Nice Orchids For You..

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Nice Orchids For You..

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Plug-in Vehicles for Clean transportation

This this technology is far off in the future?  Watch a video about a family who has driven for 7 years and 70,000 miles with no gas and using only the energy generated from their solar panels.  This could have been implemented almost a decade ago and was not.  Our own house generates excess energy during the day.  We could use it to charge up a plug in vehicle.

Watch this fascinating video right here.

New things in Gmail

Gmail has served us well as a web based email client.  The developers are always coming up with new things to make it even more appealing.  Here are some new features that I really like:

	YouTube previews in mail by Stanley C and Braden K Shows a video preview whenever you receive a YouTube link in an email. You can watch the video right inline!
	Picasa previews in mail by Dan, Stanley, Mark & Umesh Shows photos previews whenever you receive a Picasa link in an email.
	Flickr previews in mail by Dan P Shows photos previews whenever you receive a Flickr link in an email.

...and this one is especially nice.  It is still under development but works well.  The delay needs to be a bit longer or user configurable.  But, this is very nice.  We used to have an undo in our email at work and it saved me many times when I sent something and then had second thoughts about it.

Undo Send by Yuzo F Oops, hit "Send" too soon? Stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button.

First Ever Whale Sedation

A right whale was sedated in order to remove entangled fishing gear.  About 90 percent of the gear was removed.  Read more.

Federal Tax Credits for Energy Efficiency

Here is a list of all the new tax credits for energy efficiency.  There are a lot of them.

Solar systems thirty percent off. Buy now.

Solar stuff that Obama will help you buy.

The new tax credits amount to thirty percent off for photovoltaic and solar water heating systems.  If only we had the money.  Well in Florida you also get $4 a watt for photovoltaic systems and $500 for solar water heaters.  So, for photovoltaic systems that is almost another thirty percent off.  Wow.  Wish the tax credit cap had been removed when we installed ours.  We would have saved a LOT.

Mozy Backups

After years of using external hard drives and all sorts of other backup schemes for my computers I took the plunge and decided to give Mozy a try. This site is a good summary of the service. I gave up thinking I could be a reliable support service for my own computers. First I switched to using Google Mail when it first came out. I admit that much of the decision was based on the functionality I saw in their calendar and the way it integrated with email. So, we have used Gmail and Google Calendar for years now and have been extremely happy with it. I won't go into all of the reasons because this post is about Mozy. You can read the excellent review of the service at this site. I'll post more about my use of this service as time goes on. Our two computers, a Mac and a PC, are in the initial backup stage right now. That is a bit time consuming but once the first backup is completed all others are incremental so that they should take only a short time. I was satisfied with the security and privacy protections at Mozy. Thanks Nick Barardi for an excellent overview and review of Mozy.

Energy Panel Discussion

This is an insight into what the future holds for energy management and monitoring.

They sail on pink oil, the strangest sailing club in the world.

Sail World - Powerboat-world: Sail and sailing, cruising, boating news

I found this article to be fascinating from a sailing viewpoint and from a geographical viewpoint.  I might also add that anyone with an interest in water management would find the story about this transient lake in Australia intriguing as well.  Sailors are indeed some of the most interesting people in the world.

My Favorite Firefox Addons

These are the Firefox add on applications that I have installed.  Extensive testing and evaluation have demonstrated that these are most useful for every day web browsing and file manipulation.