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A bill recently introduced in the Senate would improve the efficiency of homes and commercial buildings, advace the adoption of improved building codes with greater efficiency requirements, and require the federal government facilities to adopt efficient measures and require new federal buildings to meet the highest efficiency standards.

The Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2011 (Bill S.1000) would promote greater efficiency for buildings and appliances as part of a national energy efficiency strategy.

The aim of the bill is to use “a variety of low-cost tools to reduce barriers for private sector energy users and drive adoption of off-the-shelf efficiency technologies that will save businesses and consumers money, make America more energy independent, and reduce emissions.” It would also create a goal of achieving net-zero-energy building by 2030. The “bill recognizes a fundamental reality: the best and cheapest energy available is the energy we don’t use.”

Although the bill has bipartisan support (Senators Jeanne Shaheen [D-NH] and Rob Portman [R-OH]) and is also supported by many industries, it still has to make its way through the legislative process.

image: CC BY 2.0 by Will Palmer

A refresh to the MacBook Air lineup appears to be imminent this week as retail sources worldwide report that supplies and shipments of Apple’s ultraportable notebook are beginning to diminish.Sources for 9to5 Mac have confirmed that MacBook Air supplies are beginning to run dry – a typical indication that Apple is preparing to launch an updated product line – ahead of the rumored June-July refresh.

The MacBook Air was last updated in October 2010 with a thinner, lighter design; solid-state drives as standard; and an all-new 11.6-inch option. The next refresh is expected to be a little less exciting, but could see the introduction of Intel’s newest Sandy Bridge processors and the company’s high-speed Thunderbolt port.

Strengthening these reports and fuelling further speculation is a recent price reduction to the refurbished MacBook Air through the Apple online store. Base models have dropped $30 and now start at an all-time low of $829 – suggesting Apple is clearing its inventory to make room for new blood.

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Check out this Kickstarter project — it’s a really smart clear polycarbonate iPad 2 case (called the iLoqk — hey, we’ve heard worse) that comes with a removable clamp that doubles as a tripod mount, which is yours for a pledge of $40. An extra $20 will bag you the XShot, an extending arm that attaches to the tripod mount and comes with a wireless shutter release for the iPad’s camera. It’s a pretty nifty idea, and seems like it’d helpful in all sorts of situations.

If that’s not enough, another $20 ( for $80 total) adds a tripod to the bundle. Of course, the project’ll have to be fully funded to the tune of $35K before it even gets off the ground. Sit through the almost-feature-length promo video for a better idea of how the whole package works.

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Image courtesy of Etymotic Research.

“If something ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a phrase Etymotic must have taken extremely seriously, judging by a look at their now-mythic, $99 ER-6i. The set has been around since their release in 2004, after which they quickly became the standard against which all other sub-$100 IEMs were tested. But seven years is an eon for a product to have remained essentially unchanged in the gadget world. Are they still as good now as they were then?

The short answer: absolutely. That’s remarkable, considering their run; even more so is the fact the strengths of this set — sound quality, sound isolation and ergonomics —  are still among the best examples of those factors in their class.

The Good:

The ER-6is come standard with the same set of eartips as the hf2s we tested — one set each of the massive foam tips and the ball-end “glider” foam tips, and two pairs of flanged tips, small and large — and exhibit the same excellent passive noise-cancelling performance (42 dB for the massive foam tips, 35 dB for the others); the only difference is the length of the tips, with the ER-6i tips being a little shorter. This practically rivals the noise-cancelling characteristics of many active noise-cancelling sets.

Sound character from this single-armature set is good. It’s neither deeply bassy nor extremely clear at the high end, yet still manages to impart a pleasing sound due to its strong midrange, with a bit of a bias toward bass. In fact, the contrast between the ER-6i and the hf2 (also equipped with a single armature) in ability to deliver clear highs and expanded range is quite pronounced, with the ER-6i definitely falling behind. The ER-6i is supposed to make up for this with better bass over the hf2, but if this is true, I didn’t notice — bass response actually seemed better from the hf2.

It’s clear that Etymotic designers took a good look at ergonomics when creating the ER-6i. Flats along the sides of each earpiece make them extremely easy to insert and remove; there’s also a cable-saving j-bend where it meets the jack, and the cable itself seems difficult to tangle. And the zippered pocket-case is a nice touch.

The Bad:

These guys don’t come with an inline microphone, at a time when many sub-$100 IEMs do. Also, you’ll have to pop for a $6 set of filters every now and again, depending on how mucky your ears get, after you’ve gone through the first complimentary set that come with the earphones.

Verdict:

Despite its age, the ER-6i manages to score high marks in sound quality and ergonomics, and is still unbeatable at sound isolation among its peers.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

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Illusion Labs – the team behind the hugely successful Touchgrind skateboarding game – have taken everything that made their first hit such a success and used it to create Touchgrind BMX. Put the skateboard to one side and become a BMX pro – performing spectacular tricks in beautifully crafted locations all over the world.

The Heist is currently famous for its overwhelming popularity that has helped it knock Angry Birds off the top spot of the App Store’s paid chart. Featuring a collection of mind-bending puzzles that you must solve in order to get your hands on the valuable prize inside the vault.

Siege Hero boasts gameplay similar to Angry Birds, in that you must destroy a group of enemies protected by glass, rocks and timber. However, instead of taking aim at a group of ugly pigs, vikings are your enemies, and rocks replace the birds as your ammo.

Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of the week’s must-haves – including Back to the Future: Episode 3 and To-Fu: The Trials of Chi – below!

Touchgrind BMX – ($4.99) iPhone — Games

With its incredible 3D graphics and impressive physics, I think Touchgrind BMX is even more enjoyable that its skateboarding sibling. Your skill and imagination are the only limits to the tricks you can perform, and when you pull off your most spectacular stunts, you can share them with your friends via YouTube and Facebook. Collect medals for achieving high scores and completing challenges with built-in Game Centre support. Touchgrind BMX uses the same two-finger control system we’ve become accustomed to, and the same true physics. It boasts a collection of unlockable bikes and locations and the ability to replay, record and share your gameplay. This game is another fantastic release from Illusion Labs.

The Heist — ($0.99) iPhone — Games

In The Heist from tap tap tap, your mission is to solve 60 challenging puzzles in order to crack the vault and claim your surprise at the end – and it’s certainly worth the effort. There are 4 different puzzle types that are guaranteed to get you hooked on this game, and 19 Game Centre achievements to earn. It’s the first game I’m aware of that gives away a prize for completing your mission, but I hope it’s not the last – it makes for truly exciting gameplay.

Siege Hero – ($0.99) iPhone / ($2.99) iPad – Games

I’m a fan of Angry Birds just like the vast majority of iOS gamers, however, after a while I get fed up of looking at those smirking little swines. Siege Hero offers a similar kind of gameplay, but from a first-person perspective. Use your catapult and an array of rocks, bombs and oil kegs to annihilate vikings, knights and samurais. As Siege Commander it is your job to destroy the opposition, save innocent peasants and set the kingdoms free. With 63 castles to teardown across three different maps and ages, terrific cartoon art, and addictive physics-based gameplay. If you’re bored of Angry Birds, Siege Hero will quench your catapulting thirst.

Back to the Future: Episode 3 – ($6.99) iPad – Games

I’m a massive fan of Telltale’s Back to the Future games for the iPad – the first two episodes have already featured in my previous must-have games roundups – and the third deserves just as much love. In this episode, entitled “Citizen Brown,” a time-stranded Marty finds himself in a “topsy-turvy” version of the world lorded over by the enigmatic “First Citizen Brown.”  You play as Marty in a cinematic adventure true to the original films, which must be experienced by any Back to the Future fan.

To-Fu: The Trials of Chi – ($0.99) iPhone / ($2.99) iPad – Games

To-Fu is the world’s most malleable martial artist – ready to undertake the infamous ‘Trials of Chi’. Stretch, ping, stick and rebound this stretchy protagonist through 100 levels of treacherous booby-traps and mystical mechanisms as you try to conquer the trials and help To-Fu become the illustrious ‘Master of Chi’. To-Fu features high-definition graphics optimized for the iPhone 4′s Retina display, and hours of brilliantly entertaining gameplay.

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We knew this was going to happen. Stung by a judge’s recent decision to allow Apple to look through Samsung’s upcoming phones to look for IP violations, Samsung has just asked a judge in their own patent infringement case against Apple to make Cupertino fork over the prototypes of the iPhone 5 and iPad 3.

According to This Is My Next:

Samsung claims that it needs to see Apple’s future products because devices like the Droid Charge and Galaxy Tab 10.1 will presumably be in the market at the same time as the iPhone 5 and iPad 3, and Samsung’s lawyers want to evaluate any possible similarities so they can prepare for further potential legal action from Apple.

As such, Samsung has asked Apple to produce the “final, commercial versions” of the next-generation iPhone (likely due out in September) and the next-gen iPad (not due out until April of 2012! by June 13th, despite the fact that Samsung’s lawyers admit they don’t actually have any proof that these products are in the pipeline at all, since Apple’s never confirmed they are working on them.

It’s a pretty strange and laughable move, and it’s all moot anyway: even if Samsung happens to win this motion, Apple will simply appeal until either the court dismisses this requirement, or the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 have already been released.

So why is Samsung pursuing this line of thinking? Nilay Patel says it’s all about leverage:

Apple and Samsung held negotiations for a year before giving up and heading to the courts, and I’m reliably informed that there haven’t been any substantive settlement discussions since Apple first filed its complaint. That means talks have been at a standstill for a long time now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung was trying to put some additional heat on Apple to try and kick negotiations back into gear.

In other words, as interesting as it is that Samsung is asking to see the iPhone 5, it doesn’t mean much: this is just initial bickering before the real fireworks begin.

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A majority of the miles upon miles of plastic oil booms deployed to soak up the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill have ended up either in landfills or are destined to be burned for fuel.  GM has come up with a way to keep a large chunk of those booms from that same fate by recycling the material into parts for the Chevy Volt.

GM will turn a total of 227 miles worth of oil booms into material for the Volt’s air-deflecting baffles that surround the radiator.  A centrifuge spins the used booms to release the oil and the plastic material is then processed and remolded to be used in the air deflectors.  The program will divert 212,500 pounds of boom waste from landfills.

The air deflectors are made of all recyled materials, including the booms, recycled tires from a GM test facility, recycled packaging plastic from a GM plant and post-consumer recycled plastic.

via Earth 911

Google and Citibank are investing $55 million apiece in the Alta Wind Energy Center, a new wind farm in California. Parts of the Alta project are already completed and producing power. The newly announced investments will be in the fourth phase of the project.

The Alta Wind Energy Center will take the title of the largest wind power project when it is completed, when it will cover over 50 square miles. The complete facility will ultimately produce more than 1500 megawatts of electricity and will increase California’s total wind power production by 30%.

image: CC 2.0 by Calc-tufa via BoingBoing

via: CBC News and BoingBoing

[Edited to correct units: 1500 MW]

GE has unveiled a six-car, solar-powered charging station in Plainville, CT at the company’s facilities.  The six Level 2 chargers capable of fully charging 13 cars a day and five cars at a time.

The solar carport is able to produce enough energy to power about 20 homes for a year and what doesn’t go to charging EVs will go to the grid.  When the charging station is overloaded, it will take back from the grid if necessary.

The station is currently a working demo of their technology and only open to the 300 employees who work at the GE facility, but may open to the public soon.  GE hopes to build similar charging stations across the country.

via The Hartford Courant and MSNBC

May is a good month for commuting to work by alternate methods. Bike-to-Work Day is celebrated in many communities in May. In my town, we have a month long Commuter Challenge encouraging people to discover commuting alternatives. When I saw that the coworking space I am affiliated with had avoided about a half a ton of CO2 emissions, I started to wonder about what that volume looked like. The term ‘ton’ is used to mean ‘a lot,’ but how big is that when talking about a gas? A car weighs a ton or two (a current model Ford Focus has a curb weight of about a ton and a half), but it’s made from much heavier materials. CO2 is a gas, though, so it is much harder to have an image of what it means to have a ton of CO2.

A little research and some calculation shows that a ton of CO2 will fill a volume of about 17,850 cubic feet at standard atmospheric pressure. To help visualize it, this is roughly the volume of a two story house, about 2,000 square feet in size (25 feet deep x 40 feet wide x 17.86 feet tall). Locate a house that is about that size, then imagine that volume filled with pure carbon dioxide; that’s what one ton of CO2 is.

And that’s just the carbon dioxide. If we are talking about automobile emissions, then there are all kinds of nitrogen oxides, uncombusted hydrocarbons, soot, and other pollutants that are being put into the atmosphere, as well.

To get a sense of larger volumes, the Hindenburg was about 6 million cubic feet in volume. That would be about 336 tons if it was filled with CO2. The New Orleans Superdome has a building volume of about 123.6 million cubic feet, which would hold almost 7000 tons of CO2. It would take more than 140 Superdome buildings to contain a million tons of CO2.

Another way to look at it is to think about how long it takes for you to put a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. The EPA uses the figure of 19.4 pounds of CO2 per gallon of gas. So, roughly speaking, every 100 gallons of gas you use puts a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. A car that is driven 12000 miles and averages 24 MPG in a year puts 5 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

An earlier version of this article appeared on the GetDowntown blog.

Google has opened a new data center in Finland where all of the cooling is done with sea water rather than compressors and refrigerants. The building, which was originally built as a paper mill, is located on the Gulf of Finland and using cool sea water is a way to save money while keeping the building cooled with a readily available resource.

Cooling is one of the biggest expenses for data centers. Servers, especially when many of them are stacked close together, generate a great amount of heat, and that heat must be dissipated to keep the equipment running. The Google data center brings in sea water through granite tunnels and into heat exchangers where the water absorbs the heat to keep the equipment cool.

The heated water is further tempered with cool sea water in a separate building before it is returned to the ocean to minimize the impact the heated water might have on the natural environment.

hat tip: @SomeChum

There’s something fishy about this, but iPad 3G has supposedly been hacked to make phone calls and send SMS messages — just like a giant iPhone!

Check out the video of the supersized iPad/iPhone in action:

The hack is called PhoneItiPad and is by iPhoneIslam, which was behind the FaceIt-3GS, a hack that enables FaceTime video calling on an iPhone 3GS. According to iPhoneIslam’s caption on the YouTube video:

A hack that will change the game. Can you imagine turning your iPad to a fully functional phone.

With No Special Hardware all what you need is Jailbroken iPad 3G and your iPad 3G will do anything you expect from iPhone… Phone Calls, SMS, FaceTime by Phone Number… ETC

iPhoneIslam hasn’t given a released date but says PhoneItiPad will be available on the Cydia Store “very soon,” and before WWDC.

Why do I think this is fishy? The video just doesn’t seem right. Why does the video go out of focus, for example, just as the phone icon is tapped?

Via iClarified.

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Seems like just yesterday that the Swoosh introduced its Nike+ iPod kit to the delight of iPod-toting runners everywhere. It  wasn’t yesterday though, it was five years ago (and one week). To celebrate, Nike has been giving away free copies of its Nike+ app (regularly $2) at the App Store. The app uses the iPhone’s GPS and MotionX technology — the same tech found in Jawbone’s stunning new Era Bluetooth headset, btw — to track your run (the GPS works well outdoors, the MotionX tech takes over where GPS signals are weak). And then there’re all the great motivational features and post-run sharing options.

Better make a dash if you want a copy, though — it’ll probably revert back to $2 soon.

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With the Arab Spring turning everyday citizens with cell phones into witnesses — sometimes the only witnesses — on tumultuous events, the time for the citizen journalism app has definitely arrived.

There are currently dozens of apps in iTunes available for people to submit news tips; some simply offer a way for people to send in local story ideas, others target specific networks and users can send pics and video directly to newsrooms.

Most are free — which speaks to how badly news organizations want no-cost, on-the-ground global coverage.

1. Meporter Launched to much fanfare at a recent TechCrunch Disrupt conference, this is currently the only app not affiliated with just one news network. And, perhaps more importantly for freelancers, the company may also pay users who create content by licensing it to news orgs for them. Until CNN comes knocking, you can also upload your own reports and broadcast them from the app.

2. CNN The latest version of the iPhone app lets citizen journalists view, record and submit video and photo reports to the U.S. news network’s citizen journalism program iReport.

3. AP Mobile In addition to viewing the Associated Press content from around the globe, you can zap photos and tips directly to newsroom editors with the “Send to AP” button. They assure that user info is solely used to verify the tip or to gather more information.

4. Al Jazeera The latest version of the Doha-based news network app launched in February includes a citizen journalism feature, though somewhat disappointingly users must send material through the default email app after clicking on the “Your Media” button.

5. Groundviews From the award-winning citizen journalism site of the same name in Sri Lanka, this app targets users in Southeast Asia. You can submit photos and short reports directly from the app as well as see what your neighbors are uploading.

Via IJNet

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