2008 August 15 | money news blog

For more visit Source:[green.yahoo]

15 08 2008

Frugal intermediates guide to green

Posted by: admin in Investing World

Huddler’s tight-knit community of eco-minded consumers share their knowledge about sustainable products and services ranging from electric automobiles to organic toothpaste. Click here to participate.

Go green and save green: Intermediate’s guide

In this guide, you’ll find out how to spend about $1,200 to save over $7,000 in 5 years. Here are recommendations of medium-cost things you can do to help you go green and save green.

Do this…	Conserves this…	Costs…	Saves…	Saves in 5 years…	ROI over 5 years
It’s not fat, it’s insulation
Check for air gaps and fix leaky spots with weather stripping and caulking.	Energy	$250 average for a home energy rating. Caulking costs less than $1 per window, and weather stripping is under $10 per door. (So for a home with 12 windows and 3 doors, repairs would cost about $42.)	Up to 25% of your heating bill ($458 per winter based on 2007 averages for heating oil bills).	$2,290	784%
Add insulation around your existing water heater.	Energy	$16-$35 for an insulation blanket	Over $30 per year in excess heat loss.	$150	588%
Get smart, get energized
Get smart powerstrips to help keep your vampire power use down.	Energy	$45 for a Smart Power Strip Saver	$20 per month ($240 per year).	$1,200	2667%
Install a programmable thermostat.	Energy	$30-$150 (good mid-range unit should cost $50-$80).	$150 per year	$750	1500%
Install exterior solar shades, like EZ Snap. They shade glass and stop up to 90% of heat before it enters your home.	Energy	$360 (at $3/sq-ft for a dozen 10 sq-ft windows).	Solar shades/blinds can cut up to 25% off your cooling bill. (Or about $150 every year.)	$750	208%
Buy Energy Star appliances when you need to replace something.	Energy	$300 more for a new Energy Star clothes water.	Replacing a pre-1994 clothes washer with an Energy Star model can save a family $110 a year on utility bills. (In comparison with regular models, it can save you $550 in operating costs over its lifetime.)	$550	183%
		An Energy Star dishwasher costs about $20 more.	Dishwashers represent 2% of home energy costs. Energy Star dishwashers can save you about $13 in energy costs per year.	$65	325%
		An Energy Star refrigerator costs about $30 more.	Refrigerators represent 6% of home energy costs. Energy Star refrigerators can save you about $6 in energy costs per year compared to non-qualified models.	$30	100%
Install timers to help turn off your lights. A 60-watt bulb left on for an hour per day will use 22 kWh per year. If that is cut to 50 minutes each time by using a timer, usage will be only 18 kWh per year.	Energy	$8/timer	Up to $3.20 a year for a four-bulb lamp (given a reduction of 10 minutes a day).	$16	200%
Save water, shower with a friend
Install low-flow showerheads. A family of four, each showering for five minutes a day, uses 700 gallons of water a week; you can cut that amount in half by using low-flow aerating showerheads.	Water, energy	$35 on average	$182 in water and electricity costs per year.	$910	2600%
The great outdoors
Get a rain barrel. A quarter-inch of rain falling on the average home yields a tiny over 200 gallons of water. The average family in the U.S. uses about 120 gallons of water for outdoor watering each day.	Water	$60-180	Rainwater also has more nutrients than tap water. You could save $25 on fertilizers and watering a year (given 20 days of rain).	$125	104%
Use electric yard equipment, instead of gas-powered yard equipment. A single gas-mower puts out more pollution than 43 new cars being driven 12,000 miles. Americans use 800 million gallons of gasoline per year to mow their lawns (which works out to be more than 8.8 gallons of gas per year per household).	Energy (and air and noise pollution)	Electric mowers use only about $3 worth of electricity each year and are cheaper than high-end gas-powered mowers.	$35.20 in gasoline per year.	$176	1,173% (only taking fuel costs into account)

Definitions:

ROI stands for “return on investment.” It is an assessment of whether the investment is justified by the savings it will create. In this case, we look at the ratio of savings during 5 years to the cost of the products (which are frequently one time expenditures).
In the case that the change does not cost anything, you’ll find “N/A” in the ROI column. This stands for “not applicable” because you’re investing only time and brain power. You could also think of the ROI as infinite in those cases.

15 08 2008

World wide web captivated by Bigfoot hunters’ press conference

Posted by: admin in Social Media and Tech

It’s the ultimate summer Friday news story: CNN Webcasting a press conference hosted by the men who claim they nabbed a dead body of the legendary creature known as Bigfoot.

Bigfoot hunter Tom Biscardi held the press conference in Palo Alto, Calif., …

15 08 2008

Wachovia to purchase back about $9 billion of auction-rate securities

Posted by: admin in Investment News

Wachovia to purchase back auction-rate securities Bank reaches agreement with regulators to repurchase about $9 billion By John Spence, MarketWatch Last Update: 8/15/2008 12:45:00 PM BOSTON (MarketWatch) — State and federal regulators said Friday that Wachovia Corp. has agreed to a preliminary settlement related to the sale of roughly $9 billion in auction-rate securities, the market for which collapsed earlier this year. Charlotte, […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

15 08 2008

Winklevoss twins advance to Olympic finals

Posted by: admin in Social Media and Tech

There’s been another victory on the water for ConnectU founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss–even as their court case against Facebook continues to peter out unfavorably.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss racing in Beijing.

(Credit: Row2k.com)

The identical twins, representing the United States in the men’s pair (M2-) event …

15 08 2008

Bank Of America On Two-Day Slide, Down On Mortgage, Legal Woes

Posted by: admin in Investment News

Bank Of America On Two-Day Slide, Down On Mortgage, Legal Woes Last Update: 8/13/2008 2:31:07 PM By Marshall Eckblad Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Shares of Bank of America Corp. (BAC) are having a bad week. And it’s only Wednesday. Investors have headed for Bank of America’s exits over the last few days, pushing the Charlotte bank’s shares […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

15 08 2008

Class action suit means Facebook’s Beacon just won’t go away

Posted by: admin in Social Media and Tech

A class action lawsuit filed earlier this week targets Facebook and eight of the participants in Beacon, its ill-fated advertising product that shared information about third-party site activity with the social network. The set of 20 plaintiffs, mostly residents of Texas, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court …

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

15 08 2008

Street View throws Japan for a loop

Posted by: admin in General News

Does Google know judo? Maybe. Google Street View has pulled a sutemi–a judo throw in which you launch yourself at the ground, risking disadvantage, to topple your opponent–on the entire Floating Kingdom. Although Japan knew that the controversial Google Street View was coming to Japan, the tech savvy country was caught off-guard by Google’s willingness to involve itself in yet another privacy imbroglio.

A pic shoot in Japan, captured by Google Street View.

(Credit: Google)

The pattern is familiar. Automobiles mounted with the Google Street View cameras scoot through a neighborhood, taking 360-degree shots of all they surveil. When the feature finally goes live, amused Netizens find images of people in compromising positions, while others decry the end of innocence–uh, privacy.

In Japan earlier this week, the real-world Google Street View effect saw images of two high-school lovebirds playing dentist, a pic shoot in a park, a person collapsed or asleep in a street, the wife of a CEO of a major Internet services company, and the expected shots of couples entering love hotels, which is basically a motel with hourly rates and vibrating beds. The irony of this is that the Japanese are often obsessive about their privacy and ‘’saving face” can often be taken literally, where people will cross their arms in a big X in front of their bodies or faces when you threaten an unwanted photograph. When I was living there, I even had a shop owner come out and demand that I not take a pic of the exterior of his trendy shoe store. That’s quite a different attitude from what we experience in the U.S., and ironic given the popularity of photography there.

An uncontroversial bird caught in flight by Google Street View in Japan.

(Credit: Google)

On message boards, the debate has mirrored that of other countries, from the expected, ”new technology is ruining our way of life,” to a bear-hugged embrace of finally being able to see what the place you’re supposed to be going to looks like. That’s no small accomplishment in Tokyo’s notorious neighborhoods, where warrens of streets zig, zag, and loop back upon themselves seemingly without logic.

Still, Japanese IT professional Osamu Higuchi was so horrified by Street View that he wrote an open letter to Google explaining how it has acted out of disregard for local standards and could encourage more crime. He called the effects of Street View ”evil.” Heavy stuff.

Despite being a country with one of the lowest per-capita crime rates anywhere in the world, Japan’s media is obsessed with reporting on any change that could lead to an increase. As such, Higuchi’s letter isn’t surprising. His concerns that laundry left out to dry and automobile parking spaces revealed in Japan’s densely packed and often-empty-during-office-hours residential neighborhoods could lead to higher theft rates are not without some merit, at least in theory.

While it’s not as crazy a theory as the Hadron Collider destroying the planet, I’ve yet to see any reports of increased crime anywhere being linked to Google Street View. Also, as JapanProbe and others have noted, Google has been quick to remove offending images and has been using face-blurring algorithms to try to add a modicum of privacy protection.

For more visit Source:[green.yahoo]

15 08 2008

Location, location, location: the true cost of locality

Posted by: admin in Investing World

With the housing market down and oil prices on the rise, inexpensive living seems far less attainable than it did a few years ago.

As costs continue to compound — from housing and transport to goods and foods — it’s tempting to throw up your hands in defeat.

At the Rocky Mountain Institue, instead of thinking of all these as separate problems in need of separate solutions, we like to think of them as systemic problems in need of whole-systems solutions.

Rather than address high gas prices by looking for the cheapest gas in your zip code, we find solutions that’ll reduce our need to use that gas in the first place.

So, too, with housing.

Financial planners often advocate spending less than 30 percent of your annual income on rent or a mortgage. As a result, it seems logical to choose cheaper housing on the outskirts of an urban center.

But typically the farther away your housing is from work and town, the higher and more inflexible your transport costs are.

This makes intuitive sense. Recently, however, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Brookings Institution, and The Center for Transit-Oriented Development tested the idea empirically by measuring the true cost of housing in metropolitan areas around the United States.

The groups’ analysis formed this Affordability Index. Among the findings, people who live close to transit, jobs, schools, and retail — typically in cities and inner-ring suburbs — spend up to $2,100 less per annum on gasoline than residents of outer-ring suburbs.

The Inexpensive Index tool also tracks what $4 a gallon of gasoline means for transport costs and housing location.

The take-home message: Living in city centers, though often a bit pricier, may be more economical in the long run, especially once transport costs are factored in.

At the city or municipality level, co-locating jobs, shops, and housing is one of those integrated solutions that helps lessen the pain of high oil prices. It also builds community, reduces environmental impacts, improves local economies, and enhances convenience.

Examples from Europe to the United Says are confirming the reality of these benefits.

Meanwhile, if moving isn’t in your near-term plans, taking mass transit, carpooling, and using car-sharing services can also ease the pressure on your pocket book.

Maria Stamas is an analyst at Rocky Mountain Institute.

15 08 2008

Twitter kills U.K. SMS updates in cost-cutting move

Posted by: admin in Social Media and Tech

European users of Twitter can no longer receive text message updates on their cell phones, in a temporary move designed to keep the start-up’s telecom bills down.

Twitterers can still use its U.K. number, +44 762 480 1423, to send updates to the site. But that number will …