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U.K. residents will now be able to monitor and regulate their home energy usage from any Web-enabled phone or computer regardless of whether their energy provider uses smart meters.

Google announced two U.K. partnerships this week concerning its PowerMeter software, one of which completely bypasses the need for cooperation from an energy provider.

Since the U.K. electricity and gas supplier First Utility began offering customers free smart meters in September 2008, it has had 30,000 customers take them up on the offer. Now, as a result of a Google partnership announced Tuesday, First Utility smart meter … Read more

Surveyors, environmental impact researchers, historical impact researchers, cell-phone tower site locators, and real estate developers--these are just a few of the folks who will find real value in this nicely featured application for plotting maps based on survey or GPS data.

Metes and Bounds launches a large window with a row of icon-buttons along the top, a vertical pane with some data controls on the left side, and a large drawing and editing pane taking up most of the window's real estate. A Drawing Wizard automatically opens at launch to prompt the user for the type of drawing he … Read more

RunKeeper Pro is the paid version of the already great free fitness app RunKeeper. Like the free version, RunKeeper Pro can help track your speed, pace, distance, and location of workouts on any GPS-enabled iPhone. Whether you're running, cycling, or walking, RunKeeper can track your location so long as you have adequate GPS strength.

The simple two-button interface--Stop/Start and Pause--and a large display shows time elapsed, current speed, pace per mile (or kilometer), distance traveled, and GPS strength, with live graphs and the ability to check your current location and post pictures and status updates. You can track … Read more

Google has connected a home electricity-monitoring device to its Web-based PowerMeter application, part of Google's strategy to seed the market for home energy tools.

Google on Monday said that PowerMeter works with TED 5000, a small-screen monitor that provides a real-time read-out of home electricity use. TED, which stands for The Energy Detective, is one of many monitors aimed at giving consumers more detailed information so they can find ways to reduce energy use.

In combination with PowerMeter, a person can view details, such as real-time electricity use and weekly trends from a Web browser or using a smart … Read more

While the Apple Tablet is much more fashionable to hype, the Microsoft Courier turns out to be very hype-worthy. We also find out, once again, that Rafe knows where he works. And the U.S. has relaxed its grip on the Internet. Good thing? Bad thing? Irrelevant thing? Or over-hyped thing like an Apple tablet?

Everything we know about Apple’s touch-screen tablet http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/apple-tablet-everything/ http://gizmodo.com/5370252/apple-tablet-aiming-to-redefine-newspapers-textbooks-and-magazines

Microsoft’s Courier tablet details emerge … Read more

Will consumers one day pay for every megabyte they use while downloading video, streaming music, or updating their Facebook statuses?

They just might. The notion of metered billing gained a major supporter Tuesday when Verizon Communications' CTO Dick Lynch told press and attendees at at fiber-to-the-home industry conference in Houston that broadband service providers "cannot continue to grow the Internet without passing the cost on to someone," according to Telephony Online.

In the future, broadband service will likely be sold in packages based on how much bandwidth a person consumes, Lynch said during that press conference at the … Read more

If you've got burnt thighs from an old MacBook Pro or you notice that your computer is always overheating and crashing from using CPU-intensive apps (like playing PC games in a virtual Windows environment), you might want to check out smcFanControl. This free, GPL-licensed utility has a single purpose: letting you increase the minimum speed of built-in fans, so your Intel computer will run cooler.

smcFanControl lets you monitor the current temperature (in Celsius or Fahrenheit), assign different minimum speeds for each fan using sliders, and even apply different settings when your power source changes (for example, going back … Read more

The University of Mississippi is letting the world in to observe its power consumption in real time.

As part of a green initiative guided by its Office of Campus Sustainability, the university is installing SmartSynch's SmartMeters to monitor and transmit data on the power consumption of lights, appliances, computers, and climate control systems in its buildings.

The SmartMeters contain software and hardware that give electrical meters their own Internet Protocol (IP) address and communicate data via the types of wireless networks used for cell phones back to a centralized virtual dashboard that can be accessed by utilities or customers.… Read more

A three-man team of programmers and engineers announced on Thursday that it has found a way to park for free by bypassing the security of "smart" parking meters used in cities including San Francisco, which has about 25,000 of them.

The parking meters are manufactured by J.J. MacKay Canada and accept coins and prepaid plastic cards that can be purchased in $20 and $50 denominations from local drugstores and grocery stores.

Although MacKay claims (PDF) its meters use "sophisticated security algorithms to deter fraud," it took the trio of hackers three days to figure … Read more