power

When I was a kid, my family put a life-size plastic owl near our house to keep birds and squirrels away from the porch. (At least, I think that's why they had a life-size plastic owl near our house.) Unfortunately, I don't think it worked all that well, because last I heard, the cat had mauled it and thrown it into the hedge. I suppose it really wasn't that scary.

Consequently, the next time I'm desperate to scare away animals, small children, or the IRS, I'm going to get one of these instead. Because this … Read more

update 5/8/07: Here's a lesson for all of us: Don't try to blog at 1am after doing a 7-hour shift of cat adoptions.

Okay, maybe that's just a lesson for me.

It turns out I made a couple of mistakes in this blog entry. At least my errors were pointed out by polite readers, not the ones who feel compelled to verbally abuse you for the occasional slipup. You know who you are.

In any case, I've updated the text to reflect islandgirl45CV's comments, as well as an email from a reader about … Read more

Recently, when Power Downloader got hit with a nasty virus while out in the field, several folders of important data were lost. Though many of the files would be available to him when he returned to the Power Lair, some files were crucial to his current case. Many miles from home, Power had only one option: recovery software.

Thinking quickly, Power Downloader searched Download.com for a software savior. After only a few clicks of his mouse, he was able to locate R-Studio. With the help of a generous front-desk clerk at his hotel, Power was able to use a … Read more

Review Basics is a collaborative workspace for small teams and businesses. It runs right in your browser, and offers a fairly simple and straightforward way for others to share and leave feedback on photos, video files, and office documents. The interface runs entirely in Flash, so there are no special extensions to download, or programs that need to be installed on your computer. Just start up a workspace and go.

Review Basics works with a variety of common office document standards like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF. It also can handle uploading an entire zipped folder, so if you get a zipped attachment in an e-mail, you can upload it straight to the service without having to unpack it and send files one at a time. Review Basics also handles videos, although they have to be in the .FLV Flash format, which despite its popularity on the Internet, isn't a consumer-friendly standard compared to .MOV and .AVI. Files are capped off at 25MB apiece, so if you're working with any video clip over a minute or two, it's likely to be too large.

Annotating media is fairly simple. Users get five different tools to mark what's on the screen: boxes, arrows, a highlighter, call-outs, and emoticons. There is no drawing tool, which is one thing I enjoy and make use of on other collaborative workspace services like ConceptShare [hands-on] and Octopz [hands-on]. I think at a basic level it makes things feel familiar, like using a pen. There are still boxes which can be resized and color coded, but for irregularly shaped elements, you're out of luck.

To separate which feedback is being displayed, you can toggle each person's edits on and off. It's a lot like PhotoShop when you show or hide layers, and useful when you have more than two or three people working on a piece of media at a time, as things tend to get crowded.

Review Basics is very versatile for a free app, but it's missing a few things I think would make it far more competitive in this space. I'd like a way to leave audio or video notes. Some people (like me) find it easier to hit a record button, say something and move on, instead of writing it out. I'd also like to see live chat or live video conferencing, something that can take telephones out of the equation for both businesses and customers. The service is planning on moving to a paid model in the future, adding these things would certainly put it in the realm of some of the other services charging monthly fees.

The team has put together a series of hands-on demos you can play with to get a feel for the service. [More screens after the break.]

… Read more

There are two major problems with the current silicon panel technology used to generate electricity. For one, silicon is inefficient in converting solar energy. The thinner the silicon panel, the less efficient it becomes. Secondly, silicon panels make up about 45 percent of the total cost of current solar power installations. So thinner panels requiring less silicon would cut down on installation costs.

Now researchers in Australia say they've found a way to make silicon films, 1 to 2 microns thick, into more efficient energy converters. The trick is to impregnate the silicon film surface with small amounts of … Read more

SunPower, which makes high-efficiency solar panels, continued its rapid expansion in the first quarter as revenue climbed to $142.3 million in the first quarter, while net income rose to $1.2 million.

When acquisition and other non-recurring costs (such as stock based compensation) are excluded, net income came to $23.3 million, or 29 cents a share. Gross margins, meanwhile, came in at 29 percent, in part because the average selling price of solar cells and panels rose three percent over the previous three months. Typically in most hardware industries, average selling prices decline.

The figures, which came out … Read more

Those friendly Russians want to bring more energy directly to your doorstep if you live in North America. That means digging the world's longest tunnel. The proposed project would dig a tunnel over 60 miles long beneath the Bering Sea, surfacing at two islands en route.

Next week a coalition of Russian businesses will present this plan to Canada and the U.S. If it moves ahead, the tunnel would be twice as long as the one now connecting Britain and France.

The tunnel would connect major highways and pipelines yet to be constructed. The hope is to deliver … Read more

It just had to come out of the Netherlands. These contraptions, called the "Light Wind," are manufactured by Dutch design firm Demakersvan, and they're outdoor lights powered by wind. They might look like design-savvy variations on those little propeller beanie hats that I'm sure a few people over at the Googleplex have been known to accessorize with, but I personally think these are a cool "green" idea. They even have the capacity to store up energy when it's windy so that the light will keep shining all night long. (For size comparisons, the … Read more

When we last checked in with PowerReviews, the company that powers user review feedback for online retailers, the team had just launched a user-facing site to aggregate reviews from its clients. I liked it, although I had some criticisms. This week, PowerReviews launched a new site, Buzzillions, which addresses some of the early site's issues and adds a few more features. (It's too bad the name sucks, though.)

The new site does a much better job of clumping products together. You're less likely to find 15 different listings for the same camera now (one for each store … Read more