World's Largest Solar Power Plant to Open in 2011

You can find the original article here.

Solar power is becoming more and more prevalent in our energy plan. There is now a new solar power plant in the works for rural Arizona about 70 miles outside of Phoenix. Of course, solar power is nothing new, but it has seen much more attention in recent years than it has before. The new plant will be called "Solana" and will cover roughly 1900 acres. Once completed, it will be able to singlehandedly power 70,000 homes, all from the power of the sun. Rather than the traditional Photovoltaic (PV) cells, the plant will use Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology. A large series of parabolic mirrors will redirect the solar radiation onto a single, central point beneath chimney. This will heat the air, causing it to rise quickly through the chimney, turning turbines on its way out.

I see this technology making a big impact on the Phoenix area. It will set a precedent for solar power plants elsewhere. I sincerely hope more American cities will begin to take advantage of this source of power. However, the CSP technology requires much more space and prior planning than simply setting up an array of PV panels. However, I am sure that the idea of clean, cheap, safe energy will become a more and more attractive option in the future.

Browser Wars

Safari is Apple's own entry into the browser market. Originally it was restricted to the Mac, but has recently released for Windows, as well. Safari offers native RSS support, rather than requiring another application to manage feeds. It supports tabbed browsing. It comes free on every Mac sold. However, the current version for Mac, Safari 3 still in beta and is available for free download on both Mac and Windows. It can also import bookmarks from any other browser.

Firefox is another free web browser provided by Mozilla. Firefox is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It is open-source software, meaning not only is it free, anyone can mess with the browser's code, tweak it, upgrade it, and enhance it. There is a community surrounding this browser and they help to keep it updated. It works well with its companion email program, Thunderbird. It can show RSS headlines, but requires Thunderbird for email and the ability to read RSS articles in full. It has a phishing filter, which can help a user from inadvertently revealing sensitive information online. It is also "skinnable," meaning its appearance can be easily changed with third-party skins. It can import settings from Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Opera. It can also import bookmarks in the form of an HTML file.

Camino is a browser offered exclusively for the Mac. It is a free download and is open source. It does not offer native RSS support. However, it can detect feeds and will allow you to set up an external RSS feed reader. Like the other two browsers mentioned here, it supports tabbed browsing. It includes a built-in spell checker and it can save your last session for when you decide to reopen Camino. This will store all the windows and tabs you had open as well as data for the Forward and Back buttons. From a technical standpoint, there really is not much of a difference between Camino and Firefox, other than the organizations that maintain them.

In the wake of Internet Explorer 7, it looks like Mozilla will take a big bite out of Microsoft's browser market share with Firefox. It could go either way on the Mac with Safari and Firefox. IE is not a factor on the Mac anymore as Microsoft has long since stopped developing its web browser for the Mac platform. Microsoft Windows users will not have a hard time finding a free browser with IE7, Firefox, and a whole host of others. WIth more and more people, malware authors and hackers will have a more difficult time damaging people's systems. When a single browser, Internet Explorer, has 80% to 90% browser market share, it makes them a very large target for the jerks out on the internet. Also, Internet Explorer is directly linked to its operating system, Windows, and is used as the file browser on the computer's internal hard drive. The others listed are not so closely entwined with the systems that they are on.

Personally, I prefer Safari and Firefox. I use Safari primarily for reading my many RSS feeds and Firefox for tabbed browsing and broadcasting. As long as I keep both of them up to date, they rarely fail me. Also, I downloaded and tried out Camino. I thought it looked very clean and elegant. Its specs were pretty good. However, I did not think it was compelling enough to adopt permanently.

Computer Shopping

Pricing Page

Computer:
I selected the iMac desktop computer from Apple, Inc. It has a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of RAM. The machine is an all-in-one that has the 500GB hard drive, the optical drive, the webcam, and the 20" LCD display in one piece. The keyboard and mouse are included. There are no expansion bays, but new RAM can be added at the bottom of the computer and the hard drive can be replaced by opening the case. Besides the power port, there are 3 USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 400 port, a FireWire 800 port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a Mini-DVI port, an audio-in port, and an audio-out port. Bluetooth and WiFi are already built into the system, so external devices could also be connected that way. The computer has iLife '08, iWork '08, and Aperture. Also, the machine comes with Mac OS X Leopard (v. 10.5) preinstalled. As you can see on the pricing page, I have expensive taste.

Printer:
The Canon Pixma IP3500m is an inkjet printer with a print rate of up to 25 pages per minute.

Ning

I just had to post this. There is a website where you can go and create your own social network around anything. Like cooking? Social network. Earth Day? Social network. You can create a social network around anything and use this free utility to build it. You can even put a domain name in front of it. Anyone can come in and join your social network if they are interested. Cool, ain't it?

http://www.ning.com/