You Decide

So this "Global Warming" thing gets a lot of attention from both sides of the fence. There are those that believe we are a main cause for the climate changes and there are those who believe it's just part of Earth's natural cycle with or without us. I'm not going to debate that now because there is enough of that going on. What I am going to do is post several links to sites that have information about how to cut down on energy and ideas to improve our lives. This has become very important to me and once I move into my new house, I hope to make more positive choices. No matter what side of the fence you're on, this information can help save you money, if not give you a good feeling about your actions, and who doesn't like saving money?

A site that I found recently focuses on improving bicycling in communities throughout the United States. I like it because they have great resources for helping out cities and counties to create better environments and opportunities for biking. This encourages exercise, cuts down on car traffic, and can be positive advertising to people looking to move into the area. Not only do they focus on construction efforts, but they also suggest training traffic engineers, motorists, and bicyclists about mixed traffic with cars and bikes living in the street together. I'm hoping to get something like this going in Cedar Rapids.

The next area I have several bookmarks in is alternative energy. This is important because we all know that non-renewable resources are being depleted and we will have to find better ways to maintain our standard of living. Some links to sites I like include projects with wind and manure and solar. I was also impressed to hear that the US government is actively looking into nuclear energy plants and several plans for building them are on the way.

One way of dealing with CO2 that is growing in popularity is consumer carbon offsets. Here is an independent study done to compare the many carbon offset providers to help consumers understand what they are paying for more and encourage the programs to become transparent to provide the best solution for everyone. The provider that I have used so far is NativeEnergy. This type of program is used to help offset the amount of "unclean" energy you are using and usually put it towards "clean" energy projects. Most sites will also have a calculator to add up how much energy you spend.

And lastly for this post, if you're looking to get a new car here is the government's fuel economy site where you can find all sorts of information.

So you decide on what you believe and what you want to do, just do something.

Poof! Blog Reading

Blogs have revolutionized the way we disperse information. Blogs can represent a personal diary, a list of tips, a way to publicize a cause, a means for companies to reach out to investors and a slew of other uses. I previously used Wizz RSS Reader to check on my favorite sites. I say previously because as of this past weekend I have started using Google Reader. There are lots of goodies so I'll try to talk about what I have noticed so far.

First of all appearances. If you like the look of GMail, then you'll like Google Reader. They fit together like they're in the same family as it should be. There is a "List View" which displays the blog entries just like emails show up in GMail and you can star entries just like emails. And if you like the backgrounds and themes of various blogs, you can open up a new tab or window to view a post from the original site by clicking the double arrows at the end of an entry.

You'll also notice the simple navigation on the left of the window. Choose how you want to sort posts, subscribe to blogs by adding the feed url or searching, view only updated blogs or all, and categorize your favorites. This portion was, for me, to be expected from Google, now on to the ooey gooeyness that made me want to switch.





First, I am a Google Homepage user and Google Reader has a widget that can be added and lets you see what new posts you have to read in a
glance. I don't have any new posts in the picture, but if I did they would be listed similar to emails in the GMail widget. This tidbit made it easy for me to try it out. What I really like about it is that I don't have to click on every blog feed link to see if there are new posts and I don't have to open up a new page either. I just open up my web browser and right there on my homepage it tells me if there are new items to read and what blog they're for. This also allows me to take my blog history with me. What I mean by this is that no matter what computer I'm on, Google Reader knows what posts I have already read and has them marked accordingly.

I have to say that my favorite part of Reader right now is the expanded view. This shows all of the posts in order so that you can scroll right from one to the next and the best part is that as you scroll past the posts, Reader marks them as read... niiice.

The auto marking may be my favorite right now, but there are several features that I'm excited to dig into more. Reader's settings even has a section called "Goodies" that several of these are in. One, like most web tools, is that you can read from your phone. The bookmark link is one that I haven't noticed anywhere else before. It allows you to bring up the next unread post by clicking a single bookmark. This would be a very simple way to move through new posts without even going to your homepage or navigating to Reader. I think I will continue to prefer seeing my new posts listed, but this is a cool idea. The next goodie listed is "subscribe as you surf". Simply, if you're chugging along popping through new blogs and find one that you want to add to Reader, you just click this bookmark and it gets added to the list. I'll definitely be using this one.

The last feature I'm going to mention is one that I'll also be using. It's the Share option. This can be seen in the left navigation area and it lets you share posts with friends, family, and the world. One thing some of my co-workers were discussing today was the lack of searching or saving in Reader. While this isn't the best solution, one thought I had was to share posts that had information I wanted to remember or use again, or posts that I wanted to save. This would make them easily available and "save" them for future reference. Again, not the best, but I think I'll give it a try when I'm playing around with this feature.