I have a few flights planned for this summer, and I’m not looking forward to them. It’s not just the long security lines, crammed seats, and lack of pillows on board.

It’s my eco-conscience.

The fact is that flying is a significant and growing source of climate change. Globally, aviation contributes roughly 2-3 percent of all carbon emissions.

High impact
That might not sound like a significant number — cement manufacturing, after all, contributes at least 5 percent of all emissions.

But carbon from airplanes is emitted high in the atmosphere, which means it has a disproportionate effect on climate change. In fact, scientists attribute a “forcing factor” of two to two-and-a-half times to airplanes’ base emissions. Thus, the contribution to climate change might be more like 6-8 percent. In industrialized nations like the UK, where affluence enables more air travel, estimates are as high as 12 percent.  For more … visit Source:[green.yahoo]

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NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is sharply lower after more news of weakness in the housing sector and executive shake-ups at two major banks. The Commerce Department stated construction spending fell in April because of the housing slump. That was offset somewhat by strength in other construction outlays. Meanwhile, investors were reminded of the ongoing problems […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

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Shashi Seth, the executive leading the effort to make money from the YouTube video-sharing site, has left Google, the company confirmed Thursday.

“Shashi was a valued member of both the Google and YouTube teams, and we wish him well in his new endeavors,” the company said in a statement. Asked about plans for his replacement, the company stated, “We have a talented team leading our monetization efforts at YouTube and we’re excited about the future.”

The departure was reported earlier Tuesday by Om Malik, who stated Seth now is chief revenue officer of Cooliris. That Kleiner-Perkins-funded start-up is the developer of PicLens, a swoopy and dynamic browser tool to look at pics.

YouTube monetization is job No. 1 at Google, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has declared. Google is working on new YouTube ad options, and it recently added a YouTube buzz targeting option that lets advertisers place ads on videos that are gaining fast in popularity.

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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Facebook has made a number of changes to the behind-the-scenes workings of its developer platform, according to a blog post Monday by engineer Pete Bratach.

For the most part, the updates are geared toward two things: letting users keep tabs on spammy apps, and giving developers and app creators more …

Source [The social]

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Buzznet, the social network whose CEO told CNET News.com in April that he’d like to build “the next Viacom,” has launched a sister site: Celebuzz, a community for enthusiasts of celebrity news and gossip. It’s been in private beta for some time now.

Already dominated by the …

Source [The social]

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This post was updated at 1:21 p.m. PDT with comment from Tim Kendall.

NEW YORK–It would’ve been cool: Facebook director of monetization Tim Kendall hinted Monday that the company would offer “a product” to help third-party companies “accelerate” participation in its developer platform when asked whether the company had any plans to start directly monetizing the technology.

Since no further detail was provided, and Kendall had stated that this would deal with “whether an application is within Facebook or outside of Facebook,” this reporter inferred that he’d meant something involving development assistance for Facebook Connect, its upcoming data portability project. With Facebook Connect, third-party sites will be able to incorporate Facebook identity credentials into their own services.

But the “product” will just involve encouraging them to promote user participation through Facebook Ads, Kendall confirmed to CNET News.com later. He wasn’t specifically referring to Facebook Connect. That’s something that Facebook has offered since November, and it currently encourages developers to purchase ads to spread the word about marketing campaigns on Facebook’s developer platform. Up until this point, the social network hasn’t directly profited from its developer platform, and making part of the code open source isn’t going to rake in the cash either.

Kendall was talking on a panel at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s IAB Leadership Forum on User-Generated Content & Social Media here.

Facebook, like most other social-media companies, has not had particularly stellar revenues. The IAB conference on Monday was designed to address that issue, and possible solutions, for New York’s ad industry.

Some companies have already had successful advertising campaigns by using Facebook’s developer platform for free, Kendall stated. One of them is FedEx, he stated, which grants users to package up a selection of virtual “gifts” or any other kind of digital attachment into a “virtual FedEx package” and share it with their friends on the social network.

“It’s gimmicky, but it’s a great example of leveraging the hooks that Facebook provides, creating social context,” Kendall explained, “and FedEx does a great job of subtly incorporating their brand into the whole experience.”

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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Here’s a tip for East Coast geeks who are gearing up for this week’s World wide web Week New York: Make a schedule. And leave room for last-minute additions.

The first citywide tribute to the Web revolution, sanctioned by the office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and set to run June …

Source [The social]

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SEC: Bank Of America Registration For Countrywide ‘Effective’ Last Update: 5/29/2008 7:11:03 AM DOW JONES NEWSWIRES The Securities and Exchange Commission stated Thursday it declared effective a registration of 132.8 million shares of Bank Of America Corp. (BAC) to be issued under the company’s proposed merger with Countrywide Financial Corp. (CFC). Earlier this year, Bank of America agreed to buy troubled […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

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Facebook has made a number of changes to the behind-the-scenes workings of its developer platform, according to a blog post Monday by engineer Pete Bratach.

For the most part, the updates are geared toward two things: letting users keep tabs on spammy apps, and giving developers and app creators more …

Source [The social]

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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 current briefing on polar sea ice.

Although 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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