buildings

Take your diary with you with Efficient Diary Portable

Contrary to popular belief, diaries aren't just for teenage girls. Keeping a diary--or journal, if you prefer--is a great way to keep track not only of your most private thoughts, but also of work activities, food logs, travel, and much more. Efficient Diary Portable is a feature-packed program that lets users create custom diary entries and take them along on a portable device--all with password protection, of course.

The program's interface is sleek and attractive, and we had no trouble getting around. A tree hierarchy on the left lets you access entries from the current day, current month, … Read more

Manage your schedule with Efficient Calendar Free Portable Edition

Competition is pretty stiff in the calendar market these days. Calendar programs just keep getting more and more interactive and versatile, and there are options out there to fit the needs of just about everyone. Efficient Calendar Free Portable Edition is a lightweight program that you can take with you on a USB drive or other portable device. It doesn't offer nearly as many features as some other calendar programs, but it's not a bad choice if simplicity is one of your highest priorities.

The program's interface is plain and attractive, reminding us a bit of Microsoft … Read more

Organize your information with TreeDBNotes Free

Tree hierarchies are a great way to organize information, starting with broad concepts and adding increasing levels of detail. TreeDBNotes Free is an easy-to-use program that lets you use tree hierarchies to create databases of all kinds of information, whether you use it as a contacts manager, to organize notes for a book, to keep track of recipes, or even as a journal. Even if you've never used this kind of program before, TreeDBNotes Free is easy to learn and will have you creating trees in no time.

The program's interface is attractive and easy to navigate, with … Read more

If you build it, they will come

Ever wonder what it would be like to own your own island? Well, with Paradise Island for Android, you can at least simulate the experience. In this "freemium" simulator game, you are the owner of a small sector of a tropical island, on which you work to build a perfect resort getaway. As you build more attractions and entice more tourists, your wealth grows, and eventually (if you're good enough) you can expand your empire to cover the entire island.

With enough money, you can build resorts, restaurants, casinos, hot dog stands, shopping centers, monuments, pyramids, waterslides, … Read more

Microsoft: Software puts kibosh on energy waste

Before hauling new equipment to their boiler rooms, companies would do well installing software to improve building efficiency, a Microsoft pilot test found.

Microsoft is expected to publish a paper on a test done at its Redmond, Wash., campus geared at lowering the corporate energy usage with information technology. The premise of the project was straight-forward: does it make more sense to upgrade mechanical equipment, such as HVAC systems, or use software?

Coming from a giant software company, the results are perhaps not surprising. But the tests help validate the notion that information systems are an important ingredient to reducing … Read more

Virtual building audit spots energy savings

Now there's an app to tell you how to make commercial buildings more energy efficient.

Startup FirstFuel announced today it has raised $2.4 million from venture capital companies Nth Power and Battery Ventures to commercialize a software system to remotely evaluate and measure commercial building efficiency.

What's unusual about the application is that it doesn't require a person to be dispatched to perform an energy audit or install meters to gather data. Instead, the company collects utility data on hourly energy consumption and combines it with weather information to create a profile of a specific building. … Read more

Windows 8 developer tablets popping up on eBay

Some of the folks who received free Windows Developer tablets at Microsoft's Build conference last week are already trying to turn a tidy profit from them via eBay.

A quick search on the online auction site today for "Windows Developer tablet" scored four of the Samsung devices, each selling for a cool minimum of $2,000. Microsoft handed out the tablets as freebies last Tuesday to the more than 5,000 people who attended the developers conference at which the company demoed its upcoming OS.

Windows 8 rules at Microsoft Build (roundup)

This year's Build conference comes at a crucial time for Microsoft. PC growth is slowing and tablets are catching on. Now, with Windows 8, Redmond hopes to change the conversation.

Why Windows 8 isn't an iOS copycat Windows 8 is the first version of Microsoft's OS designed to work on tablets with touch from the very start. But it's not merely aping Apple--it's approach is very different. (Posted in Apple Talk by Josh Lowensohn) September 16, 2011 4:00 a.m. PT

Windows 8: Microsoft's Swiss Army knife vision With Windows 8, the software … Read more

Android and ARM elbow in on Wintel alliance

For many years, the market for personal computing equipment was dominated by the Wintel "duopoly." But no more.

In practice, Wintel wasn't so much two companies scheming together as it was a marriage of convenience pairing two dominant technologies: Microsoft's Windows operating system and Intel's x86 processor family.

It wasn't an exclusive relationship. Microsoft always had Advanced Micro Devices and flirted with chip designs such as MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC in the early days of Windows NT. And Intel encouraged other operating systems, notably Linux. But the marriage stayed largely intact as the two … Read more

Microsoft previews Windows 8

Facebook organizes your friends into Smart Lists, Google Flight Search takes off, and Microsoft previews the next Windows operating system with a new touch-screen mode.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded: