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Archive for May, 2009

Are you a garage sale fanatic? Do you look forward to Saturdays so you can scour the yard sales for treasures and antiques? Well your life just got a heck of a lot easier. Yard Sale Treasure Map is a new site to help you find the best Craigslist sales with the added convenience and graphic interface of Google Maps.

To use the site, simply enter your zipcode or starting address and the distance you are willing to walk, ride or even drive for a good garage sale. Yard Sale Treasure Map will access Craigslist and pull all the garage sales in your area onto a Google Map. Scour through the descriptions, delete the ones you aren’t interested in and keep the ones that you want to check out. The website will automatically calculate your best route to each sale. You can even add in your own stop, say at the farmer’s market to get fresh veggies for that night’s dinner.

When you’ve figured out your plan, hit Print Directions and a customized printable document with a map and directions will pop up for you to print and take with you. Unfortunately, the website isn’t quite ready for iPhone, but it may be soon, so keep checking back.

If you want to get your own yard sale listed on Yard Sale Treasure Map, you’ll need to add it via your local Craigslist.org. Check out the FAQ for suggestions on how to list it properly so it is recognized. As with all garage sale descriptions, the more details you can put in about what’s for sale, the better turnout you’ll get.

via Re-Nest

IMEC recently reported a method to integrate high-speed CMOS electronics and nanophotonic circuitry based on plasmonic technology, which has the potential to be used in future applications such as nanoscale optical interconnects for high-perfor.......

Diversified renewable energy solutions provider Leviathan Energy announced today that it will officially commence US sales and marketing efforts for the Wind Energizer, its patented technology for increasing the power output of large wind turbines.

Speaking from the American Wind Energy Association’s annual conference and expo in Chicago, CEO of Leviathan Energy, Dr. Daniel Farb, said he expects “that with the very fast return on investment the Wind Energizer can deliver, sales will be quite strong.”

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Warren Buffett isn’t the world’s second richest man for nothing. He has an unsurpassed knack for picking good companies in strong industries at the right price. Most things he’s touched have turned into gold. So it’s exciting to see that a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary called Clayton Homes has just launched a line of green prefab homes (called the i-house) that start at under $75,000 (or about $105 / square foot) excluding site costs and shipping. Clayton Homes is one of the largest manufactured housing companies in the world, having produced over 1.5 million units since 1934. They’ll clearly get the manufacturing, financing and logistics right, but can they deliver the amenities, materials and compelling designs that prospective green homeowners have come to expect from green prefab?

The first models are quite promising. Even the base version comes with a lengthy list of standard green features, including:

• Well insulated exterior walls, floor and roof (R-21, R-30 and R-30 respectively)
• Andersen low-e windows
• Metal roof designed for rainwater collection
• No-VOC paint
• High efficiency heat pump
• Dual-flush toilets

If that’s not green enough for you, then you can pick from a long list of sustainable options that includes:

• Two to four kilowatts of solar PV panels;
• Bamboo flooring;
• Tankless water heaters
• Energy Star appliances

You obviously won’t get a LEED Platinum rating on your new i-house, but you will get a very low-energy and reasonably green home at a great price point.

The i-house website has an easy-to-use configurator that allows you to create a customized home and view pricing for options and delivery in your area.

Via Jetson Green

An unlikely savior may be coming to the rescue of the planet’s beleaguered coral reefs: Chris Olson, the founder and inventor of Swell Fuel wave powered electricity generators.  Olson has been building and testing small-scale floatable energy converters for a number of years, and they may prove ideal providers of the the low-voltage charge that seems to help coral reefs regenerate.

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