power

Here's one that many CNET readers can enjoy: snap a photo of that dusty rat's nest of wires under your desk. Best-case scenario, you win lunch in Beverly Hills and maybe influence green-tech policy.

The contest is called "What's Under your Desk" and it's put on by Green Plug, a company that launched at Demo last year. Here's a video review from Michelle Thatcher at CNET and write-up from News.com's Erica Ogg on Webware.

The idea is to send in photos of those tangled messes caused by consumer electronics to make … Read more

Want some turbines to build a wind power park? Get in line.

High demand--coupled with the engineering challenges of building turbines that can extract hundreds of kilowatts or megawatts of power from the wind--has created a shortage. Wind park developers, thus, are being forced to jostle their plans and supply line relationships to keep projects on track.

If you order now, you might not get turbines until late 2009 or later.

"There has been a backlog for a significant period of time. The lead time is around a year to a year and a half," said Myke Clark, … Read more

If you're unfortunate enough to have a job that requires charging 20 cell phones simultaneously and on the go, then you may want to have a look at this (or keep it away from your boss). The "PowerCube 600" is a portable generator that can churn out 600 watts of solar power.

"Portable," however, is a relative notion in this case: As Engadget notes, this thing weighs 2,000 pounds. So don't count on keeping it in the trunk of your Prius--it wouldn't fit anyway, at 72 x 124 x 50 inches.

The government's Energy Star program and the tech industry's Climate Savers Computing Initiative will work over the next three years to develop more-efficient standards for consumer electronics.

"Today's partnership announcement unites Energy Star and industry in an effort to rally the technology industry to reduce computer energy consumption and fight climate change," said Bob Meyers, principal deputy assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, in a press release.

Energy Star, launched in 1992 by the Environmental Protection Agency, is considered the first "green" U.S. consumer label for electronics … Read more

Solar installer SolarCity is doing, in a limited way, what many people contend is the key to wide-scale adoption of solar power: a leasing program.

The Foster City, Calif.-based start-up is offering customers in California, Arizona, and Oregon a financing option that allows them to get solar panels with a relatively small up-front down payment and monthly lease fee, SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive said on Monday.

Solar panels that generate electricity can cost between $20,000 and $35,000 before tax credits and other clean energy incentives. Those subsidies can bring the cost down significantly, depending on the state … Read more

As long-time fans know, Power Downloader is a gregarious guy. Modest to a fault, he just likes helping people. One of his favorite programs for helping computer users of all levels of experience is the freeware application CrossLoop. CrossLoop is a secure single-serving of remote access, but once it's given, the remote user has complete access until the connection is severed.

When PD runs the program, his PC is assigned a new 12-digit access code each time you start the program. The person he's helping also gets a new access code and then shares that with PD. Power … Read more

I spent some of this weekend using SlideRocket, a new service that's aiming to replace your presentation software with its flashy (actually Flexy) Web-based tools. Is it a real PowerPoint or Apple Keynote killer in its current iteration? Not yet, but I think it's off to a great start.

The service has all the flash and fervor of some other Adobe Flex-based apps we've seen like BuzzWord, Scrapblog, and Picnik. The transitions and stock slide templates are enough to distract you from how potentially boring your presenter is and thought has been put into making things look good from the get-go, no matter your design prowess. In many ways, the final results are indistinguishable from Apple's well-known presentation software Keynote, which has been a part of the company's iWork suite for Macs for the last three years.

Let's start by talking about what makes SlideRocket different from presentation software you might be used to. For one thing it's very Web-friendly. As I mentioned last week in our coverage of the company's demo at the Under the Radar conference (coverage), it's been designed to integrate media and information services you're already using. Big names on the list include Yahoo maps, Flickr, and Google Docs; I foresee others being added in the future--as long as the service has a data API.

Linking up to each of these services is handled with some grace, although I found performance to take a hit when adding several Flickr photos to a single slide since the service will check in with Flickr each time you load up the slide. It can be set to do the same thing for Google Documents, but this is actually a good thing in case the source data changes. I've been told local copies of the files will be able to be stored on SlideRocket's servers in the future to speed things up.

Speaking of local storage, SlideRocket has the beginnings of a very smart way to handle shared media. Similar to Keynote, all your files are put together in one place and can be sorted via keywords simply by name. The more time you spend categorizing it, the faster you'll be able to parse it, but the built-in search is instantaneous--which is very helpful. Users get up to 3GB of storage to share photos, music, and videos. These asset libraries are shared in the business editions.

So, how does it stack up against other Web-based presentation tools?… Read more

It's no secret that Power Downloader's favorite Web browser is Firefox, for both Windows and Mac. Judging from the Mozilla browser's growing market share, it's not just Power's favorite, but the preferred browser of many of his fans, too. So, he's happy to recommend one of the most useful Firefox extensions he's ever come across: MR Tech Local Install.

It's a mouthful of a name, but it's got features for beginners and power users. Basically, it's the extension's extension, giving users added control over add-on behavior as well as … Read more

Flashy presentation tool SlideRocket is easily one of the best-looking services I've seen.

CEO Mitch Grasso's presentation at this afternoon's Under the Radar session about the virtual worker (using SlideRocket to present) got several oohs and ahhs. In many ways it takes a cue from Apple's Keynote product with great use of fonts, reflections, transparencies, and transitions to put together presentations that use hardware acceleration and cutting-edge design templates to impress clients, co-workers, and potentially your boss.

The app uses Adobe's Flex technology and has an offline client meaning users can create and edit presentations … Read more