Today the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission has granted “Google Energy” the official right energy, capacity, and services at market prices just like a utility. Google Energy is a new subsidiary of the search giant Google.

Now Google is saying that they want this to happen in their eternal quest to become carbon neutral. Yes, this makes sense. A recent study found (and Google confirmed it on their blog) that each Google search that you make uses about 7 grams of CO2 or about the same amount of energy as boiling a cup of water. Now that may sound minimal, but when we notice that 91,000,000 Google searches are preformed on average per day, it starts to raise some serious eyebrows. Google uses A LOT of energy!

That’s right, google is no longer supporting Internet Explorer 6 in its’ products and services. Most importantly this refers to services like Google Docs and Google Sites, but the support will continue to wain. This announcement, made on their blog, is nothing to be too shocked about, but it is still big news. Many companies have been discontinuing support for IE6 recently, especially since the product is a free download, there is really no reason that users aren’t upgrading.

With Google, this is a big deal because…. well, it’s Google. The largest internet company is finally saying

“Goodbye IE6! We think it would be best if we stayed friends and remember our good times together, but we can’t support you anymore, it is time that we both move on.”

Now that Google has finally embraced the truth, many more will follow suite. Once the big dawg gives the OK to let it go, no one else has a reason to keep it up, and soon, IE6 will be dead.

This is a nice early retirement for IE6 since recently Microsoft claimed that they would support IE6 until 2014. The reasoning behind it is that 20% of users still only use this browser. It looks like the developer community has put a harsh foot forward and decided to halt support for this outdated browser.

Posted via web from jacurtis’s posterous

So, as you may know I have been launching a new site lately called The Mac Coach. This site was designed to help new mac users get going with their macs and help older users gain a deeper understanding of the software they already use. It officially launched a few days ago, and I was really excited. Well something I quickly noticed was that my site doesn’t seem to be compatible with Internet Explorer. In most cases this would be a bummer, as IE holds a large majority of browser usage demographics. However since my site was pretty much designed with Mac users 100% in mind, the IE market is rather miniscule.

Since IE was butchering the design of my beautiful website, I decided to simply add some code so that when an IE users logs onto The Mac Coach, they will be redirected to another page that informs them of incompatibilities and recommends that they install another browser. I feel that I can handle my own when it comes to HTML and coding, when i get the proper help. So I scoured the web for some hints. Unfortunately all that i found were some hit or miss sites that only partially explained it. My purpose today is to pass the knowledge that I gained onto my readers, so that it will be easier for the next guy to do this.

So I recently encountered something that most college students dread. The day that you turn on your xbox and instead of booting up like normal you see 3 flashing red lights on your console. These red lights in fact are so common that they have received the well-understood nickname, “The Ring of Death”. It has received this nickname because it is literally death to you and to your xbox. It requires that you pay outrageous repair fees or buy a new console. Something that no college kid wants to hear. Worst of all, in almost every circumstance of “The Ring of Death”, it occurs with no warning. Having worked fine the time before, and now refusing to boot.

After doing the standard reboot multiple times to eliminate the possibility that it was a fluke, I eventually turned to xbox.com for support. I discovered my problem, in the support home page under “most common problems” column. I found it as the first item in that column. There I clicked,

So, a lot of little things have been keeping me busy  lately. I have been working hard on themaccoach.com, and all the many things which that entails. I have been making significant progress with it though. Plus, my dad has been very sick, and got admitted back into the hospital for that. You can read his comments on his blog. Between those things, trying to amuse myself, and trying to stay caught up on sleep, I have been rather busy.

In addition, I have actually been working on two other posts that are still not complete yet. You have those to look forward to also. One about screen recording software, and the other about xbox fail rates. Anyway, stay tuned, and don’t lose faith in me.

I have owned a mac for 3 Years and 1 Day. I got into the Mac world by buying a small 13″ white macbook as I entered college. I stand before you today to proclaim that it was the best investment I have ever made. I could not be more happy. I love using my mac, and will never go back to using windows, at least for my personal computers (where i still have a choice). I could go on about why I am so happy with switching to mac, but the greatest reason I am so happy is that I am currently writing this post on that same mac, and it still runs and functions like the day I bought it.

I have made many, many upgrades to my mac over these past 3 years and 1 day. I have upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, and now to Snow Leopard. I have upgraded from iLife ’06 to iLife ’08 and to iLife ’09. I have done the same with iWork ’06, ’08 and ’09. I have ordered countless other programs to run on my mac and increase its’ functionality. I have been running Adobe Design Premium CS3 on it for nearly 3 years now, and now I even run Aperture 2.0. My mac has been my sidekick, as I attempted to start a business (which only ended because of personal life circumstances). All of these are wonderful upgrades that have added a ton of value to my mac, but none of those compare to the upgrade I am most satisfied with, Applecare.

Google Acquisitions and Investments (Graphic).

A subway map of Google's Acquisitions.

It was interesting for me, as I studied this article that I found through Digg. It was about Google’s Acquisitions over the years. We hear about them all the time, it isn’t anything new, but I guess what shocked me is how many of them that we haven’t heard about. And on top of that, how many of the technologies that Google has, have come directly through these acquisitions. I always assumed that Google was actually developing these technologies (silly me). This makes Google more of a holding company than anything else.

On top of that, when you look at the history of Google’s hiring and they have been known to sort of “buy out” the best in the industry. Everyone has heard about their wonderful accommodations and the benefits that their employees get, but does anyone ask why?

I am so excited for this new season of “How I Met Your Mother” (aka, HIMYM)! It is going to be Legendary! If you haven’t watched it before, you need to get out there and catch up. Start with season 1, episode 1, and continue to the end. This show is my all time favorite. It is about a group of friends and their escapades around the city that never sleeps. It all started when Ted, the main character, helped Marshall (his best friend) propose to Lilly (Marshall’s Girlfriend of 10 years, and also Ted’s friend). Then Ted started thinking about marriage and looking for “the one”. Of course none of it wouldn’t be complete if it weren’t for Barney (a ladies man that hates marriage, commitment, dating or anything of the sort) or Robin (the girl that Ted falls for first, on his quest for “the one”).

I ran across an interesting article recently. It was a blog post from a google employee. What shocked me about this article is that it isn’t like the article I had come to expect with one of Google’s 7,000 blogs they seem to publish.

It wasn’t about some new technology that they had invented. It wasn’t about how they were going to trash the competition with some new service that they will offer. It wasn’t about how wonderful their job is at the Googleplex , and how they get paid 6 figures for dinking around at their computer. No this article was from a Google employee, high up, that was leaving and actually expressing relief and discontent from the company. Maybe the days of Google Bliss are gone. Or maybe they never existed. One employee of seven years finally tells us the true story from the inside.