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A Radical Approach to Cutting Carbon
Climate change has focused everyone's attention on cutting emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It's difficult to wean ourselves off of oil, however. That's what makes it all the more remarkable that the first city that will be powered entirely by renewable energy sources will be built in the United Arab Emirates.
The $22 billion development will be known as the Masdar Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It will include an alternative energy research institute. Khalad Awad, a spokesman for UAE's government-owned Future Energy Company, believes the city will help in the development of energy resources that will eventually replace oil. For the UAE, it's important to look forward: the country is the world's third-largest oil exporter and sits on 10 percent of all known oil reserves.
Construction of the city will begin in February and eventually cover seven square kilometers. It will be home to 50,000 residents. The lion's share of its energy will come from the sun, thanks to photovoltaic panels, concentrated solar collectors, and solar thermal tubes. The rest will come from the efficient burning of composted food waste, and a scant one percent will come from wind power. Urban planning will help reduce energy needs. Cars will be forbidden within city limits, to be replaced with a light rail system and small vehicles running on solar power.
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Floating Ads
The lazy summer game of finding fun shapes in the clouds is about to take on a new meaning, thanks to an Alabama entrepreneur. The special-effects artist has come up with a way to create foamy clouds as large as four feet across that conform to particular shapes. So Nike's swoosh could float through the air over a ball game, or Apple's logo could sail provocatively over Redmond skies.
The secret of these clouds, dubbed flogos by creator Francisco Guerra, is a machine that creates tiny bubbles filled mostly with air and a touch of helium. The machine also shapes the bubbles into the desired form and sends them skyward. In good conditions, a single flogo could soar as high as 20,000 feet and travel 30 miles. The machine can make a flogo every 15 seconds. Best of all, since the flogos are basically made of air and a little soap and water, they aren't an environmental hazard.
A number of businesses have expressed interest in using flogos. For example, Disney plans to use a flogo machine next month to send clouds shaped like Mickey Mouse's head into the air at Disney World in Orlando. And it's no wonder: at $3,500 to rent a flogo machine for a day, this kind of advertising compares favorably with using a big banner towed by an airplane ($5,000 per day) and even skywriting ($4,500). Besides, it's hard to beat the surprise and whimsy factor of a flogo.
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And the Winner is...
He never made it onto the presidential ballot, but comedian Stephen Colbert still came up a winner this week at the twelfth annual Webby awards. Also known as the Oscars of the Internet, the Webby awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Colbert was chosen by the academy as the Internet's Person of the Year.
The awards ceremony itself will be held June 9th and 10th in New York. By tradition, acceptance speeches will be limited to five words. Colbert earned his award for the innovative way he has used the Internet to interact with fans of The Colbert Report." Colbert has been known, when on the air, to call for fans to alter Wikipedia articles; he also made his show's official website the top Google search result under Greatest Living American thanks to a fan campaign, and he maintains an active Facebook group.
Other award winners included Wired .com, for best copy/writing;
TED .com, for best navigation/structure and several other categories;
Flickr, for best practices and best community; Apple, for best use
of video or moving image; and many others, including the NYTimes
.com, the Onion, National Geographic and ESPN. Tickets to the Webby
awards were still available at the time of writing.
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