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10 ways to make money while in your underwear

A while ago I was interviewed by a TV news syndication service for a story on sites that let you sell your expertise online. The story showed, just briefly, screenshots of a few of the services. For completeness' sake, here's a list of 10 sites (plus a few bonus sites) you can use to monetize your down cycles, e.g., make money in your spare time from the stuff in your head.

1. BitWine has a large list of topics from which you can select your expertise. You set your own hourly rates. Calls from customers looking for your expertise come in to your computer, but people calling you can connect to the network via ordinary telephone. (See story.) See also Wengo, a European take on this concept.

2. Ether has a slick system to connect people to your phone line and charge them for the call. Its big difference is that there's no directory. You put a little "call me" widget on your own site or blog, where, as the company says, "trust already exists." (Review.)

3. Skype Prime is like Ether, but works over the Skype Internet Telephone (VoIP) service. Skype takes a large percentage of revenues for using this service (30 percent, compared to Ether's 15 percent). (Story.)

4. Talkbean is designed for language teachers. It escrows the lesson fees: Students pay up front, and tutors get taught once the lesson is complete. (Review.)

LG toasts champagne theater in Singapore

When it comes to aesthetics, you can trust the Koreans to go over the edge with fancy designs. It started off with the Samsung Bordeaux-series LCD TVs with their wine glass-inspired flat panels, and now we have LG following suit. As part of its Design Art home theater systems, the electronics giant is launching two models featuring speakers modeled after a champagne flute. Each of these sleek tall-boy speakers is dressed in stylish piano black and has a two-way design with dedicated tweeter and woofer for better sound reproduction.

Though we believe LG could have done a little better than … Read more

You only have two ears--why do you need a surround sound system to play music?

Granted, home theater and multichannel sound go together like peanut butter and jelly, but music, even now in the twenty first century is pretty much a stereo-only affair. Ergo, if you listen to more music than watch movies, ditch the hassles of the 5.1 channel, satellite/subwoofer model and get yourself a decent stereo receiver and a pair of really nice speakers.

Outlaw Audio's RR 2150 "Retro Receiver" sounds spectacular with music and better yet, it's a refreshingly simple to use alternative to all of the stupidly complicated seven-channel A/V receivers I've used.… Read more

More than 100 times faster than Wi-Fi?

Radio scientists at IBM Research and MediaTek are teaming up to develop a wireless transmission protocol that will deliver files more than 100 times faster than Wi-Fi.

The idea is to take advantage of the 60GHz spectrum, according to Mehmet Soyuer, the lead researcher on the project, who is based in IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. These chips will be able to transfer files at around 2.5 gigabits per second, compared with the 11 to 54 megabits of Wi-Fi. Hence the 100 times faster calculation, Soyuer said.

Put another way, these chips … Read more

Solar Decathlon prize goes to Germany's TU Darmstadt

The Solar Decathlon solar home competition finished up on Saturday with Germany's Technische Universitat Darmstadt taking top honors.

For about 8 days, students from 20 universities showed off their solar-powered houses to judges, government officials, and the general public on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Contestants had to design, finance and build their houses and then transport them to the Mall, where they were judged on 10 factors, including the energy efficiency, architecture and indoor comfort.

For previous coverage of the Solar Decathlon, see here for photos and see here for videos and description of the technologies and designs … Read more

Stolen Home Depot laptop exposes employee data

Correction, 8:22 a.m. PST: The original version of this article inaccurately reported the timing of the theft. The laptop was stolen several weeks ago.

A laptop containing personal data on about 10,000 Home Depot employees was stolen from the car of a regional manager, Home Depot announced Wednesday.

The laptop was stolen several weeks ago from the car of the regional manager in Massachusetts while it was parked in front of his home, according to Home Depot.

"The Home Depot takes data security seriously and works very diligently to protect its customers' and associates' privacy," … Read more

Putting the TV on a sound pedestal

A story for your grandchildren: In ancient times, there were these things called armoires--once used for clothing, they evolved into big and bulky cabinets where people hid their big and bulky TVs. But now that plasma, LCD and even OLED sets (the ultimate anorexic model) have completed the television set's swan-like transition, it's understandable if their proud owners no longer want to keep their TVs under wraps.

For these unabashed exhibitionists there's a new Sharp home theater system, a self-contained credenza with built-in speakers, subwoofers and amplifier outfitted with Dolby technology throughout, according to Tech Digest. Sound … Read more

In Washington, D.C., it takes a village to build a solar house

There are green buildings, and then there are really green buildings.

I just returned from the Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C., a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy where 20 universities build houses powered entirely by the sun. That's right, off the grid on the National Mall for almost two weeks.

I will be hosting an Ask the Editors forum on green buildings this Thursday, October 18 at 11:00 a.m. PDT, where I can share some of the things I saw at the Solar Decathlon and answer any other green building questions you … Read more

More alternative-energy innumeracy

As an engineer, I hate to see bad engineering treated like a good idea.

I've written recently about questionable proposals for human power generation, electric vehicle recharging and fuel cells. In some cases, there's nothing really wrong with the underlying technology, but it's being implemented and promoted using bad math and misleading promises.

The latest example of innumeracy comes from Shawn Frayne, an independent inventor here in Silicon Valley. Frayne's Windbelt is a low-cost wind-power generator that uses a fluttering membrane instead of rotating blades to convert wind power into mechanical motion; a simple linear generator … Read more

Newsflash: HDTV is too complicated!

In an posting on Crave yesterday, Sony's SVP of Marketing Randy Waynick feels that, as an industry, high definition TV gets a barely passing grade in terms of how it communicates about its products to consumers.

Let's be blunt: HDTV and the next generation home theater it anchors is a trainwreck. What should have been the next great in-home entertainment experience has been marred by an alphabet soup of confusing standards and protocols and dubiously compatible products that consumers should never have been exposed to.

Anyone that has shopped for a TV recently knows how true this is. … Read more