Just when you thought spam couldn't get more insidious, McAfee releases a report that the annual energy used to transmit, process and filter spam accounts for 33 BILLION Kilo-watt hours.
That's the greenhouse gas equivalent of 3.1 million cars using two billion gallons of gasoline.
The report also analyzed the countries where most of the spam relaying occurs. The US took the lead by a long shot with 17.5%, while Canada is not in the top 12.
Read the full article here.
What runs on 7.5 watts, gives off as much light as a 65 watt light bulb, lasts 30,000 hours (10 years) and costs $120?
If you answered the GeoBulb, you're light... I mean right.
It seems that there is a burgeoning market for high-end "super green" light bulbs; another company is offering a $65 bulb that uses 150 LED lights and sucks up only 9W.
As more alternatives to the traditional incandescent bulb are offered, hopefully prices can only go down while power savings go up.
For more info on the GeoBulb, check out Engadget's blog post on it here.
Ok, well maybe not gold, but defintely cash in your pocket.
An American inventor has developed a $22,000 machine that will turn a restaurant's used fryer grease into electricity. Each week, 80 gallons of grease can be converted into 5 kilowatts of electricity, about 10% of a restaurants power usage.
James Peret, the inventor of the Vegawatt, estimates that the unit will pay for itself after only two years of ownership. And since the unit is actually more efficient than a typical coal power plant: it extracts 70 percent of energy available per-calorie, and emits 50% less carbon-dioxide than a comparable amount of electricity generated by a coal power plant.
Not a bad way to turn your old fryer glop into cash in your pocket.
For more info, Wired magazine has a thorough story on the Vegawatt here.
What's a better investment then banking on the cost of gas to rise? Steven Verona, founder of MyGallons.com, is betting that you will want to buy tomorrow's gas at today's price -- and he'll charge you to do it.
How does it work? Users sign up at MyGallons.com where they will pay an annual fee and load a gas card up with gallons at that day's price. They can then use the gas card at participating gas stations, and MyGallons will automatically pay the difference.
Tomorrow's gas, today's price.
It hasn't officially lauanched yet, though they do certainly have a snazzy website. It just goes to show that for the savy marketer, there's truly a silver lining in any cloud.
