GE | Plug Into the Smart Grid

Flash and Silverlight are two things that are generating the wave of the future in web technologies.  This site uses Flash to show a bit about energy usage and such.  That’s good and all, but I’m more interested in the effects and how they are skillfully used to demonstrate and teach.  Reading text, no matter where, can often be a drag, but add some visualization and most of us can learn in a snap.  A picture is worth a thousand words, right?  GE’s site page here does a good job of helping to visualize the effects of energy conservation to give us a better idea of the impact that it has.

One day, when I’ve made some serious improvements on my design, animation, and ActionScript skills, I will make something cool like this for our own site, say, one that shows places that we have traveled to on an interactive map or something.  Until then, I’ll just admire the coolness of sites like this.

P.S. Here are some other Flash and Silverlight sites that may be of interest

• http://www.byu.tv/ – Flash Player by default, can also select Silverlight in the top left corner.  Naturally, this site is a must see! :)
• http://www.kungfupanda.com/ – Click on “Enter the site” and you’ll see
• http://www.prettyloaded.com/ – Shows a bunch of loading counters
• http://www.aspirant.nu/english/ – Has some Flash-based puzzles
• http://www.smoothhd.com/ – Various videos

GE | Plug Into the Smart Grid

Engineering Windows 7 : Some Changes Since Beta for the RC

As much as I would love to have them post an RTM date in Windows 7, some of the updates and changes that they’ve made since the beta came out is still pretty exciting.  It’s even kind of exciting to see that some of the items listed on the page at the link below are ones, more or less, that I gave some feedback on. 

Stephanie and I have been beta testing Windows 7 since it came out in January.  It is really cool.  If you think that Vista is cool, and I hope you do because it is WAAAAAAAY better than XP, Windows 7 is really cutting edge and cool!  It’s definitely not just a much prettier version, either.  They are really focused on letting the customer take control of layout and features and have designed it to be incredibly easy to use. 

Personally, I have been digging into development, diagnostic, and other utility features the most.  Even though it requires a bit of both onboard and video RAM to process a lot of the features that it has, it handles and manages system resources beautifully.  Anyway, have a look at the blog -> here, as well as at the link below for more.

Engineering Windows 7 : Some Changes Since Beta for the RC