Wow! Google Maps Street View

Google maps added a new feature. Now, for some major cities, including Portland, you can actually travel along the streets looking at video/photos of houses and stuff from the street. This would be a great tool to help us find new places. I just looked up my own house, of course. I determined that the photos were probably taken before I moved into the house, but I'm not sure. If I point my view down, I can see the car that drove around taking the photos. Now I'm virtually driving that car around town. Fun.

Another Reason to Go Green

Today, I got my green power coupon book in the mail! Some of Portland's enviro-friendly businesses use green source power and use these coupon books to let us know (and encourage those of us who have already chosen green power).
Portland General Electric offers several ways to start moving toward sustainability, letting individual customers choose to get some percentage of energy from renewable sources for fractions of pennies more per unit (a few dollars a month for most people). Look at how much coal is in the typical mix-- 41%! This is an easy way to feel better about energy use in my house. If you're in Portland and thinking about energy options, go to Green Power Oregon to find out more.

Low Battery?

Now if your cell phone battery runs down, just walk around the block and power it with your steps. Okay, so the real early applications will likely be for people with medical needs, like insulin pumps and neuroprosthetic devices as those are developed. But, eventually, I want one. I saw this blurb in online Science Magazine info:

"As we walk, we expend energy not only in pushing off with our planted leg, but also when our other leg decelerates as it makes contact with the ground -- energy that could be harvested for other uses, according to a new study. In a Report in the 8 Feb 2008 Science, Donelan et al. described the development of a knee-mounted mechanical device that can covert the expended mechanical energy of the deceleration step of walking into electrical power. The so-called "biomechanical energy harvester" consists of an aluminum chassis and generator mounted on a customized orthopedic knee brace, and weighs about 1.5 kg. Embedded sensors detect the angle and velocity of the wearer’s leg, switching the device on only during the braking phase of each swing -- analogous to regenerative braking in hybrid cars, where energy normally dissipated during braking drives a generator instead. The team reported that volunteers walking with one device on each leg produced an average of 5 watts of electricity -- enough to power 10 cell phones. The ability to produce substantial electricity with little effort makes this technology attractive for powering prosthetic limbs or other portable medical devices. A related ScienceNOW story by D. Powell highlighted the innovation."