Up in the Venezuelan Clouds!

Yesterday, I was listening, as my favorite cabbie was telling me that his little son wants to grow up to be a meteorologist - "For some years now,his greatest passion is switching weather channels and chewing on all the information".( yea, hes very smart for his age. I have met him once) And then today, I hear about Venezuela working hard at cloud seeding to make rain. They are going thro' a severe drought which has created a big need in electricty and water. And the government has now decided to depend on unconventional methods to make rain.

"Using technology borrowed from Cuba and Chile, the idea is to fire a mixture of silver iodide, dry ice and salt into vertically growing cumulonimbus clouds to encourage raindrops to join together."

Read more here.

Update-- Back home, my landlord told me once he met a couple who run a business of Predicting weather and Its effects on the financial market! Now, that was real news for a weather-illiterate like me. (Should google to learn more!)

Read more...

Buzz's on Time!

Alright. So, Google is just determined to be the next Alexander. Buying out all potential competitors and integrating all services and feeding us at one place; now they are one more step ahead- by changing Gmail to Social Gmail. So, what if they had failed at first, with a lame "wave" that couldn't create many tides? The Buzz's here. And, like last time, it was not based on "invitations". They know better this time- that propogated elitism won't work anymore in the digital world where there are already a lot of more useful come one come all applications floating around. So, anyways, they just shoved the Buzz down everybody's throat yesterday. (everybody who opened their gmail inbox yesterday and thats a lot of people,if me and the stats are not wrong).

Aah,so, it seems like, little failures are still the big stepping stones to ultimate empire-dom. Is it? Lets see.

Update(Feb 18)-- Buzz is sued by Florida Resident for violating consumer protection laws. Many users had complained of loss of privacy. Buzz Settings initially automatically created profile and added friends based on most frequent emailed and chat contacts, sharing among them Picasa albums and Google Reader. Now, they had disabled it following a large number of complaints.

Read more...

AirBenders in Pittsburgh

Last semester in a class, one student had talked about the urgent need for more giant wind mills in the United States to harness natural renewable power resources. President Obama had talked about more green jobs too during his campaign a year back. And,Spain's Gamesia Corporacion Technologica, one of the largest equipment manufacturers in Wind Technology has now taken root in Pittsburgh, PA.
They had invested 200$ million to convert old industrial sites to clean technology power houses. They were successful in creating and offering a lot of green jobs in the US. They have 700 workers in the state currently and to a large extent, been able to cut down on carbon emissions.

The company hopes to soon account for 20 percent of electrical supply of the US.

Read more...