capture

Although plain in design, this handy tool lets you easily store and view your favorite Web sites offline. Instead of supplying a built-in browser, your stored pages can be quickly viewed in your designated browser.

This freeware program's bland interface is all business. A simple Wizard that leads you through the process of copying Web sites is a welcome touch. Users need only enter a project name, insert the URLs to be copied, and adjust settings as desired, including choosing how many layers of a page the program will pick up. HTTrack Website Copier goes to work very quickly … Read more

Many of my favorite freeware tools have more-than-adequate competitors out there, but you can never have too much of a good thing. Here are four utilities that you may not have heard of to help you back up your files, take screen captures, uninstall programs, and test your download speeds.

MyUninstaller replaces the default Windows Add/Remove Programs utility, and is a strong alternative to Revo Uninstaller. They both uninstall programs, and that's just about where their similarities end.

MyUninstaller feels extremely lightweight compared to Revo and contains none of the system tools extras like Autorun Manager that Revo … Read more

LAGUNA, NIGUEL, Calif.--What do you get when you put the CEO of a coal-dependent utility on stage with two environmental advocates to discuss whether coal can be clean? A surprisingly civil discussion with more than just straight "pro" and "con" positions.

The CEO of American Electric Power, Michael Morris, spoke on the same panel with Michael Brune, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, and David Hawkins, the director of climate programs at the Environmental Defense Council on Tuesday at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference here.

AEP is the second-largest electricity generator in the … Read more

This free offline browser captures Web sites so you can view them from your desktop; however, it froze on us several times and produced many error messages along the way.

Wysigot Light's user interface consists of menu and shortcut commands at the top of the window. A tree menu shows all of the Web sites designated for offline view. A large panel displays the actual Web page. We especially liked the Assistant feature, which used a wizard-like approach to guide us through adding new Web sites to the browser. The wizard let us designate how often to check the … Read more

A new machine dubbed the "Black Phantom" can turn biomass into manmade coal.

Carbonscape, a New Zealand-based start-up, describes its invention as an industrial-sized microwave that can cook plant waste, wood waste, and "even sewage" into coal.

Carbonscape also claims that the machine captures and stores more carbon than the amount of carbon generated by the electricity needed to power it for the process.

Why would anyone want to make more coal when humans are desperately trying to get out from under the carbon dioxide mess we've been making since the Industrial Revolution?

The invention … Read more

If you need many screen captures, this tool makes it easy to grab them, but you may run into a barrier with the trial period. It's 30 days (which is adequate) or three sessions (which is brief), whichever comes first. We had a few other quibbles that left us unwilling to part from the reliable, old, built-in PrintScreen.

Screenshot Master installs a small icon in your system tray. Using this tool is very easy, because you just click the icon to make it work or to access its setup menu. The menu launches a well-designed configuration dialog box that … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Lars Josefsson is the CEO of an electricity utility and a self-described climate activist.

He leads Vattenfall, a Swedish state-owned utility that has set a goal of making its power generation carbon-neutral by 2050. He delivered the opening keynote address at the MIT Energy Conference here on Saturday.

Vattenfall, which means waterfall in Swedish, already gets 22 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, largely hydropower and offshore wind in Sweden, and an additional 31 percent from nuclear energy.

In the utility industry, Vattenfall is well know for being the first to test carbon capture and storage technology … Read more

Updated section on Jing on 3/6/09 at 8:30 a.m. PT.

Even if you don't use a screen capture application regularly, there are good reasons to have one on standby. Instead of copying the ID number of an error message into a customer service e-mail by hand, you can quickly take and send a screen shot. Screen shots also make excellent archivers. In a click you can save an image of a flight itinerary or other receipt that you don't want to hang around in paper form. Gamers have another use case--documenting killer performance to … Read more

While we normally appreciate user guidance, the pop-up how-to guides got in the way of what proved to be an effective tool for capturing and manipulating images.

Ashampoo Magical Snap adds an expandable toolbar to the top of your window that lets you capture entire Web pages or specific selections. It also captures desktop and window screenshots--basically anything that appears on your screen. Once you make a selection, pop-up how-to guides walk you through the editing process. We found them a little overwhelming, and appreciated the option to turn them off. Once you capture an image, the toolbar smartly changes … Read more