Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate Yes you heard me right. Some ass in Dubai decided to further wreak havoc on the planet and install pipes under the sand that contain a refrigerant. Frankly the story makes me so angry that it was difficult to even read it. One thing to note is that if you can actually get through the article there are some good quotes by someone who apparently thinks this is ridiculous as well. Here: ““Dubai is like a bubble world where the things that are worrying the rest of the world, like climate change, are simply ignored so that people can continue their destructive lifestyles,” she said. Aided by cheap oil and gas, Middle Eastern nations have poured enormous resources into controlling temperature. About 60% of Dubai’s huge power bill is for air-conditioning; each... 12/27/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate I know everyone gets freaked out when it comes to genetics. I frankly don't see why. Yes we can manipulate genes and it works great. There are ethical issues involved such as creating monsters, super human soldiers, and countless other scenarios that people have been dreaming up since work first began in this field. But I think most people can see the practical applications that are involved. In the case of this story it is rather urgent that something be done about breast cancer. “Women in three generations of her husband's family have been diagnosed with the disease in their 20s.” Anyways the story is a pretty good read and I for one look forward to eliminating these sorts of diseases if we can. If you have something to say please leave a comment. I w... 12/27/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate A Canadian student at Carleton University in Canada has developed a very revolutionary prototype that significantly increases battery life in popular phones and I would think could see its way into other devices as well. The problem with these devices is a significant portion of energy is wasted transferring through wires. So what did he do different? Got rid of the wires! By putting a wireless transmitter in the device it seems to save a tremendous amount of energy and works great so far. You can read the article here. If you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment on your blog as well. If you like what I say subscribe to my blog. If you really like what I just said flag this story for a feature! If you would like to work wi... 12/27/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate I came across this article and thought it was pretty interesting. I think changing out city lights for LED lights makes perfect sense. Not only will it pay for itself it will save the environment by using less energy. The bulbs also last longer. Now if we could only swap them out for solar lights maybe I would be even more enthusiastic. Maybe they can be converted later once the technology gets better? If you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment on your blog as well. If you like what I say subscribe to my blog. If you really like what I just said flag this story for a feature! If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email. Buy or Sell, I'll Treat You Well! Search... 12/27/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate The problem Mozilla is having with Google specifically is competition with it's new browser, Chrome. You see, “Mozilla is dependent on Google for the vast majority of its revenue and has previously worked closely with the search king's engineers on the development of Firefox.” With Firefox taking 1/5 of the world's browser users things could really heat up. With no financial backing the company would seem doomed. It will be interesting to see what happens but I really wouldn't want to see anything happen to Firefox.  You can read the rest of the article here.  If you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment on your blog as well. If you like what I say subscribe to my blog. If you really like what I just said flag this story fo... 12/27/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate I came across this article the other day. Apparently high school students in Maryland are faking out traffic cameras using their teachers' license plate information on the cars and purposely speeding past the cameras. What this does is automatically send a ticket to the offending plate owner and the cameras cant seem to tell the difference between a real plate and the faked ones. All it takes is some glossy paper. To me this not only shows traffic cameras do little or nothing to actually enforce laws, they seem more harm than good. Personally I don't want us to be moving towards a surveillance society like the UK seems headed.  If you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment on your blog as well. If you like what I say subscri... 12/27/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate I came across this article the other day and found it interesting. I realize this has little to do with real estate other than to say the usual, times are changing. As often as people say that I wonder how different things really are than they were not so long ago. Sure technology has evolved but are we really any different than a generation ago? What's funny is how people get nostalgic about times past and often insist that somehow people were nicer and that things were better. Often people refer to the 50's as a time of innocence and yet this was the same period in history that saw the largest heroin epidemic ever in this country. An interesting read is Wisconsin Death Trip, an actual chronicle of life in Black River Falls Wisconsin during the late 18... 12/27/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate In case you haven't heard, video is not just the next big thing, its here and its huge! According to this story, “Video search on YouTube accounts for a quarter of all Google search queries in the U.S., according to the latest search engine numbers from comScore.” This is simply staggering news. What started as a rather strange phenomena has grown into a very powerful business tool, that is if you are using it! To put this into perspective, “If it were a standalone site, YouTube would be the second largest search engine after Google. More searches are done through YouTube than through Yahoo, which has been the case for the past few months.” But wait, that's not all! Not only is Youtube impossibly popular in general, when it comes to video, it is blowing ... 12/19/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate No more downloaded .pdf files or any other readable document. Issuu Smart Look eliminates the download and simply lets you look at the document directly. Not only is this feature simply better, it looks really dang cool too! You can check it out here.  Adding the code to an existing site is really easy. Its pretty much a cut and paste job that anyone could do. I would love to demonstrate this on my site but I dont have any .pdf files or any other documents to download like that :( I really think this is a must for any website with downloadable, readable content. It's flashy, cool, and useful. You can read the full story here.  The story also includes some other sites that are working on similar lines. If you have something to say please leave a comment. ... 12/19/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate Well maybe not everything you are doing but you might want to check this service out. What does it do? “Drop.io, a service that offers hosted file sharing, conference calling, fax receiving, blogging, collaboration, and media presentation features, has released a major new version of its Firefox add-on.” It also features Facebook connectivity. “Upload new files to share, write a blog post, share a link via the aforementioned shortcut, or do something else clever with your own API app, and it can quickly be published to your Facebook news feed.” There is definitely some use for this app. It could also be a great way to integrate filesharing with your website. For instance you could create a drop that contains files or guides on how to buy a home and then ... 12/19/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate Agent     I came across this article and at first I didn't really think much about it. The company Spranq has developed a new font dubbed Ecofont that uses less ink by basically punching holes in the font. You can read more about it here. How much of a difference can a simple font make? I guess I was just thinking of this in the simplest of terms, yes a font could save ink, but is 20% less ink really going to save the environment? But you see this is much more than that. According to Spranq "With the Ecofont SPRANQ hopes to increase environmental awareness too. Increasing customer awareness about printing behavior: is printing really necessary or (partly) a waste of ink and paper? We also hope to inspire software giants and printer manufacturers to innov... 12/18/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate In case you missed Part 1 check it out here. In part 3 I was pointing out insecurities?? in the Safari Browser and showed how the password manager is most likely inadequate and a potential issue. In the same article I cited they also pointed out that Chrome didnt fair too well either. You can read that article here. To be fair Opera did the best but still failed 14 of the tests! So maybe the question is this: Is anyone safe? Well the thing about security and the difference between good and bad security is being able to fix holes as soon as they become apparent. There is absolutely nothing that is 100% secure. If enough time, energy and money were to be poured into a project, somewhere and in some place a hole is to be found. Some are easier than others ... 12/17/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate In case you missed Part 1 check it out here. Safari I love the Mac myths. For some reason when you approach Mac users about security they seem to get this sneaky smile on their face and say, “Not me! Thats why I bought a Mac!” Well the truth is that its not necessarily any more secure than a Windows machine. Yes, thats the truth. Safari might be giving away your passwords to untrusted sites. This could mean a very big vulnerability for you and your computer, especially if you use the same password in more than one place. You can read the article here. But wait thats not all! Not to bring up old news but as recently as March of this year at a hacking convention there was a very interesting battle. First of all it was found “that the Safari browser was su... 12/17/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate In case you missed Part 1 check it out here. Earlier this week it was announced “News broke in the security world earlier this week that a critical vulnerability had been found in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7.  The vulnerability could be used to take over computers and is known to be currently being used to steal passwords.” Now if you are a Internet Explorer user or 70%ish of the current market or you were a past IE user (99% likely) then you are familiar with these sorts of announcements. But if Microsoft had a defcon level and defcon 1 is all out nuclear war, this one is defcon 2. You know that joke, this is so serious and then you the audience chime in “How serious is it?!” Well its serious for sure. “The seriousness of the flaw was evidenced by ... 12/17/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate Firefox has been gaining quite a reputation and quite a following. Recently it was reported that Firefox is taking a 20% market share for browsers. What this means in terms of security is that “This gives it a high profile and leaves it a desirable target to be exploited by hackers and malware writers. Worse yet, it has less money to fund security efforts that Microsoft, and according to some experts, less focus as well.” This might mean a risk to your computer. But really how can you know? I guess the point is that you really don't know how safe you are until someone exploits a hole and voila, all your files disappear. Its hard to know you are truly safe before something happens. But a recent study suggests that Firefox might actually pose a very big p... 12/17/2008

I recently reported that Facebook was adding a new feature called Facebook Connect and Google was adding Friend Connect. When I wrote those articles I didn't realize one very big feature staring me in the face. In addition to all of the other interconnectivity that “Connect” will offer they basically act to universally identify you wherever you are in the world. Huh? “People may have IDs for the various blogging platforms or commenting systems, but most don’t identify with them. It is a necessary inconvenience. They identify with Facebook or their email because that is where they manage their personal and professional lives.” Well the point is to identify yourself no matter what site you are using and then report your activity back to Facebook so that your friends are updated too. Ok t... 12/17/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate Eau Claire Wisconsin Realtor® Everyone knows, or should know, there is a direct correlation between poverty levels and crime. Basically the answer to crime is to raise up income levels and we would see a drastic decline in most crimes. That probably won't stop the crimes going on in our government, wall street or white collar crimes in general but since when does our society treat those types of crimes as crimes? After all, you don't see anyone in jail after all the recent criminal activity on wall street. Anyways, to get back on topic, I came across this article and found it rather interesting. There is some speculation that we might see an increase in cyber crime as more people in the IT business lose their jobs and seek employment. The article is a p... 12/15/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate Eau Claire Wisconsin Realtor® According to this article, the website Zillow, has reported that US homes have lost about $2 Billion in value. That certainly does make a great headline and probably scares enough people into reading the story. But take a good look at that story for a moment and then lets analyze this together.   Whenever I am presented with an opinion and this article is certainly opinion, I want some basic facts to be presented alongside that opinion. This is just basically supporting your argument or at least documenting where you got your information from when you formed your opinion.   Now take a look at the article again and show me where they are documenting their source for this information. Unless I am missing something the article... 12/15/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate Eau Claire Wisconsin Realtor® If you are in a profession that requires you to stick your personal information out there, like my job does for instance, then you probably get pretty tired of all the phone calls from telemarketers. Then pretty much anyone with an Inbox has probably been tired of ridiculous scam emails as long as they can remember. On top of all that you have the problem of ridiculous faxes coming in with offers from all over the place. Not only do these tie up your phone line they waste time, paper and money. What is really frustrating is that junk faxes are actually illegal, Congress requires the FCC to enforce its Junk Fax Protection Act. The legislation, enacted in 2005, forbids unsolicited fax ads. The law defines unsolicited as "any ... 12/12/2008

Eau Claire Wisconsin Realtor® Not too long ago Google announced the release of their browser called Chrome. It has been in the beta stage for a bit and from what I have seen most people have been happy with it. Well now its official and no longer in the beta stages. Now if only my MLS would stop having to use Internet Explorer I could officially switch to something else. I think I would go the Firefox route myself simply because of the addons and it being around longer. Anyways links: http://www.dailytech.com/Hardened+Google+Chrome+Ready+to+Throw+Down+With+IE+Firefox/article13668.htm http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081211-google-anticipates-a-bright-and-shiny-future-for-chrome.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/google-chrome-beta.html http://www.google.com/chrome/?utm_c... 12/12/2008