Juju

I just found out about this fascinating new company called Citizenre which is starting a service in 2008 called REnU. Despite the unfortunate choice of naming, it looks so awesome it's almost too good to be true. Basically, they are going to offer to install solar panels on your roof for free and charge you a fixed rate based on usage (I think... there's some confusion on this point) which should be equal to or less then you pay now from your utility!? You're basically renting the equipment, but there's nothing to buy, no installation cost, no maintenance fees, and just a $500 deposit. They also have a very moving video (if you're a tree hugger... ok, maybe I'm just a dirty hippie) describing it all with Ed Begley, Jr (hehe) and some narration by Morgan Freeman.

I emailed them the following questions, hopefully they'll get back to me soon:

The FAQ says you pay for the energy you produce, not the energy you actually use, however the Net-Meetering page says that excess energy produced is sold back to the power company and is used as credit for times when you do not produce enough energy to meet your needs? The Overview page says "Performance-based contract means you only pay for what is delivered". This is confusing. Also, the Net-Meetering page says a map of existing net-meetering laws is given below, but there is no map on that page?

How does the controller send reports? Is a phone line required? I don't have a phone line, I have cable modem and Vonage VOIP phone service. Will this be a problem? Can it send the reports using a regular internet connection? One page says a phone line is needed, but then this page says it reports daily via a simple ISP connection.

The How Solar Energy Works page seems to suggest it mostly gathers power during the day and sends most of it back to the power company for credit and then at night it draws power back out of the power company. Why not store most excess power in batteries to draw from when needed? Seems like I would end up losing money because I doubt the rates the power company buys from me would equal what they charge me?

I'm curious about the 25 year contract option. Solar panels will undoubtedly see many advancements over the next 25 years. Will there be an option to upgrade the system and at what cost?

Probably a stupid question, but I don't know much about solar panels. I'm wondering how it handles snow. Must snow be cleared off the panels? I thought it was funny how one of the pictures at the top of one of the pages shows a house covered in snow, but the solar panels are perfectly clear.

I'm also curious why there's no contact email address listed anywhere on the REnU website. The link to Locate an Associate doesn't work and I'm not quite ready to register to reserve a system. I had to goto the main Citizenre website to find an address to email, which is pretty annoying.

UPDATE

I actually got a response quite a while ago, but didn't get around to posting it until now. Just for the record here it is:

1) The page the FAQ refers to (Net Metering) is actually accessible on the home page - as well as the rest of the site - labelled "Service Territory and rates. Thank you for pointing out the error; it will rectified soon.

2) The controller needs to use a phone line to send data. You do not need a dedicated (separate) line and VOIP as well as broadband internet also qualifies.

3) We are not offering energy storage at this time. Although useful, battery packs are not sufficiently friendly to the environment. The system are engineered to meet up to 100% of the historical consumption, so it is higly improbable that there will be an excess.

4) Yes, upgrade options will be available as new technology is implemented.

5) Snow can be cleared off the panels if necessary in the very same way that dust is washed off in the SW. Performance guarantee states that they do not pay a rent if the system is not generating for them. A heating device might be supplied (33 degrees) that could clear off the snow.

I'm still a little confused as to if a phone line is really required. His answer to #2 makes me thing the person doesn't really know what they're talking about. VOIP and broadband != a phone line to send data if it uses a plain old modem.

I'm still very interested in REnU, however I will probably wait until they start to roll it out and people start sharing their experiences. I really hope it succeeds!

I'm pleased to announce that a project I've been working on for the past few months has been released. (well open beta) It's called eVoke TV. Majority of the development was done by yours truely using Ruby on Rails.

What is it? Turning on marketroid speak, it's TV Listings Web 2.0 style. Compared to most TV listings sites, which tend to be slow and cluttered with ads, eVoke aims to be as fast as possible. Lots of ajax and scriptaculous effects.

Also, it provides RSS feeds for your rated shows as well as a personalized lineup feed. In other words I can open my RSS aggregator and every day it will send me the list of shows I like that are on today. Along with the RSS feeds, you can add script tags to your blog to share your favorites as you should be able to see in the sidebar of this page.

The other biggy is an ajax powered realtime chat room for every show that is on right now. What this means is it connects you to other users in your timezone so that you can chat about the show you're watching. (your chat status can also be posted to your blog so your visitors can see what show you're watching right now and join you in chat)

There's lots of other nifty stuff, so do me a favor and go take a look and spread the word.

Oh, how could I forget, we're launching at Demo 2006, a pretty prestigous conference. Over 1500 companies applied, but only 70 are accepted. I'm quite pleased with myself at the moment. :)

Instructions on how to build an RJ45 cable tester. It uses dip switches to let you check crossover cables as well as finding crossed wires.

Normally I would have just posted this to my delicious links page, but I wanted to try the cross-posting feature of digg.com. Digg is sort of like a community moderated slashdot. It has all kinds of nifty buzzwordy features and things that I'll post more about later after I soak it all in.

If you're looking for the link on how to make the cable tester, click the read more link below. Apparently that's how digg posts it. Not sure I like that. As a matter of fact, I don't like that. :)

read more | digg story

I found it kinda funny that last month, the Mozilla Foundation started offering a bounty of $500 for every serious security bug found and the initiative was started with a $5,000 donation. Then on Tuesday they announce 10 security bugs which are now fixed by the latest versions. 10 x 500 = 5,000. Isn't it ironic, don't cha think? :)

As usual they were still patched a lot faster then some people and I must say, the latest version of Firefox kicks some major ass. The new find function bar is brilliant. The RSS integrated bookmarks are fantastic. (now every morning I can open all new slashdot stories in all tabs with two clicks) Awesome.

Uh oh, the viruses and worms are starting to evolve. I'm telling you, they're just a few steps away from becoming sentient. This one uses the speech engine in Windows XP to say the following:

How are you. I am back. My name is Mr. Hamsi. I am seeing you. Haaaaaaaa. You must come to Turkey. I am cleaning your computer. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 0. Gule gule.

Bonus points for the first worm that starts out by saying "In A.D. 2101 War was beginning."...

After listening to this guy explain the Retro Encabulator, I now know how people feel when I try to explain to them what I do for a living.

You can create your own real stamps online at PhotoStamps. This is just begging to be abused.

Via Boing Boing - seanbonner.com

A Mini-ITX PC inside a ball. There's some better pictures here showing how it sort of opens up in the middle. Pretty nifty.

Via Boing-Boing - Sensible Erection.

Update: I'm offering a Gmail invite for a referral!

This is not a scam. (even though a lot of scams start out by saying they are not scams) Here's how it works:

1. You sign up and complete an offer.
2. You sucker 5 other people to sign up and complete an offer.
3. ...
4. PROFIT! (you get a free 20GB iPod, iPod mini, or $250 iTunes Gift Certificate)

Impossible you say? There's reports all over the place about people actually getting their free iPods. The company running this (Gratis Internet) does several deals like this. Think about it, they could make 40 bucks for referring someone to one of the offers and they make money by betting the majority of the people who do it don't manage to get 5 people. Some of the offers require you to subscribe to something, but most of them you can cancel before the free trial runs out and you won't have to pay anything. (or in the case of the eBay offer, so long as you don't win the bid it doesn't cost you anything) So the most you end up paying is getting your email address added to yet another spam list. (after about 8 years on the internet with the same email address, I'm on all of them anyway. Thank god for TMDA)

So anyway here's some tips to help you get your free iPod:

• Use Internet Explorer. (I can't believe I just said that) Apparently some people have had problems getting the offer credits if you use Mozilla or Firefox, then again some people say it works fine. Your millage may vary.
• Don't signup a referral on the same IP address. They will detect it and think you're cheating and ban you from doing the promotion. For instance, I referred my wife. Instead of signing up my wife at home where I also signed up, I signed her up at my computer at work.
• I recommend doing the eBay promotion, but remember: you have to open a new account (even if you already have an ebay account) and you must bid on an item so that you become the high bidder (try to find an auction for something that just started and has no bids and that you're sure someone will eventually outbid you so you don't have to pay)
• Seems the eBay promotion has been removed. They added back the Ancestry.com promotion which I hear can be done for free and cancelled online. So thats probably the easiest one to do.

For information, help, and more evidence that it's legit, check out the Free iPod Guide. If you do decide to give it a try, please make sure you click on my referral link, thanks. :) I plan on updating this post over time as I work on getting referrals and to give people an idea of how long the process takes.

08-01-2004:

Signed up at freeipods.com.

I used the form on the page to send a referral email to 8 suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfriends. Note: the email that gets sent to them looks way too much like spam despite being From: you. Might be better off just emailing friends to tell them about it.

I tried doing the ebay promotion, but for some reason I never got a confirmation email from ebay to create my account. I'll give it another day or two.

08-02-2004:

I still didn't get a confirmation from ebay, so I tried doing the offer again and creating another new account using one of my other email addresses. It went through right away. While looking for something cheap to bid on so that I'll get outbid, I actually found some things I would actually like to buy and bid on it. (I guess sleazy marketing schemes can payoff sometimes)

Signed my wife up and ran the ebay offer as well. (note: I registered her while I was at work so as not to come from the same ip)

08-03-2004:

My wife and I both got emails that our ebay offers were approved! Only took one day, maybe I was just lucky.

08-06-2004:

Still no more referrals and I'm getting desperate. I've turned to the dark side and added a popup ad to my website to make it display this iPod page. At least I take some comfort in the fact that it will only annoy IE users. :) You should be using Firefox anyway.

08-09-2004:

I got two more people that have joined, but not completed an offer. That means if all the people that have joined complete an offer, then I'll get my iPod! Unfortunately I know one of those 4 probably won't do it. :(

08-13-2004:

PROGRESS! Finally. I got a few more people that have signed up and today I found that 2 of them actually completed an offer! 3 down 2 to go. Enjoy your gmail invites people. :)

08-19-2004:

The exchange of gmail invites for referrals seems to have gotten a lot of sign ups but none of them have completed a referral yet. I'm up to 10 joined, but not completed offer and 3 completed offers. I'm so close... come on people, complete referrals! If you're having trouble, post a message here and I'll help.

Current Status:

3 Referral completed 10 Joined, but offer not completed

Thats a .85 inch drive that goes up to 4 gig.