Weblin page.

Down the line, Weblin states, it hopes to make it possible to integrate Weblin with users’ existing avatars from some virtual worlds.

For the time being, of course, Weblin’s utility seems like it only comes from there being a critical mass of users and when users visit sites that are popular with others employing the service. But over time, if it grows massive enough, it could provide a fun substitute to the traditional way of using Web sites.

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I’ll begin in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South’s most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I’m doing on Twitter.

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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For something so focused on navigation and geography, it’s a bit ironic that location-based social networks have to work their way through such a jungle: carrier partnerships, handset compatibility, creepy privacy concerns, and what-have-you. But one small New York start-up, Socialight, says it’s found a route: developers, developers, …

Source [The social]

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Sheryl CanterThis post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

At a congressional hearing last Wednesday, Howard Frumkin, a senior official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stated there was strong scientific evidence of major health problems due to climate change in the next few decades, including:

  • Heat waves that put kids and the elderly at risk
  • Danger of droughts and floods from extreme weather
  • Increased food-borne and water-borne infectious diseases
  • Worsened air pollution due to higher temperatures
  • Migration into new areas of vector-borne diseases like malaria

At least he got to say it. Last October, CDC testimony on the health risks from global warming was censored by the White Home.

Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif), who chaired the hearing, stated she suspected that “a layer of screening” continues to limit what CDC officials are granted to state.

While insisting that CDC had no position on EPA’s pending regulatory decisions, Frumpkin stated, “…there is strong evidence that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas … and there is strong evidence that climate change affects public health in many ways.”

For more visit Source:[green.yahoo]

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