Freebie Friday Returns!

Freebie Friday returns with Google Goggles, a free Mobile App with many uses, both practical and fun. Google Goggles lets you use pictures taken with your mobile phone to search the web; it’s ideal for things that aren’t easy to describe. Scan a barcode, and you can find out about a product. Scan a menu in a foreign language, and you can get a translation. You can even take a photo of a landmark or a piece of art, and Google may be able to tell you what it is. This link will let you see Google Goggles in action.  


Google Goggles is being continually improved. According to the support page, right now it works best for printed text, barcodes, logos, and landmarks, and not so well for photos of animals or furniture. 

Here is perhaps one of the products most valuable uses. Do you have a stack of Sudokus you could never solve? Take a photo of one with Goggles and just see what happens! Or watch this video.

And, now that I have your attention, please read on for some news and a few important reminders of upcoming events:

UPDATES from NEW HAVEN

The Long Wharf Nature Preserve will remain intact! Connecticut DOT Commissioner  James P. Redeker has announced the reconfiguration of the Exit 46 plan which would have taken a portion of the preserve. You can read the details in an article from the New Haven Register. According to this article, Redeker said the new plan actually improves traffic flow and safety more than the original proposal! 

Elm City Market posted progress photos. There are now 650 members and counting.

DATES TO REMEMBER

September 17

Slow Food’s $5 Challenge 

Take back the 'value meal' by getting together with family, friends and neighbors for a slow food meal that costs no more than $5 per person.

and a special opportunity from Slow Food USA … during the month of September, you can become a member for whatever you can afford to pay. With over 25,000 members and 250,000 supporters, Slow Food USA is part of a global, grassroots organization which believes that food and farming should be sources of health and well being for everyone. Through national advocacy, local projects and bringing people together through the common language of food, Slow Food USA members and supporters are making it easier to access real food that is good for us, good for those who produce it, and good for the planet. Any donation this month will allow you to join … give it a try. 

September 21

5% Day at Whole Foods in Milford.

Whole Foods in Milford will donate 5% of all sales to benefit New Haven’s Common Ground High School. 

September 21

New Haven Green Drinks

6-8 pm at 

Cave A’ Vin, a newly renovated wine bar at 975 State Street, near Edward Street.

This evening’s program will be a departure from the norm. Instead of a speaker, it will be a “special fun event to get everyone to meet new people.”

September 24

Moving Planet 

At the 350CT event people will come to the New Haven Green via bikes, on foot, carpools, mass transit, anything and everything BUT carbon-intensive travel, for a central celebration with tables, music speakers, art, and a bike-powered outdoor screening of the movie Wall-E! The date is fast approaching, check out the ActNH site for opportunities to volunteer.


TGIF! Be sure to come back for my Meatless Monday post when I hope to report on a very successful $5 Meal!

On My Radar 9.10.11

It’s been a busy month in New England with an earthquake (for which I was absent) and Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. I’ve been remiss in reporting a number of important pieces of news. Here are some of the items on my radar.

The WRATH of IRENE:

• No one in the northeast is likely to describe this storm as “over-rated.” While it is true that downtown New Haven survived the storm with minor loss of tree limbs and without any power outages, this was the exception rather than the rule. The city as a whole lost 1,250 trees, storm damage was estimated at $13 million, and some sections were without power for nearly a week. Still, there were no homes or lives lost due to the storm. Such was not the case in the adjoining town of East Haven, where a number of houses washed into the sea. Coastal damage was severe — with extensive beach erosion and property damage statewide, due in part to the astronomical high tide which coincided with the storm’s arrival. So busy were we CT residents focusing on our own woes that it was not until the next day that we learned of the devastation in the Catskills and the state of Vermont. 

GOING GREEN is GOOD for the BOTTOM LINE

• The wind turbine at Phoenix Press kept on turning through most of the storm. The turbine, which automatically shuts down for safety if the wind is more than 60 mph, only did so once over the weekend. Phoenix Press was able to put power back onto the grid during the storm, generating 2,500 kilowatts of power during Irene’s 48-hour visit — more than four times the amount generated normally.

• The Devil’s Gear Bike Shop, sponsor of many local cycling events, was recently named one of the top 100 bike stores in the country by Bicycling Magazine.

• Ecovative Design, LLC, a small company on which I reported on May 30 of last year, recently received the Dupont Diamond Award for its biodegradable mushroom packaging. Ecovative produces home-compostable and cost-competitive replacements for conventional packaging foams using mycelium, or "mushroom roots," as a self-assembling glue. In a June 13 press release the company announced an equity investment by 3M, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the DOEN Foundation. Ecovative's technology has broad applications beyond packaging including insulation, building products, automotive, and consumer goods. The company's Mushroom® packaging, EcoCradle™, is currently used by a number of Fortune 500 clients. Ecovative operates a pilot production facility in upstate New York, and plans to expand to new regional manufacturing facilities in the United States. Ecovative now has an online store featuring a variety of “fun stuff” made from mushroom mycelium, all very green, and some purported to make great wedding gifts. 

NEWS from ALL OVER:

• Gus Speth, former Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Justin Haaheim, lead organizer of Act New Haven, were among the over 1,252 arrested in Washington, DC in a two-week protest over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a 1700 hundred mile pipeline carrying the fossil fuel diluted bitumen that would run from Alberta, Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. 

• The state of Connecticut passed a bill which will go into effect on October 1 requiring all businesses that generate over 104 tons of “source-separated organic material” (food scraps, food processing residue and more) annually to compost them.

• In Sacramento, a measure that would have banned expanded polystyrene takeout packaging in California has been shelved without a vote in the state Assembly. Senate Bill 568, which passed the Senate in May and would have gone into effect statewide Jan. 1, 2016, would have applied to PS cups, bowls, trays, containers and clamshells. It would have been the first statewide ban on PS packaging in the U.S. The bill was placed in the inactive file Sept. 8, meaning it could surface again in 2012.

• In response to recent crop failures, women farmers in Nepal have been discarding imported hybrid seeds and husbanding hardier local varieties in cooperative seed banks. 

• The Google Green Grocer program offers Googlers in Mountain View the opportunity to  order the same high-quality, sustainably sourced seafood, meat and eggs they already enjoy in Google cafes, while supporting local community fisheries and farms.

NEWS from NEW HAVEN:

• The Elm City Market has now pushed back its opening to October. At the end of August 625 people had signed on as members.

• Officials including Gov. Malloy and DEEP Commissioner Dan Esty met with developer Bruce Becker at 360 State Street late in August in the hopes that the way can be smoothed for a fuel cell metering request so that the building can meter and charge its tenants for the fuel cell power they consume. 360 State’s fuel cell is currently operating at only 55 to 60 percent of capacity, powering only the building’s common areas—corridors and lobbies. 

• New Haven’s Apple Store is rising on Broadway.

• I was deeply saddened to learn that Chris Sanseverino, former chef at Caseus and West Hills alum, died on September 2. Donations can be made to Slow Food CT in Chris’s name. See his obituary for details. 

SPECIAL EVENTS:

September 11

Anniversary and Commemoration of 9|11

New Haven’s bells, including the Yale Carillon and the one at United Church on the Green, will toll city-wide at 1 pm for precisely 1 minute.

September 17

Slow Food’s $5 Challenge 

Take back the 'value meal' by getting together with family, friends and neighbors for a slow food meal that costs no more than $5 per person.

September 21

5% Day at Whole Foods in Milford 

Whole Foods in Milford will donate 5% of all sales to benefit New Haven’s Common Ground High School. 

September 24

Moving Planet 

Moving Planet is a worldwide rally to demand solutions to the climate crisis. At the 350CT event people will come to the New Haven Green via bikes, on foot, carpools, mass transit, anything and everything BUT carbon-intensive travel, for a central celebration with tables, music speakers, art, and a bike-powered outdoor screening of the movie Wall-E! Awesome!

BLOG NEWS

I STILL need a reader in Mississippi. Someone must know someone there.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and please come back soon.