Save the Planet

I use facebook and with over 175 million users I am sure many of the people in the class have an account. Recently I found an application, through a friend, called Save the Planet. This application allows people to log in and earn "lunch money" which can then be used to "save the planet" in whatever way you choose. There are several options where you can spend your lunch money which includes removing ounces of CO2 from the atmosphere through carbonfund.org, buying rice for the hungry through the World Food Programme with the United Nations, and saving a square foot of rainforest through Conservation International. To earn this lunch money you can just log in every day and earn up to one million lunch money dollars or you can play games on the site. These games are easy and fun and are good for when you need a break from studying.

I think this is an easy way for students, and now everyone on facebook, to help solve some of the problems that are important to them. In five to ten minutes a day I can make another million dollars in lunch money and with the million from logging in I can remove 107 ounces of CO2 from the atmosphere. Check it out!

Colored Bubbles

So I was poking around some old websites that I had in my favorites from my high school days when I actually had time to surf the internet. I came across this website, which was always awesome because this guy did things that appealed to my engineering brain and also were just plain cool. He covers topics from chocolate and writing to gardening and home made kites with wingspans of 44 feet. I was poking around through his "insane projects" page, found here, when I came across his awesome idea of adding smoke and helium to bubbles. This is a really cool idea and I wonder why it hasn't really caught on, maybe because Wayne just does this stuff for fun and hasn't caught the entrepreneurship bug.



So while thinking about bubbles I remembered vaguely an article I had read a long time about about colored bubbles. After some googling I found the site that sells them, here, and then I found the article I read, here. This article really talks about how this guy spent a lot of time, 11 years, and money, $500k, to finally realize his dream. It also talks a little bit about how he approached companies and had to sometimes put his dream of creating colored bubbles on the back burner to focus on keeping his life together.

I really enjoyed this article the first time I read it and the second time was just as good, if not better, now that I'm in 407. If you have a few minutes you should check it out. I know that I'm wondering how he made that bouncing bubble.

One Red Paperclip

This is the tale of how one red paperclip became a house...

It sounds strange right, trading a red paperclip to get to a house, but it can be done, and it was done by Kyle MacDonald. Kyle decided that he wanted to trade and the trades always had to be for something bigger or better than what he currently had. The full story can be found on his blog here.

This shows how a simple idea can really catch on and become a phenomenon. Catching the public interest is something that is key to being successful for our project and for entrepreneurs in general.

In other news, does anyone actually know who these guys are?

Crazy T-Shirts

So while looking at a site with a lot of cool, but expensive, products that make good gifts I came across a shirt that detects wi-fi. This is a very cool idea because you wouldn't need to drag your laptop out of its case and start it up and wait around for it to load only to find out that the McDonald's you are in doesn't have wi-fi, you could just look at your shirt! It would be ideal for travelers and kids on campus who don't know which buildings have wi-fi.

Realistically, if a company could come up with a small sticker that could go on the back of your watch or a keychain you could clip to your keys that would be easier for me to buy. I would be willing to spend $10 on a keychain that would tell me when wi-fi is around, that would be great! It could even be part of a jump drive, which would make it convenient since you would probably always have your jump drive around when you are looking for wi-fi.

Disney

So I went to Disney over spring break and it was great! I worked at Disney for 8 months on the college program, which I would highly recommend. I was there for just two days. Since I worked at Disney and I love the company and their way of running the parks and more importantly the way they treat their guests I was surprised to notice that they have missed one small but easy and obvious way to improve the experience of their guests. I stayed at the Pop Century Resort and because I was a resort guest I was given a free parking pass which I was supposed to put on the dashboard of the rental car. This is a great option that Disney gives, parking for 1 car for 1 day is $12! So by staying at a resort, one of the cheap ones, for approx. $80 you're really only paying $68 because you save $12 for parking at the parks.

This is all well and good except for the fact that there is no "quick line" at the parking lot entrance where cars line up to pay to enter the park. This means that resort guests must wait in line with everyone even though their parking is already paid for since they are resort guests. An easy way to fix this is for Disney to change one of the already existing entrances into a "resort guest only" entrance which would just need a scanner, to scan the already existing bar code on every resort parking pass, and a gate which lowers and opens for each car.

This option grants resort guests and even quicker entrance into the park because they won't be waiting behind minivans which are trying to find the exact change needed. The buses have their own lane, resort guests should as well.

Edit: I finally downloaded my pictures from my trip and here is a picture of waiting in line to enter the park, it'll probably help clarify what I was talking about.

Long walk or short walk?

When I saw this comic on xkcd.com I immediately thought, that is so true! As an IE I spend a lot of my time (aka all of my classes, except for 407) in the Leonhard building. For those of you that don't know, the Leonhard building or Leo (since I'm lazy and hate spelling Leonhard with an H) is the farthest building from main campus. It's across the IST bridge and beyond EES. This makes it a long walk from wherever you're coming from and when heading over there I always try to take the shortest way possible.

For me, since I live in West Halls, is to cut across Atherton and then through the parking lot. Clearly this is the shortest path. The problem that occurs is just where the applied science building starts and the sidewalk continues straight on towards the EES building. There is no diagonal path towards Leo (I have included a rather sad illistration of this below, thanks paint)! Now, being IE's makes all of us obsessed with officiency and the students have made their own path, literally worn away a dirt path across the lawn. I have been an IE for 3 semesters and the path was there when I started and will be there when I leave, unless somehow, someone knows the sidewalk people of Penn State.

Ruckus Gone, Who Will Step Up?

So Ruckus has finally died. Apparently no one really knows why they are gone, they went down for an update and a while later it shut down, seemingly for good. This article gives the most information I was able to find about the subject.

Personally I was never a fan of Ruckus. Switching from Napster to Ruckus was like being kicked out of your suite at the Plaza and being moved into the Motel 6 in a bad neighborhood. Napster was streamlined and allowed you to access new music and the ability to listen to that music in the same program without being required to go through your browser. Ruckus was stepping down in technology and ease of use. The search function of Ruckus was particularly horrible and would not even provide options for incorrect spellings. Also, the selection Ruckus offered was minimal and spotty.

Napster might have cost the university money but at least people were satisfied. Ruckus was free, after a while, and ran on annoying pop up adds that routinely interrupted my homework. These ads clearly did not work and were a distraction to the user and lowered the quality of the Ruckus program.

My question is what will Penn State do next? Will they return to Napster? Or will they try to find a new provider?

Personally I hope they return to Napster, it is a no brainer for me. Their selection is better, their program is sleeker and more user friendly, and they don't bombard you with pop up ads. As far as I have seen Penn State is not even aware this has happened. There is nothing on PSU Live and nothing that I have been able to find through google. Step up Penn State, don't leave your students without music. Don't leave your students the excuse to start pirating music, again.