One piece of advice that should’ve been obvious to participants of last weekend’s Rental Automobile Rally from Long Island City, New York, to Montreal, Quebec: use GPS.
Or so I figured, as one member of a three-person team equipped with a MacBook, an EVDO card, a GPS navigator, a backup GPS navigator, and a radar detector to know when authorities were nearby in case we, uh, pushed the speed limit a little bit. (We only used that in New York say, though, because radar detectors are illegal in Vermont and Quebec.)
The surprising truth? A massive number of the driving squads had nothing but paper maps on them, making the overnight rally–with six backroad checkpoints, most of which were marked with nothing but a set of coordinates, to ensure that you couldn’t just take I-87 the whole way–a pretty difficult affair.
But even with GPS, there was some head-scratching when everyone’s Garmins and TomToms navigated them right to the shores of Lake Champlain and recommended that they take a ferry. The gadgets were right: teams that drove onto the Grand Isle ferry arrived in Montreal hours before teams that chose to drive around the lake.
As for the teams that opted for maps over GPS, most of them made it…eventually.
A new program for Connecticut homeowners is promising to explode the installation of home solar systems in the say. Basically, the say will be providing low interest loans to anyone of “moderate or low” income.
The solar systems will be installed for free, and then the residents will pay a flat low rate, presumably in exchange for the power the panels generate. While the upfront costs of solar panels (often more than $30,000) are out of reach for most homeowners, they actually promise to save money over the life of the panels.
So the say is absorbing the up-front costs of the panels for anyone who makes less than 150% of the median income of their area. The households will pay a monthly rate of less than $120. This should represent a nice steady source of income for the say. And, of course, it has wonderful environmental consequences as well, all for less than the cost of some cable TV packages.
Still, they only expect about 1,000 homeowners to take advantage of the program over the next three years. It seems to me that more people would be interested in taking advantage of the program. It’s possible that CT is limiting applications at first to ensure viability of the program.
Similar solar lease programs have taken off in California as well, and Wal-Mart has installed many of it’s solar panels with similar financing techniques.
So if you’re a Nutmegger, go to the CT Solar Lease site and see if you can get into the program. And if you have any report on how it goes, email me at tips@ecogeek.org.
By Matthias Rieker Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–In banking circles, convergence speak is back. Mergers between investment banks and commercial banks had become rare until JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) purchased Bear Stearns, but falling profits and tougher funding have injured Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEH), Morgan Stanley (MS), Merrill Lynch & […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net
Lotame, a targeted-ad start-up that focuses on social sites, announced Tuesday that it has raised $13 million in a Series B venture round. The lead investor is Emergence Capital Partners, and existing investors Battery Ventures and Hill Crest Management also contributed. The money, per a release, will be used for “…
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Stocks fell sharply Monday, with financial-sector woes coming back to the fore amid reports of more losses at Lehman Brothers and of a bail-out for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Summary: U.S stock fall steeply as financials worries return. More losses From Lehman Brothers Bail-out for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Need good […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net
For the most part, the only person you can socialize with on a handheld GPS navigator is the chick who tells you to turn left after 100 yards.
Garmin wants to change that. The device manufacturer has partnered with location-based app company ULocate to bring its Where.com software, previously available only on compatible cell phones and carriers, to some of its devices. (It hasn’t stated which ones specifically.) This will give Garmin owners access to information that Where aggregates: Yelp reviews, gas price comparisons from GasBuddy, and Where’s own Buddy Beacon software, which shares users’ current locations with friends. It can be hooked up to Where’s Facebook application, too, so you can tell your friends where you’re.
Having Yelp reviews and gas price comparisons on a handheld device is a definite plus, but sharing my location isn’t exactly what first comes to mind when I use an in-car GPS navigator. It’s also been met with some skepticism. Many people thought that location-based social-networking and friend-finding applications would explode after the launch of the iPhone 3G, but we still haven’t seen an epidemic of location-sharing take off. Many cell phone owners seem to be perfectly OK not having everyone on their Facebook friends list know where they are.
Nevertheless, you really can’t go wrong with helping people find cheaper gas prices. And Ms. “After 1.1 miles, take the exit right” hasn’t yet been able to offer me such tips.
Glam Media has continued its international expansion, appointing former DoubleClick and Excite executive Yukihiro Yamamura as CEO of its Glam Japan division. Glam Japan hasn’t actually launched yet, but is slated to go live later this year.
Yamamura had been head of DoubleClick Japan previously, and before that he …
Lotame, a targeted-ad start-up that focuses on social sites, announced Tuesday that it has raised $13 million in a Series B venture round. The lead investor is Emergence Capital Partners, and existing investors Battery Ventures and Hill Crest Management also contributed. The money, per a release, will be used for “…
Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. subsidiary that owns social sites MySpace and Photobucket, has signed on as the latest member of the Family On the web Safety Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to “identifying and promoting best practice, tools and methods in the field of online safety, that also respect free expression.”
As the first social network to become a nationwide teen craze, MySpace became a frequent target for safety advocates–including state lawmakers, who ended up working with the social network to create a safety plan for children and teens on the internet.
Other prominent members of FOSI include AOL, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Google, Loopt, Microsoft, Ning, Verizon, and a number of international telecommunications carriers.
“FOSI has been a dedicated leader in promoting on the web safety and we look forward to contributing to the work they do,” Fox Interactive Media Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a statement Friday. “Internet safety is a key priority for us as we strive to keep all teens safer on the internet. This new membership will further strengthen our efforts and will also grant us to share our expertise with other members.”
FOSI holds an annual conference about on the web safety: this year’s will be on December 11 in Washington, D.C.
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