Good for Easley for having some foresight to setup this whole project. Granted, I still don’t get the whole plug-in concept fully. To me, it seems like another form of changing dependancies from one pollutant and problem, to another. Switching a bunch of cars away from gas stations, and instead plugging them will mean higher home and business power bills and will mean the power plants (many still coal-based) output more. Sure, I’ve read about how the collective batteries of a bunch of hybrids and electric cars will work as an off-peak holding ground for electrical grids, which is nice, but still doesn’t seem like a flawless solution.

State Launches Center for Plug-in Hybrid Cars

Nice write up on the technology behind the Chevy Volt concept. It’s pretty cool, but at the same time, they’re using technology available during the freakin’ first world war. Imagine where cars tech would be had they been doing R&D on greener technologies and alternatives to petroleum-based fuels.

Futuristic Car Runs Like WWI Submarine

Several months back, Google started doing street-level views in the downtown of some major metropolitan areas. Basically, they had vans with a 360 camera of sorts mounted on top, probably linked to a GPS unit to link location to photos. Well it looks like recently, Google added Raleigh to its set of street-level views, which is weird because it doesn’t look like Charlotte has it yet. I would have expected Charlotte to get the views before little ‘ol Raleigh.

The whole Street Views thing is great. It’s more than just a 360 degree photo overlay on Google Maps. Instead, you can follow down streets, looking left and right. Play around with it. Pretty cool!

Also, looks like the aerial photography was updated for the region as well. Our house now shows up on Google Maps. It’s a fairly recent pic, and it’s sad how brown the whole neighborhood looks. Damn you drought!

Ulanguzi in Downtown Raleigh on Google Street Views