plug-in

The payoff for plug-in hybrids: 95 years?

Plug-in hybrids get far better mileage than standard cars or regular hybrids--and emit far less pollution.

But they are also tough to justify economically at the moment with existing technology, according to the first several months of data from RechargeIT.org, which is studying how well plug-in hybrids work in real-world circumstances.

Plug-ins, in fact, only cut gas consumption by about 88 gallons a year over regular Priuses in urban driving. That comes to an annual savings of $158 to $250 (when you factor in the cost of electricity too). With the conversion running around $15,000, the payoff … Read more

Will plug-in hybrids stress the grid?

Plug-in hybrids are coming. General Motors, Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive and Toyota are all coming out with gas-electric cars that can be charged from a socket.

The question now is can the grid handle it. The latest voice on the debate, Stan Hadley of the Cooling, Heating and Power Technologies Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, says it won't be easy. Hadley examined 182 scenarios on how plug-ins might be used in different regions in the U.S. between 2020 and 2030. Hadley assumed a 25 percent penetration of plug-ins by 2020.

In a worst case scenario, Hadley postulated … Read more

Is Silicon Valley the new Detroit for electric cars?

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Silicon Valley is sparking a revolution in alternative-fuel autos, but it may take awhile--too long perhaps--to effect change in Detroit, according to a panel of auto executives.

A group of electric and traditional carmakers spoke here Friday at the Joint Venture Silicon Valley conference about innovation, why alternative carmakers are attracted to the Valley, and whether nimble upstarts can overshadow the big Detroit automakers. The consensus was that Silicon Valley is commanding the attention of the auto world, whether it will dominate or not.

"We're not going to take over China or Detroit, but every … Read more

Save your quick reads for later

Read It Later is a Firefox extension that should appeal to anybody trying to minimize bookmark and open tab clutter. As you peruse links sent from friends and RSS feeds that deposit little nuggets of truth that you just don't have time for right now, Read It Later gives you a one-click option for saving the links and keeping track of which ones have been read.

When you restart Firefox after loading the extension, it will automatically prompt you to install the two Toolbar buttons that are used to control the extension and manage your reading list. Users can also control adding bookmarks to their reading list via the context menu, the Bookmarks menu itself, or with hotkeys, making access to your daily detritus fast and painless.

Seize control of iTunes

For many Windows users, Apple's iTunes is a mixed bag. It offers many of the music and video jukebox services we all want, but it's often sluggish and the polar opposite of customizable. A new freeware plug-in called iTunes Control gives us all a chance to remedy at least part of that situation.

Latest Silicon Valley status symbol: The plug-in hybrid

If you've got a fancy job in the Bay Area, you're probably going to get the sales call from Sass Somekh.

Somekh, the former president of equipment maker Novellus and an alum of Applied Materials, has started OurPower.org as a way to promote plug-in hybrid conversions. Converting a regular Prius to a plug-in isn't cheap. The price runs about $10,000. Even if gas rises to $4 a gallon, it would still take nearly 100,000 miles of driving before you broke even. (OurPower.org is working with A123 Systems, the lithium-ion battery maker, to perform … Read more

Read better with Better GReader

Better GReader is a young, but not exactly robust, Firefox extension. However, like its sibling Better Gmail, it has a lot of potential. Designed to improve the look, as well as the functionality, of Google Reader, GReader has four skins and four features to get your RSS going.

Lightroom plug-in exports photos straight to iStockphoto

Photographer and programmer Eugene Berman has released version 1.0 of a Lightroom plug-in that enables photographers to export pictures directly to iStockphoto, a "microstock" Web site that sells images for relatively low cost.

Adobe Systems' Lightroom is gaining in popularity as a way to edit and catalog the unprocessed "raw" images from higher-end digital cameras, and Adobe in 2007 released a beta version of a software developer kit (SDK) that lets anyone write plug-ins for exporting photos.

Other Lightroom plug-ins also exist that permit uploads to Flickr, Picasa, Zenfolio, and SmugMug.

Exporting to iStockphoto is … Read more

Nik to move photo-editing software to Photoshop

LAS VEGAS--Nik Software on Wednesday announced a new variant of its photo-editing software that will run as a plug-in to Adobe Systems' Photoshop.

The company's Viveza plug-in brings the "U Point" editing method, already available in Nik's Capture NX software, to Photoshop. The software functions as a Photoshop smart filter, which means it can be applied nondestructively and updated later.

Viveza will ship in the first quarter for Windows and Mac OS X and cost about $250, Nik said at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here.

The U Point system is an attempt to … Read more

V2G: Smart grids meet electric vehicles

In the future, utilities will pay you to plug in your vehicle. Millions will plug in their electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) at night when electricity is cheap, then during the day when energy is expensive, sell those extra electrons at a profit. Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology is a bi-directional electric grid interface that allows a plug-in to take energy from the grid or put it back on the grid. V2G helps solve the major problem that demand for electricity is high during the day when everything from industrial plants to air conditioning is running … Read more