The two reasons people say no to your idea
"It's been done before" "It's never been done before"
Even though neither one is truthful, accurate or useful, you need to be prepared for both.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Ramp generates electricity from cars passing over it
Mark Frauenfelder: 
Here is a proposal for an energy generation system. The idea is to pump a generator when a car drives over panels attached to the generator.
Here is a proposal for an energy generation system. The idea is to pump a generator when a car drives over panels attached to the generator. I hope the people who came up with this idea realize that the energy they get from the generator will be less than the extra fuel the car must to burn to drive the generator. Link Jon-o says:
Mark mentions that this will just result in more gas being burned by cars, completely offsetting any power generated, but cars spend a lot of time *braking* as well -- if a device like this was put near the bottom of a downward slope, or somewhere else where cars need to slow down, it would be making use only of energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat in the brakes.(Would this work for hybrid and electric cars that use regenerative braking, too? -- Mark)
Daniel says:
My first thought at seeing the title of your post on the electricity generating ramp was that it would be energy inefficient, but then I realized that if it were on a downhill where you would be breaking anyway, it doesn't matter if it slows your car down - it's a little side benefit and less wear on your breaks. Their YouTube video of it is stupid and wasteful, but the idea doesn't have to be. Also, using it as a speedbump as implied by the article is another bonus, in areas where that's necessary.US exposes 1000's of SSNs for years in web-accessible database
Xeni Jardin: Tens of thousands of social security numbers belonging to Americans who received loans or financial assistance from the government were exposed for years in a publicly accessible database. Snip from New York Times article:
Officials at the Agriculture Department and the Census Bureau, which maintains the database, were evidently unaware that the Social Security numbers were accessible in the database until they were notified last week by a farmer from Illinois, who stumbled across the database on the Internet.Link“I was bored, and typed the name of my farm into Google to see what was out there,” said Marsha Bergmeier, president of Mohr Family Farms in Fairmount, Ill.
The first link that appeared in the search results was for her farm’s Web site. The second was for a site that she had never heard of, FedSpending.org, which provides a searchable database of federal government expenditures. The site uses information from the Census database.
Ms. Bergmeier said she was able to identify almost 30,000 records in the database that contained Social Security numbers. “I was stunned,” she said. “The numbers were right there in plain view in this database that anyone can access.”
Reader comment: Gabriela says,
I saw your post on BoingBoing about the USDA privacy breach that The New York Times reported and wanted to let you know The Sunlight Foundation just unveiled a new project -- Real Time Investigations – that also had exclusive coverage of this story and blogged about it moments before the Times piece ran.Real Time Investigations is an open source journalism effort that reveals the behind-the-scenes research involved in petitioning the federal government to make its information more accessible to citizens, constituents and journalists. We first learned of the extraordinary privacy breach by the USDA when a user of FedSpending.org, an online database of government spending created by OMB Watch and funded by us last year, reported it to OMB Watch late last week.
Download Multiple Flickr Pictures in a Batch [Original Images, not Resized Thumbnails]
Allagappan from NIT Trichy is looking for some Flickr mass downloader tools to help him choose and download Flickr images in bulk from flickr.com website to the hard-drive.
It's so surprising that Flickr doesn't provide an official tool for downloading images from their website but thanks to the API, Flickr enthusiasts have developed some excellent Flickr Photo downloading tools and our favorite is Downloadr.
Think of Downloadr as an offline browser for Flickr photos. [Get Downloadr Windows only, ~300kb zip]
With Downloadr, you can search, browse and batch download multiple Flickr pictures based on image tag (s), Flickr username, Groups Pools, Flickr user sets or even Interesting Flickr pictures of any particular day.
Images are fetched only from public Flickr photostreams though you have an option to authenticate and download your private Flickr pictures via Downloadr.
The developer homepage is in German but the tool itself has an English interface. More discussion on the Flickr groups. If you are using Flickr, Downloadr is a must have utility.
Related Flickr search tools - FlickrCash, Flickr Leech
Think of Downloadr as an offline browser for Flickr photos. [Get Downloadr Windows only, ~300kb zip]
With Downloadr, you can search, browse and batch download multiple Flickr pictures based on image tag (s), Flickr username, Groups Pools, Flickr user sets or even Interesting Flickr pictures of any particular day.
Images are fetched only from public Flickr photostreams though you have an option to authenticate and download your private Flickr pictures via Downloadr.
The developer homepage is in German but the tool itself has an English interface. More discussion on the Flickr groups. If you are using Flickr, Downloadr is a must have utility.
Related Flickr search tools - FlickrCash, Flickr Leech
Friday, April 20, 2007
Google Web Conferencing Software has Full Screen Video and Application Sharing
Google has officially entered the turf of WebEx, Microsoft Live Meeting and Adobe Connect with the acquisiton of Marratech, a web and video conferencing company based in Sweden.
There's a possibility that Google will integrate Marratech web conferencing features into Google Apps Primer and Google Office to make these "virtual office" offerings more complete and compelling for the corporate world.
The Marratech video conferencing client is done in Java and available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. But it is possible to participate in Marratech meetings via the web browser without downloading the Marratech client.
Currently, the Marratech client is free while companies are required to license their server software.
Like other web conferencing software, Marratech allows users to hold virtual e-meetings and share application sceens, webpages, images and documents in the Whiteboard area. Participants can use annotation tools like pointers and markers to highlight presentations or draw on the screen.
Marratech video conferencing client allows participants to see other in real time using web cameras. All participants can record and playback the entire net meeting including voice, video and whiteboard.Download Marratech brochures - Client, Server
The Marratech video conferencing client is done in Java and available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. But it is possible to participate in Marratech meetings via the web browser without downloading the Marratech client.
Currently, the Marratech client is free while companies are required to license their server software.
Like other web conferencing software, Marratech allows users to hold virtual e-meetings and share application sceens, webpages, images and documents in the Whiteboard area. Participants can use annotation tools like pointers and markers to highlight presentations or draw on the screen.
Marratech video conferencing client allows participants to see other in real time using web cameras. All participants can record and playback the entire net meeting including voice, video and whiteboard.Download Marratech brochures - Client, Server
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