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Friday, August 31, 2007
Perfume is perfect for particular people
According to Health Canada, an estimated 2 to 5 per cent of adults may experience mild reactions to the chemicals in cosmetics. For those who suffer from allergies related to chemicals found in fragrances, California-based Rich Hippie offers a synthetic-free alternative perfume.
"We don't use any synthetic ingredients. We just use the real thing," says Rich Hippie owner Nannette Pallrand.
www.perfumeplus.zlio.com says perfume presents personality Ads by perfume strore
"... It is more time consuming, more expensive to produce...but it is worth it because it is safer for your health, safer for the environment and a much more beautiful scent."
The two-year-old company has 22 perfumes with rich titles like, "Bohemian Wedding," "Summer of Love" and "Hoochie Coochie" as well as unisex scents like "Nirvana." For the potent fragrance, Pallrand uses old-world French perfume manufacturing methods.
"The perfume industry was traditionally in France where there was a huge wine industry," says Pallrand of the wine alcohol she uses in Rich Hippie. "In France, famous perfume houses would pop up near these vineyards. After World War II, chemical companies needed a new market and went into different areas, like cosmetics."
The result is perhaps one of the most intoxicatingly fresh and light scents on the market that didn't make my throat sore or make my eyes itch.
According to Pallrand, all of the ingredients in Rich Hippie perfume are organic, including the alcohol that is made from organic California grapes as opposed to alcohol derived from petroleum. However, Rich Hippie is not certified organic.
"Perfume recipes are something that one doesn't give out. They are a closely guarded secret," she says, "To certify, one would have to give up the recipe and sources to the certification agency."
Pallrand will disclose that she gets ingredients from around the world: rose and camomile from Morocco, orange blossom from Tunisia, vanilla and ylang ylang from Madagascar, to name a few.
And although the luxurious ingredients are both exotic and expensive, the actual perfume is packaged in simple pharmaceutical bottles.
"I didn't want to do what large conventional companies do where most of the money is spent on the packaging and not the product."
However, the actual perfume box is an impressive shock of yellow and hot pink calligraphy reminiscent of Sofia Coppola's punkesque queen, Marie Antoinette. No retailers in Toronto carry Rich Hippie - yet - so it can only be purchased online. Which raises the question: How does one find a fragrance without smelling it beforehand?
"We sell sample kits of the perfume in small vials," says Pallrand.
Sample kits run between $55 to $325 while full bottles are $225 for a 1/2-oz. vial and $675 for 2 oz. Available at rich-hippie. com
Fragrances
To many people, the word "fragrance" means something that smells nice, such as perfume. We don't often stop to think that scents are chemicals. Fragrance chemicals are organic compounds that volatilize, or vaporize into the air - that's why we can smell them. They are added to products to give them a scent or to mask the odor of other ingredients. The volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) emitted by fragrance products can contribute to poor indoor air quality (IAQ) and are associated with a variety of adverse health effects.
Exposure to fragrance chemicals can cause headaches; eye, nose, and throat irritation; nausea; forgetfulness; loss of coordination, and other respiratory and/or neurotoxic symptoms. Many fragrance ingredients are respiratory irritants and sensitizers, which can trigger asthma attacks and aggravate sinus conditions.
Fragrance chemicals are the number one cause of allergic reactions to cosmetics -- not only to the primary users, but also to those who breathe in the chemicals as secondhand users. Phthalates in fragrances are known to disrupt hormones and are linked in animal studies to malformations of the penis, as well as adverse effects on the developing testes.
In health care facilities, fragrance can come from a number of sources:
scented cleaning products;
fragrance-emitting devices and sprays;
workers, patients, and visitors who are wearing perfume, cologne or aftershave; scented cosmetics, skin lotions or hair products;
or clothes that have been laundered with scented detergents, fabric softeners or dryer sheets.
Indoor air quality can be greatly improved in health care facilities by adopting a hospital-wide fragrance-free policy that includes a fragrance-free policy for employees, maintenance products and non-employee hospital occupants.
Solar Gets Warm Reception
Favorable energy policies involving budget allocations and air quality have bolstered solar energy. The latest news is coming from the Mojave Solar Park in California and expressly from Pacific Gas and Electric that has said it will buy some of its green power.
California and other states with ample renewable energy resources are requiring their utilities to offer more green options. Their efforts are winning de-facto national support, with Congress and the Bush administration allocating more research and development into all forms of energy, including solar - precisely $2.2 billion through 2009. And with all stakeholders concerned about the threats from climate change, the green movement in particular is finding lots of support.
A key challenge is winning new capital from venture capitalists and major manufacturers of generation technologies. Such enterprises are stepping forward. The endeavor is no doubt helped by state mandates that are giving investors more confidence that they can earn handsome returns. California, for example, requires utilities to provide 20 percent of their fuel options in the form of green energy by 2010. That has motivated solar manufacturers from around the globe to start bidding on projects.
"The solar thermal project...is another major milestone in realizing our goal to supply 20 percent of our customers' energy needs with clean renewable energy," says Fong Wan, vice president of energy procurement, PG&E. "We can harness the sun's climate-friendly power to provide our customers with reliable and cost-effective energy on an unprecedented scale."
Specifically, the Mojave Solar Park project will deliver 553 megawatts. It is expected to be fully operational in 2011 and will cover up to 6,000 acres or nine square miles of the Mojave Desert. Israel-based Solel Solar Systems is providing the technology.
Solar energy now provides less than 1 percent of all energy needs in this country. Currently, 742 megawatts of solar cells are produced annually worldwide. Germany has 500 megawatts of solar energy already installed. That market, along with Japan's and the United States', accounts for 75 percent of the world's solar photovoltaic market. Globally, the market value tied to solar power is pegged at $4 billion.
Bigger Role
According to Professor Erin Baker at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the goal is to bring down the cost of photovoltaic technology to the same level as that of competing fossil fuels, around 3-5 cents per kilowatt hour and all by 2050. But such price advantages - and the corresponding environmental breakthroughs -- can only happen if solar power can be harnessed and released when needed.
"The development of complimentary technologies, in particular low-cost storage of electricity, is critical," says Baker. She says that private-public partnerships are essential if solar power is to gain increased footing while more federal support ought to come in the forms of subsidies and other tax breaks.
Solar costs about 25 cents a kilowatt hour. That's compared to about 9 cents a kilowatt hour for natural gas and 5 cents a kilowatt hour for modern coal-burning plants, as well as 6 cents a kilowatt hour for wind energy if tax considerations are included. The good news is that the cost of solar power is falling all the time. It once stood at $1 a kilowatt hour and advocates say that it could soon cost 12-16 cents a kilowatt hour.
Nevertheless, the goal is to make solar competitive with prevailing technologies. And, initiatives such as the one in California are providing motivation to suppliers. Major manufacturers are already showing an interest in this pursuit. General Electric and Mitsubishi Electric & Electronics USA are in solar markets and in the case of GE, it says that it is planning to invest $3 billion in all green technologies. Both companies are focusing in the American Southwest where the possibilities for solar energy are highest.
Meantime, the Sandia National Laboratories is joining forces with Phoenix-based Sterling Energy Systems. The two are trying to ramp up production on a massive scale. But they got the break they needed when Sterling signed 20-year agreements with San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison to provide about 850 megawatts of solar energy to each. With those commitments, Sterling expects the incremental cost of production to fall and therefore the subsequent price per kilowatt hour.
"This will be the largest array of solar dish-Sterling systems in the world," says Chuck Andraka, the Sandia project leader. "Ultimately, Sterling Energy envisions 20,000 systems to be placed in one or more solar dish farms and providing electricity to southwest U.S. utility companies." Realistically, the Bush administration says that solar power could provide as much as 2 percent of the nation's generation mix by 2025.
Understandably, utilities and others are concerned about entering into long term agreements that involve technologies that do not have enduring track records. But, the more certainties that developers receive, the less those risks become. And their cause is no doubt helped by the fact that major American businesses are stepping up. Wal-Mart, for example, has said that it will generate as much as 20 megawatt hours per year of solar at store locations in California and Hawaii.
That commitment, if successful, would be a boon for all aspects of the solar enterprise. It would also indicate to businesses both large and small that their efforts to produce a healthier ecology can make a difference. Solar and other sustainable energy forms are not going to replace fossil fuel usage. But renewable technologies will get better and cheaper and energy policies will likely keep pace. When coupled with a growing global energy appetite, the fundamentals that underscore the green energy space will only get stronger.
More information is available from Energy Central:
California Goes Solar - Industry Rattled by Massive Plan, EnergyBiz, March/April 2006
Business Models Driving Solar, EnergyBiz, May/June 2007
For more on this topic, visit the Energy Central Generation Technologies Topic Center.
Knowledge2007 Conference Announces Keynote Speakers ,Major Industry Support
Keynote speakers and major industry support for the upcoming Knowledge2007 Conference, with the CIO Summit and 2nd Annual CIO of the Year Awards have been announced by Energy Central and Sierra Energy Group, the research and analysis division of Energy Central.
The Knowledge2007 Conference is also fortunate to have the support of its sponsors, representing the industry's major technology solution providers. Heading up the industry support is Sprint, the Knowledge2007 Presenting Sponsor. Other sponsors include Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Accenture, Alliance Data, Enspiria, and OSIsoft.
Warren Causey, a Vice President with Sierra Energy Group and Conference Program Chair commented on the importance of these keynote speakers: "We are excited about our keynote addresses at Knowledge2007. Bill Maguire has built Virgin America's IT infrastructure from the ground up while aligning this complex infrastructure with the company's innovative and customer-centric vision. And Sprint's commitment to utility industry requirements with leading telecommunications innovations will provide additional insights for our CIO and senior IT management audience. We are all very excited about the conference with these two 'headliners'."
Mike Smith, Senior Vice President with Sierra Energy Group added: "This combination of keynoters who are at the forefront of the innovative use of IT to provide business solutions, coupled with the support of virtually every leading technology solution provider in North America makes Knowledge2007 a very compelling event for senior utility IT executives. We look forward to seeing everybody in Austin in November!"
Additional information about the Knowledge2007 Conference can be found at www.knowledge2007.com.
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About Energy Central
In business since 1995, Energy Central is an energy information services and media company that has developed a membership base of 140,000+ power industry professionals. These members have access to a variety of news and information products, including daily and weekly e-newsletters, five web sites (including www.energycentral.com and www.energycentraljobs.com) and publications such as EnergyBiz magazine.
About Sierra Energy Group
Formed in 2005 as the Research & Analysis Division of Energy Central, Sierra Energy Group provides analysis and intelligence in utility and energy business and technology markets. Services from Sierra Energy Group include the renowned Causey Reports, Market Intelligence and research programs, and proprietary research offerings. The Group is composed of utility and energy industry veterans with backgrounds in utility IT and business operations, solution provider management, and market research
'Wiki City Rome' to draw a map like no other
Residents of Italy's capital will glimpse the future of urban mapmaking next month with the launch of "Wiki City Rome," a project developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that uses data from cellphones and other wireless technology to illustrate the city's pulse in real time.
The project will debut Sept. 8 during Rome's "Notte Bianca" or white night, an all-night festival of events across the capital city. During that night, anyone with an Internet connection will be able to see a unique map of the Italian capital that shows the movements of crowds, event locations, the whereabouts of well-known Roman personalities, and the real-time position of city buses and trains.
The map will also be broadcast on a big-screen display in one of Rome's main squares in the city center, giving Romans real-time feedback on the human dynamics in their immediate surroundings.
Wiki City Rome stems from MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory, an initiative directed by Carlo Ratti that studies the impact of new technologies on cities. The project builds on the work of "Real Time Rome," presented during the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, the prestigious biannual exhibition of contemporary art.
Organizers say Wiki City Rome raises the intriguing prospect of a map drawn on the basis of dynamic elements of which the map itself is an active part. According to researcher Francesco Calabrese of SENSEable City Lab, a person could consult the map to find the most crowded place in Rome to drink an aperitivo - and then identify the least congested route by which to reach it.
"Rome's Notte Bianca is all about the city, the people and the events, and Wiki City Rome will give Romans a new awareness of how they move within their city in response to this exceptional pulse of activities," said researcher Kristian Kloeckl, a SENSEable City Lab member who is also working on the project.
"How do people react towards this new perspective on their own city while they are determining the city's very own dynamic? How does having access to real-time data in the context of possible action alter the process of decision-making in how to go about different activities?" Kloeckl asked. "These are among the questions we may be able to answer."
By looking at a city using a "real-time control system" as a working analogy, the Wiki City project studies tools that enable people to become prime actors themselves in improving the efficiency of urban systems. In coming years, the Wiki City project will develop as an open platform where anybody can download and upload data that are location and time sensitive.
"By deploying developments of the 'Web 2.0' and the 'Semantic Web,' Wiki City can be a significant leap forward towards a pervasive 'internet of things' to support human action and interaction," said Carlo Ratti.
Ratti's team obtains its data anonymously from cell phones, GPS devices on buses and taxis, and other wireless mobile devices. Data are made anonymous and aggregated from the beginning, so there are no implications for individual privacy.
Partnering with the SENSEable City Lab on Wiki City Rome are SEAT Pagine Gialle, Telecom Italia, Telespazio, the Rome public transportation authority ATAC, La Repubblica, and Trenitalia.
In addition to Kloeckl, Calabrese and Ratti, members of the Wiki City Rome team include Assaf Biderman, Bernd Resch, and Fabien Girardin
YouTube agrees to royalty deal for UK performers
Today, the MCPS-PRS Alliance and YouTube announced an agreement to license more than ten million pieces of music to YouTube, which will recognize the contribution of the creators of that music to the service. The MCPS-PRS Alliance collects royalties for more than fifty thousand composers, songwriters, and publishers in the UK. The deal will allow each of the fifty thousand artists to be paid when their works are played on YouTube.
MCPS and PRS are the not-for-profit UK collecting societies that ensure composers, songwriters, and publishers are paid royalties when their music is used; from live performance to TV and radio, CDs to DVDs, downloads, streams and everything in between. Royalties create a future for music by supporting creators while they continue to write. MCPS and PRS are committed to delivering maximum royalties and world-class service.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, is the world's largest online video community. YouTube has faced no end to mounting attacks and lawsuits over their user published content. Most of the claims against YouTube are over royalties and IP violations. Viacom, who is the largest of their opposition, is already prepping witnesses, and their case for the $1.5 billion suit they filed against Google over the content displayed on YouTube.
"We're pleased to be working in cooperation with the MCPS-PRS Alliance to provide the YouTube community in the UK with the best possible user experience. This agreement is another great example of how we are working with the music industry to explore new and creative ways to compensate music creators," Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube said.
Adding to that Steve Porter, of the MCPS-PRS said, "We are delighted to have concluded this deal with YouTube and to be the first collecting society outside the US to do so. Whether it is music videos, user uploads or other audio visual content, our agreement will allow our fifty-thousand songwriter, composer, and music publisher members to be paid when their creative talents are being enjoyed on YouTube's service across the UK."
The deal marks the first fully settled agreement of this kind. Although some U.S. royalty collecting societies have reached interim arrangements with YouTube, none of them are at the stage where final compensation values are ready to be set. Under the terms of this agreement, YouTube will pay a blanket fee to the MCPS-PRS for their content.
On the Internet, A Tangled Web Of Classified Ads
A few years ago, a classified ad for Andrew Davis's 2001 Mitsubishi Montero SUV might have been limited to two lines of descriptive shorthand: A/C, pwr pkg, 6cyl AT, 2wd, $9k firm.
Today, in ads on the Internet, Davis is posting pictures of his car in an off-road setting and sharing such details as the replacement of the timing belt and water pump 5,000 miles ago. He has even included a link to a feature article about his car's model in Popular Mechanics.
  Andrew Davis prepares his 2001 Mitsubishi Montero for sale after placing ads on multiple Web sites, which he found "a confusing jumble" both for seller and buyer.(By Bill O'leary / Post)  |
Davis, a Clemson University graduate who moved to the Washington area only a few weeks ago, posted free classified ads on Craigslist and the Marketplace area on Facebook, the social-networking site. He also paid for an ad in The Washington Post, a bundled deal that also put his listing on Cars.com and other Web sites.
His approach of putting his vehicle in front of as many potential buyers as possible illustrates how dynamic the process of classified advertising has become. For sellers, the options have moved beyond newspaper ads and fliers on coffee-shop bulletin boards. And for buyers looking for a car, an apartment, a job or a new puppy, it means better chances of seeing relevant ads on a variety of sites.
This push into online classifieds -- a business dominated by newspapers for more than a century -- is still very much in flux, said Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence in Oakland, Calif. While classified revenue has been shrinking at newspapers across the country, a growing number of Web companies, both established and new, are moving into the business, although not necessarily dominating the market.
Newspapers have lost their grip on classifieds in recent years. Once a steady source of revenue, classified advertising at some of the larger chains has dropped 14 to 20 percent over the past year, notably in once-lucrative segments such as automotive, real estate and employment ads, according to Fitch Ratings. Fitch, a credit ratings agency in New York, said this week that newspaper performance has been weaker than it originally forecast for the year.
Online traffic to classified sites, meanwhile, has grown 23 percent, to more than 46 million unique visitors in July, up from about 37 million a year earlier, according to the market research firm ComScore in Reston. Traffic has declined on some sites, among them Yahoo Classifieds, where it fell by 13 percent. But it has grown on some newer sites such as MySpace, where classified listings have jumped 33 percent since their August 2006 debut.
The classified market has become increasingly fragmented as a growing number of companies search for the best way to convert offline newspaper ads into a Web format.
"It becomes a confusing jumble of sites," Sterling said. "If you're a seller, that's a problem, and if you're a buyer, that's a problem."
What is emerging are two primary online approaches. One is simply to shift the traditional classifieds model to the Web, aggregating ads to a single site. The other involves distributing those aggregated ads to as many Web sites as possible.
EBay has backed some of the biggest and best-known classified sites. It partially owns Craigslist, the popular no-frills site that collects local listings, and allows buyers and sellers to post listings free. EBay recently introduced its U.S. users to two similar sites, Kijiji and Gumtree, both of which started overseas.
Geebo, based in McLean, is another online listing site trying to compete against Craigslist by creating a brand name that will draw buyers and sellers to its site.
"When I think about classified sites, outside of Geebo, I can only think of one, and that's Craigslist," said Geebo chief executive Greg Collier. "It's not like I can think of 10 or 12 of these right off the top of my head. There may be a lot out there, but nobody knows they're there."
In contrast, such companies as Edgeio and Oodle are less concerned with creating a site that buyers will view as a destination. Instead, they are pushing their way into the marketplace by acting as a go-between, cutting deals with newspapers, as well as Web sites, to increase the number of places where their listings appear.
Edgeio collects classified listings through individual sellers, as well as listings on sites like Geebo, or from traditional publications. Using software, it then distributes those ads to Web sites with specialized audiences.
For example, a niche Web site for fans of cocker spaniels might partner with Edgeio to display ads from a local breeder selling puppies. The ads might come from an individual or an ad posted in the community newspaper, but are then distributed to the cocker spaniel site through Edgeio.
"Our goal is to get more traffic to the [Web site] publishers," said Edgeio co-founder Keith Teare. "As money flows through the system, we take our share."
Like Edgeio, Oodle acts as a middleman, but is positioning itself to be more like a buyer's agent, offering such tools as e-mail alerts. Oodle's service searches classifieds and finds products a prospective buyer is looking for. In addition, it analyzes its listings for trends and other market data for buyers to use in their research. For example, someone shopping for a 2002 Honda Accord will also get information about that car, such as the average price for that year and model, in Oodle's listings.
Oodle chief executive Craig Donato said his model is a new approach to classified advertising. The challenge now is to get those ads in front of a local audience in a creative way so that buyer and seller can find each other and complete the sale.
"What's happening essentially is that companies are trying to do things online that lead to offline transactions," he said. "The transaction always occurs between two humans offline. . . . You would never rent an apartment without seeing it first or take a job without interviewing. That defines classified ads."
For that reason, local papers say they will be key players, even as classifieds find more venues online.
Forging partnerships with sites like Oodle have allowed newspapers to test some different approaches without having to build their own technologies, said Mort Goldstrom, vice president of advertising for the Newspaper Association of America in Arlington.
But Fitch Ratings analyst Mike Simonton said newspapers have a long way to go in making up for eroding classified revenue.
"We don't think that online classifieds have replaced or are successfully replacing the print classifieds," he said. "There's just a lot more competition in that market."
Intel Releases Quad-Core Processors Early
sponsered by; www.4me.zlio.comOriginally slated for January 2007, Intel today announced the availability of two dual-core processor families with the release of the Intel Xeon 5300 and Intel Core 2 Extreme.
The Core 2 Extreme processors are primarily for desktop clients and users that have multimedia editing or high-end gaming requirements, while the Xeons target server implementations. And judging from the early reviews, these two-socket chips represent the fastest silicon you can currently buy.
The release of these processors comes ahead of AMD who doesn't expect to release their four-way quad-core ("4x4") offering until mid-2007. Being first to market gives back some of the edge AMD won when they released dual-core processors ahead of Intel. AMD's dual-core Opteron has been credited in helping the company make significant market gains in the last year.
Intel's quad-core market advantage may have come at the expense of engineering time. One criticism of the Intel quad-core design, dubbed "Clovertown," is that it is just two dual-core chips from the same die "sandwiched" together.
That engineering decision may be a moot point until AMD releases their own quad-core processor when you consider that Inte's Core 2 chips under 2.66 GHz are pulling only 80 watts of power compared to the 120 watts of AMD's latest dual-core Opteron. The balance of performance versus power is what has given the Opteron a leg up over Intel's Itanium for some time and it looks as if the pendulum just swung the other way. And for multimedia processing, you are unlikely to find a faster chip out there than the Core 2 right now. Obviously not every application is going to be so well optimized but if you're encoding video, Core 2 Extreme is a good bet.
Systems vendors have quickly lined up, betting that IT buyers are ready to make jump. IBM, HP, SGI, Apple and Dell have all announced the availability of servers and clients based on Intel's new chips.
The one surprise here is Dell, who beat nearly everyone to the punch announcing they would offer Intel-based quad-core machines last week. Dell isn't one to jump on trends early -- it was only this year that the company began offering AMD-based clients and servers -- and this timely buy-in could be considered either a technology endorsement, a way for Dell to shake things up after a couple of bad quarters, or both.
Users looking to capitalized on the super-fast chips shouldn't expect any early discounts. The 2.66GHz Xeon X5355 will set you back $1172 while the 2.66GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is priced at $999.
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