Everybody's got old cell phones, which sit in closets. Why don't the wireless carriers let customers cheaply have two or more phones on the same line. That would mean that when a call came in, both phones would ring (and your landlines if you desire) and you could answer in either place. You could make calls from either phone, though not both at the same time.
(Note: I have posted a followup article on CitizenRe as a result of this thread. Also a solar economics spreadsheet.)
I've been writing about the economics of green energy and solar PV, and have been pointed to a very interesting company named CitizenRe. Their offering suggests a major cost reduction to make solar workable.
3-D printing is getting cheaper. This week I saw a story about producing a hacked together 3-D printer that could print in unusual cheap materials like play-doh and chocolate frosting for $2,000. Soon, another 3-D technology will get cheap -- the 3-D body scan.
In one of my first blog posts, I wrote about virtual right-of-way, a plan to create dedicated right of way for surface rail and bus transit, but to allow cars to use the RoW as long as they stay behind, and never in front of the transit vehicle.
I proposed one simple solution, that if the driver has to step on the brakes because of a car in the way, a camera photographs the car and plate, and the driver gets a fat ticket in the mail. People would learn you dare not get into the right-of-way if you can see a bus/train in your rearview mirror.
Join me next Thursday (one-eleven) at the one-eleven Minna gallery in San Francisco to celebrate EFF's 16th year. From 7 to 10pm. Suggested donation $20. Stop by if you're at Macworld.
Details at http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005055.php
A recent Forbes items pointed to my earlier posts on eBay Feedback so I thought it was time to update them. Note also the eBay tag for all posts on eBay including comments on the new non-feedback rules.
I wrote earlier about the controversial topic of discriminatory pricing, where vendors try to charge different customers different prices, usually based on what they can afford or will tolerate. One particularly vexing type of such pricing is the mail-in rebate. Mail in rebates do two things. In their pure form, they give a lower price to people willing to spend some time on the bureaucracy. As such, they would work at charging richer customers more because richer customers tend to value time more than money compared to poorer customers.
I've thought digital picture frames were a nice idea for a while, but have not yet bought one. The early generation were vastly overpriced, and the current cheaper generation still typically only offer 640x480 resolution. I spend a lot to produce quality, high-res photography, and while even a megapixel frame would be showing only a small part of my available resolution, 1/4 megapixel is just ridiculous.
While I've written before about the trouble in making solar competitive with grid power, this is not true when the grid is being blown up by geurilla fighters on a regular basis. Over the past couple of years, Bechtel has been paid over 2 billion dollars, mostly to try to rebuild the Iraq electrical infrastructure. Perhaps it's not their fault that power is only on in Bagdadh for 2 hours a day after these billions have been spent -- but their might have been a better way.
I was seduced by Google's bribe of $20 per $50 or greater order to try their new Checkout service, and did some Christmas shopping on buy.com. Normally buy.com, being based in Southern California, takes only 1 or 2 days by UPS ground to get things to me. So ordering last weekend should have been low risk for items that are "in stock and ship in 1-2 days." Yes, they cover their asses by putting a longer upper bound on the shipping time, but generally that's the ship time for people on the other coast.
Copyright © 2026, Brad Ideas
Designed by Zymphonies