This is a new compact fluorescent lightbulb from GE. It's the next generation of lightbulbs. This little guy puts out the equivalent of a 100 watt lightbulb for only 26 watts! Which means it can last 10 times longer (5+ years) than an ordinary incandescent bulb. That's an energy savings of $59 for every new lightbulb you install. And the best part is you can get 'em at the local drugstore or Wal-Mart for less than five bucks... easily paying for itself in a few months!

Sitting humbly on shelves in stores everywhere is a product, priced less than $3, that will change the world... For years, compact fluorescent bulbs have promised dramatic energy savings—yet they remain a mere curiosity. That's about to change... Think how many games Wal-Mart has changed. There's no reason they can't change this game... A lightbulb is no big deal—until you multiply by 100 million.

This month's Fast Company explains how Wal-Mart and GE are about the make the compact fluorescent lightbulb sell like crazy. Just how much can 100 million energy-efficient lightbulbs make a difference? That's enough to power a city of 1.5 million people... or taking 1.3 million cars off the road. Yowza!

Update: This photo will be featured at the Sierra Club's Smart Energy Solutions booth at the Green Festival in Washington, DC (October 14-15). (thanks chris!)

Update #2: NYTimes article on the energy challenge: WalMart tackles America’s love affair with cheap, familiar-looking incandescent bulbs, a habit 130 years in the making.

Good information is hard to come by. Good organization of information is even harder to find. As data-gathering, remote-sensing, and super-computing technologies improve, researchers are facing overwhelming volumes of data, and the demand to manage and manipulate these treasure-troves in efficient and accurate ways grows even more.

Fortunately, there are people like Cybu Richli out there, who have an acute ability to present ground-breaking data in fascinating and incredible ways. Cybu, a graphic designer and architect in Lucern, is working with Seed Magazine in New York to create a series of "Cribsheets" that by their definition are "downloadable tools for living in the 21st century." Seed explains:

Scientific issues and innovations seem to creep into everyday conversation more than ever before. Recognizing that we could all use some expertise in hot science topics, Seed offers its Cribsheet.

And while they may look simple and beautiful, they are far from effortless projects. According to some folks I work with, a visualization is a model of a complex physical event that involves describing the event in mathematical terms. That can't be understated. With data like this out there, you're not dealing with your average Excel documents. But when you combine these visualizations with carefully crafted text (in the case of the cribsheets, a collaborative effort between Seed's writers and an international cadre of scientists), the result is breathtakingly powerful and refreshingly practical:

• Cribsheet #1: Stem Cells
• Cribsheet #2: Climate Change
• Cribsheet #3: Avian Flu
• Cribsheet #4: Hybrid Cars
• Cribsheet #5: Nuclear Power
• Cribsheet #6: Hurricanes
• Cribsheet #7: Extinction
• Cribsheet #8: The Elements

Update: I think I'll be updating this post until the cows come home. After all, it's worth having a running list of these amazing one-sheets!

If you're from Virginia, it's not surprising that its public universities are among the nation's top schools year after year. And this year proves no different: US News & World Report just released its rankings for 2007. Some highlights:

• The University of Virginia is once again No. 2 among 162 national public universities (a trend that has continued either in the No. 1 or 2 ranking for all 10 years that US News has ranked public schools in their own category). UVa ties with Michigan at No. 24 overall among 248 schools - public and private. New this year: Newsweek is calling Mr. Jefferson's University one of 25 "New Ivies" rivaling the historically elite league.


• The College of William and Mary comes in at No. 6 in the public category (consistently ranking sixth for several years now, despite being the smallest and poorest funded university in the top 10). And W&M continues to defy the odds with an overall ranking of No. 31 in US News, and by receiving No. 19 (the highest ranking of a Virginia school) in Washington Monthly's unusual rankings that look at contributions to society, such as community service, research, and social mobility.


• Virginia Tech takes No. 34 in public universities and No. 77 overall. But the big news for Tech this year is the high rankings for their engineering and business programs, which at both grad and undergrad levels, are received some of their highest rankings ever.


• It's also worth noting that James Madison University is enjoying its 13th straight year as the top public master's level university in the South, which is nothing to sneeze at for a school whose primary focus is undergraduate research.

Philadelphia deserves a nod today. Here's several observations from the archives: Enlightened and Electric explores the amazing adventures of Benjamin Franklin, this year marking his 300th birthday. My claim to fame in local press is all about HopStop.com and how easily I get lost (see, it doesn't just happen in NYC). Finally, Let freedom ring was my Independence Day post four years ago when I was still living in the Philly area (more on that here). Let's hear it for the city of brotherly love!

Need a quick fix to help the workday pass by a little faster? Here's a sure-fire solution: host an inter-cubicle iTunes Throwdown! The object is to out-play your co-workers in a particular music genre. Let's say classic 80s, for example. All you need are two computers with speakers, each with their own music collection, and a moderator who can judge the throwdown. (Or if you're feeling ambitious, you can add more competitors to the mix and have a full blown championship. Just don't let the boss catch you... that is, unless you boss is the moderator.)

Here's how it works:

• Katie and Steph are in adjoining offices, with John officiating.


• Katie starts off strong with REO Speedwagon's Keep on Loving You.


• Steph challenges with Wham! - Everything She Wants.


• Katie brings out Weezer - Buddy Holly. John deemed this song striken from the throwdown, as it's unfortunately from 1994.


• Steph counters with Squeeze - Black Coffee In Bed, clearly trumping Katie's more youthful selection (she's a couple years younger than Steph).


• Katie attempts a Matthew Wilder - Breaking My Stride comeback.


• Steph counters again with a 1-2-3 punch of Adam Ant - Strip, Big Country by Big Country, and Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen.


• Katie says "screw it" and plays Blur - Song 2, followed quickly by Tom Jones - It's Not Unusual (which according to her should win any contest).


• John declares Steph as the winner with Golden Earring's Twilight Zone.

Do you have any stories of iTunes Throwdown glory? Share them!

Sending clean and beautiful emails. Not an easy job, but someone's gotta do it. Back in the old days, you had to scrap your newsletter design together in programs like Outlook Express or Thunderbird. You were awed by the marketing genius of power-playing companies, trying to seduce you with their slick graphic-heavy emails. And you resorted to sending another bi-monthly family update in (sigh) plain text.

Yes, the wild west of email remains an elusive and challenging frontier to tame for the masses. Unlike browser standards, the range of email clients, applications, and platforms is a bit ridiculous. But users want to have access to their email in increasingly flexible ways (something that browsing the web hasn't caught up with quite yet). An email is read over a phone, referenced over Gmail, archived in Eudora, and forwarded to a whole host of other possible readers (that is, as long as it doesn't show up as spam to be lost forever in the digital abyss).

Enter Fresh View (formerly Switch I.T.), a web development company based in Sydney, Australia. This team introduced three amazing products on a mission to tame the wilds of email design. In their Switch I.T. days they built their first email app, Synergy Mail, the perfect solution for corporate communications that demand a personal touch. They designed and set up the newsletter template (at a pretty penny) before handing it over to you to fill in the content and send to your heart's content.

Freshview's flagship app is Campaign Monitor, quite simply is the best way for designers to have a hands-on approach for the entire email newsletter process. With breathtaking efficiency, you can design a template, manage subscribers, and gather reports for you and your clients. Over the past eight months, I have come to know a new freedom and joy in designing emails (at a reasonable price), thanks to a solid interface and the encouraging support of Dave Greiner and his team. Since its launch two years ago, Campaign Monitor continues to gleam in the spotlight as it improves the way we read our emails.

This month, Freshview proudly introduced its new labor of love, MailBuild. Designed with the strengths of Campaign Monitor in mind, MailBuild is all about employing templates that your clients can take and run with (note the similarity to Synergy's original strategy). Already, I've been very impressed with how easy it is to build a custom template and setup billing. And my clients are so excited to jump into the app, tweak their content, manage their subscribers, and watch the reports roll in! Together, Campaign Monitor and MailBuild really are a force to behold.

Update: This post featured on the MailBuild blog.