Up On the Roof…

Here’s a good article about the pitfalls of what look like helpful efforts to save money and help the environment, but on closer inspection are not even close to fulfilling either one. Eco-Bling are these items that may make you feel better and show yourself and others that your fighting the good fight.

I was seriously considering solar panels and even researched wind turbines, but doing more practical things such as installing energy efficient light bulbs, wearing an extra layer of clothing and turning off lights/appliances can do more.

I think the tax incentives tied to some of these things had mislead me to believe that there was more value than what could be recouped.

Hybrid cars are no better especially when your current vehicle is fairly efficient. I could replace my 10 year old Honda (~36 MPGs still) with a Prius or Insight, but it probably would not make economic sense since real-life mileage claims appear to be just over ~40 MPG.

Besides the value of the savings, consider the time you spend researching, planning. Will you have to hire contractors, etc? Doesn’t sound easy.

Putting on a sweater and turning the lights off could be the best answer after all.

We’ve had sporadic internet outages before. Gmail has been down for an hour or more, on occasion. Twitter has the famous “fail whale,” more often than we’d like, and certainly your ISP has been down too.

On these occasions there’s not much we can do about it. If its a connection problem and there’s an iPhone or Blackberry, we’re okay. If its a website or service, we have no choice but to wait. These are pretty isolated events that happen a few times during the year and in a few locations, but…

What if we had the Big One?

What if we had a large scale, full or multi-day, Internet blackout?
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Last night I read a story on WSJ.com (may require subscription?) about the company, Monster Cables, and their practice of suing anyone who uses the word “Monster” in their business name or product.

In general, I lean toward a company’s right to protect the value of their name. I agree that If the name causes confusion in the marketplace, then that use should be contested.

However it seems Monster’s take on this is We used it first, anyone who wants to be a monster, pay up.

They’ve sued the Red Sox over names related to the “the Green Monster,” the TV show “Monster Garage,” but the one that was featured in the WSJ piece, and shows that this may be more of a revenue generator for them, was their lawsuit over the Rhode Island company Monster Mini Golf.
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An article on Ars Technica today covered a new patent by Apple, that could tie its Nike+iPod device to particular pieces of clothing.

If they carry through with it and you have intentions to buy this pedometer on steriods, you could find yourself limited to the shoes you run, jog or walk in. Additionally, it could restrict your choice of any garments, such as head gear, jackets, sweatpants, etc…

There were plenty of comments on Ars, mostly negative, most on how evil Apple is becoming, but maybe not? This could be start of something big.
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Happy Birthday. I want to share some stats about what’s happened over the year since launch.

First, part of the reason I started this blog was to experiment with search engine optimization (SEO). I started from zero and watched each post rise and dip according to the rules around search, particularly around Google’s algorithm and each page’s Page Rank.

Okay, the numbers (according to Google Analytics)…
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