Popular Choice Winners Announced for “Apps for Energy” Competition

WASHINGTON – The Energy Department announced today the Popular Choice winners for the “Apps for Energy” competition, with app developers submitting more than 50 innovative mobile and web applications that will help utility consumers save money by making the most of their “Green Button” electricity usage data.  Popular Choice awards reflect the results of public voting at http://appsforenergy.challenge.gov, which ran from May 17 to May 31 and involved over 12,000 participants. Other winners in the competition were selected by a panel of expert reviewers and announced May 22 at Connectivity Week, a gathering of smart grid industry leaders in Santa Clara, California.

“We’re pleased to see such a strong response to our call for innovative new apps that will save consumers money by saving energy,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu.  “This is about giving consumers easy access to information so they can make sense of their electricity bill – and more importantly, reduce their electricity bill.”

In April, the Department launched Apps for Energy -- challenging developers to create apps that were designed to make the best use of the data provided through the President’s Green Button initiative, through which nine major utilities and electricity suppliers will provide more than 31 million customers with access to data about their own energy use. Learn more about the announcement HERE.

Eligible apps included those for mobile phones, computers, tablets, software programs and more – providing new tools for understanding their electricity usage, taking action, and making better-informed decisions. The public may now use all of the Apps by visiting http://appsforenergy.challenge.gov/submissions.

The team that developed the best overall application, Leafully, won $30,000. Second place, Melon, won $15,000, and third, VELObill, won $7,500. The best overall student application, wotz, won $15,000, and the second place student application, Budget It Yourself, won $7,500.  VELObill, the winner of the public vote, will receive $8,000 and second place public vote winner, Innovative Solar Demand Response, will be awarded $4,000. 

Winners for the “Apps for Energy” Popular Choice competition are:

Popular Choice Grand Prize: VELObill

Location: New York, NY

Cleantech software and services company, Zerofootprint’s VELObill app helps makes it easier for utility customers to view their energy usage, measure whether it is high or low, and compare it to that of their peers. With this information in hand, users can create an energy saving action plan tailored to their individual needs and preferences.

Popular Choice Second Prize: Innovative Solar Demand Response

Location: Dayton, OH

This app uses Green Button Data to size a Solar PV and a battery system based on average peak energy demand of a home during different hours of the day. The battery is charged by solar PV during daytime (when solar radiation is available) and a charge/discharge controller would release the stored energy during peak times, when energy production is more costly.

Winners Chosen by the Expert Panel are:

Best Overall App Grand Prize: Leafully

Location: Seattle, Washington

This application is the brainchild of Seattle-based team, Timothy Edgar and Nathan Jhaver who describe themselves as “two developers with an idea.” Their app submission, Leafully, helps utility customers visualize their Green Button data, as a variety of units, such as the amount of trees needed to offset an individual’s energy usage. Leafully encourages users to set energy savings goals and to share their progress on Facebook.

Best Overall App Second Prize: Melon

Location: Washington, DC

DC-based startup Melon, describes itself as the first company to utilize Green Button data to simplify the process of obtaining an ENERGY STAR benchmark for commercial buildings. The app uses Green Button to evaluate the energy performance of commercial buildings. By providing basic information about the building and its energy usage – the app delivers an ENERGY STAR score and recommendations on reducing energy waste and saving money. 

Best Overall App Third Prize: VELObill

Location: New York, NY

Cleantech software and services company, Zerofootprint’s VELObill app helps makes it easier for utility customers to view their energy usage, measure whether it is high or low, and compare it to that of their peers. With this information in hand, users can create an energy saving action plan tailored to their individual needs and preferences.

Best Student App Grand Prize: wotz 

Location: Irvine, CA

School: University of California, Irvine

The wotz app, submitted by a team of students at UC Irvine, lets users explore and play with Green Button data. Provides several games based on the "shape" of your data, and provides creative comparisons to illustrate your usage, like how many cheeseburgers worth of energy you used last Tuesday from 5-6 pm.

Best Student App Second Prize: Budget It Yourself

Location: Cleveland, OH

School: Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Institute of Art

The Budget it Yourself app is a collaborative project a team of students at Case Western Reserve and the Cleveland Institute of Art. The app helps users track their energy usage and make energy-savings goals.

A diverse panel drawn from government and the energy and tech communities evaluated the apps. The panel includes:

Karen Austin, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Pacific Gas and Electric CompanyPatricia Hoffman, Assistant Secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, U.S. Energy DepartmentSharelynn Moore, Vice President, Corporate Communications, Itron, Inc.Aaron Shapiro, Chief Executive Officer, HUGEBill Reichert Managing Director at Garage Technology Ventures

Ron Paul: A Viable Choice, Not an Illusory Echo

It is said and believed by most reasonable people that if a human being is not part of the solution to the problem, that person is, essentially, part of the problem, especially when he, or she, is a part of the system creating the problem. Herman Cain fits very well the description of a problematic addition to a group of Republican Presidential candidates who has hardly offered any reasonable solutions to the republic's economic and governmental problems. A product of federalism, specifically the Federal Reserve, Cain's 9-9-9 tax proposal to replace the federal income tax is much like the several legislative proposals offered by the Senate Banking Committee, in 1912, to alter the original Federal Reserve Act. On the surface of the proposed bills there were only semantic variations in the wording of the alternative legislations which varied very little from the original legislative text of Federal Reserve Act. The 9-9-9 tax creature would be just as oppressive, in effect, as the current unapportioned federal income tax to the rank-and-file American taxpayer, who will still pay a much higher bulk of the tax money that the federal government will continue to collect and spend so frivilously.

You see, Mr. Cain has a net worth of more than three-million dollars as a direct result of his lucrative seven-year affiliation with the Federal Reserve, a cartel of private bankers who control the coinage and valuation of U.S. money. His Fed salary was actually more than his Godfather's Pizza CEO salary. If you ask any professor of economics, worth his, or her, salt, about the historical fulfillment of the Congressional legislative purpose of the Federal Reserve Act, you will be told that the Fed has "never," since 1913, acted to forestall, or solve, any economic recession problem that has occurred in the United States, including the Great Depression of 1929, the first great Fed failure. Its real underlying purpose was to create illusions, of sorts, that the collective taxpayers should actually look forward to bailing-out the military-industrial private-sector complex and the federal banking system when unmanagable debt, the crux of the Fed, created an economic recession. As Mr. Cain was integrally associated with the Federal Reserve, as Chairman of the Fed Omaha Branch, and as Deputy Chairman, and Chairman, of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, he is well-versed at manipulating debt to create illusions of profitability, something inept Presidents are very good at doing. Both Herman Cain and Mitt Romney want to maintain the status quo. That is, the huge federal bureaucracy of unneeded regulatory agencies, the Federal Reserve, the decadent spending of income taxmoney, and the untenable borrowing of money from foreign nations that has made the national debt simply unpayable.

Ron Paul is the only Republican Presidential candidate who presently offers real viable solutions to the pressing economic, governmental, and social problems encumbering Americans. His solutions are not illusions, but genuine economic and governmental processes that will restore the American republic's libertarian values, those values predicated upon natural law cherished by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas, Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams. Your support for Ron Paul as the most capable Republican candidate to oppose Barack Obama, alias Barry Soertoro, in the 2012 Presidential Election will increase the hope that the United States will have an opportunity to be restored to the status of a great sovereign independent nation for the benefit of all true Americans, and their children.

Norton R. Nowlin took M.A. and B.A. degrees in the social and behavioral sciences from the University of Texas at Tyler, studied law for one full year at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, in San Diego, California, and earned an ABA-approved advanced paralegal certification from Edmonds Community College, in Lynnwood, Washington. Mr. Nowlin has attended LaJolla, California's National University and Malibu's Pepperdine University to attain graduate credits in business management and economics. Mr. Nowlin also attained a Texas State Teaching Certification, in social studies and psychology, from the University of Texas at Tyler. In sum, Mr. Nowlin has attained more than 100 semester hours of post-baccalaurate credit in law, government, history, and behavioral science. A paralegal, published essayist, poet, and free-lance fiction writer, Mr. Nowlin resides in Northern Virginia with his wife, the renown math tutor, Diane C. Nowlin, and their two very intelligent cats.

View article source

Happiness Is A Choice - Are You Choosing It?

It's true, lifestyle, people, things, success, and money can enhance your happiness, but that's only half the equation. The other half of the equation depends solely on you.

I am sure you have heard of people, or perhaps you are one of those people, who have everything money can buy and still aren't happy. Then there are those that are joyous whether they have or don't have things or partners in their life. Why is that?

People make a choice to be happy, and it's not just by saying it, it's truly believing it's possible.

They have found the joy that comes from within no matter what might or might not be happening in their lives.

They are the believers. They create harmony in their life and trust that whatever they do or wherever they go joy can be a part of it.

How you view life and the things that happen can greatly impact you.

Happiness is a choice and it's an option that sometimes may seem impossible depending on what is occurring.

You might think, "Sure, when things are going well I'm pretty happy, but when the tables turn, my happiness turns into the opposite right along with it".

How can you be happy when you are depressed, or are going through a divorce, or have lost a loved one, or you can't pay the bills, or don't know what you are going to do?

No matter how tough things might be, you can look to a future that is bright and filled with promise. You can.

Time and time again you will hear or read stories of individuals who have overcome the most earth shattering experiences, yet, their faith and hope have helped them to move through and soar above their setbacks. They choose to be hopeful and happy.

Does that mean that they never felt sad, depressed, angry, defeated, stressed, anxious, doubtful, etc.? No, but what made the difference for them was they recognized what they were feeling and made a conscious choice to be as happy as they could be.

It may be a day, week, month, and for some, even years where you feel unhappy and struggle to pull yourself up out of the depths of despair but you can do it if there is a willingness to push through that darkness into the light.

Problems are only setbacks. They are not the end or be all, there is a solution and you are it!

Think of it this way, when you first learned math you made mistakes which is why the teacher had you use a pencil (brilliant invention) so you could erase the mistakes and start over.

The challenges you face in life are like a mathematical equation. You may make a few mistakes along the way, but you can learn from you mistakes and start over.

Remember how you felt when you "got it"? You were probably happy and proud, perhaps you even felt on top of the world until the next time you felt stumped or defeated again.

You can't erase what has or is occurring in your life, and sometimes you won't have the answers, but you can choose to look at it differently and you can be happy again.

So, where does your happiness go during trying times?

Joy doesn't just disappear, although it may seem like it does, it is only being blanketed over by other emotions.

You have to find the thread of happiness that still remains woven in the tapestry of your sorrows. It is there holding you together, waiting to be sewn into your life again.

Your ego may be determined to keep you believing that happiness is not a choice, that it comes from what is or isn't happening for you, but when you choose it to be, whether that is today, tomorrow, or down the road, you can return to bliss again.

Next time you find yourself feeling down and out, or faced with circumstances that seem to leave you doubtful or uneasy, or perhaps even "wigging out", remind yourself that happiness hasn't left you, it's within you right here, right now.

If you opt to forgo joy for awhile because of what's occurring, that's perfectly fine, but remember it is only part of the equation. You are the other part.

While your heart may seem heavy, it also remains joyous and light. Be a believer in happiness and make a conscious choice as often as possible to heed it.

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony". Mahatma Gandhi

Use these techniques to assist you in seeing where you are with holding happiness in your life and how to return to it.

Kimberley Cohen is the Founder, Facilitator and Personal Insight Coach of The Insight Technique&trade.

Sign up today for your FREE Special Report - 3 Key Insights That Can Change Your Life! http://www.theinsighttechnique.com/

Kimberley is certified in Body Mind Counselling, Process Oriented Body Work and Spiritual Psychotherapy and Polarity Therapy. She founded the Insight Technique? - Your Insight to genuine Happiness, Purpose and Prosperity to assist herself and others in transforming limiting mindsets.

Soar through the limiting beliefs holding you back and experience the freedom of unlimited possibilities. http://www.theinsighttechnique.com/

View Article_Source

America's Choice: Poverty Or Prosperity?

Recognizing, "All achievement begins with thought." We Americans are left to ask ourselves: "What were we thinking?" We have set ourselves on the fast track to ruin and the best we can muster, politically and personally, is to shuffle deck chairs. By our refusal to confront the brutal facts we continue to reinforce the gravest of errors - trusting our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to "powers that be". It is time to choose again.

We have driven ourselves here: millions unemployed, trillions of dollars in debt, political gridlock and moral paralysis. We chose the route, we finely tuned the vehicle, and we aggressively turned the wheel bringing America and the world to the brink. We chose poorly. All so that we can rid ourselves of a nagging sense of responsibility.

People, by nature, seek absolute control over their lives. Power is, in fact, a birthright of every human being. Each person controls the direction, the speed and the experiences of their journey - for better or for worse. Each gets to choose. However, as people mature and come to understand the truth they realize, along with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility. For far too many "responsibility" is a burden too cumbersome to bear. In haste to shed the yoke of responsibility people unwittingly forfeit power.

Because the adventure intimidates and overwhelms, instead of claiming responsibility and charting a course we prefer that the few flourish at the expense of the many. This process of abandoning responsibility and abdicating power has slowly but surely concentrated power in the hands of the few. The powerful are the people, capable or not, honorable or not, who are willing to wield power. These are the ones we entrust our lives to.

In relinquishing power we submit a feeble petition: "take care of us". We surrender the promise and potential of a grand adventure for a groundless guarantee of a measure of comfort and an illusion of security. For we "... are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right..." ourselves with effort, ingenuity and purity of thought.

We console ourselves believing, the men of great wealth and industry possess wisdom. They know best and will provide adequately for our needs. Trust is absolute, not in the divine, but in the empty promises of empowered elites. We expect the captains of industry and the titans of finance to benevolently create ever greater wealth while we glow in the light of their brilliance. We expect faceless bureaucracy to care for the aged, the poor and the destitute, to take care of our health, to command the economy, to create jobs and to promote prosperity. The all knowing will cut our expenses, invest our savings, and manage our happiness. We seed power eagerly to those willing to exercise it, believing naively, they have our best interests at heart.

But what of the alternative? If we were to accept total responsibility for our lives and our choices, who would we blame? Who could we convict? Who could we condemn? We would have to have vision, commit to a direction, and summon the courage and fortitude to proceed. We would have to discipline ourselves with resolve to shepherd our own journey - to choose the best path. Is there any other way? No.

To right our course we Americans must accept total responsibility for what we have created. The trials and tribulations we now tolerate are the result of the people, "we the people", abdicating power and forsaking responsibility. The power to correct these errors lies with us, not the elite.

We can change direction. We can produce a better result. We can choose prosperity over poverty. The power is in each person, accessed through each mind. It is our right, our duty to choose again.

Scott F. Paradis, author of "Promise and Potential: A Life of Wisdom, Courage, Strength and Will" http://www.promiseandpotential.com/ publishes "Insights" available for free at http://www.c-achieve.com/

View article source

The Power of Choice - Happiness

I read a meditation recently where the author said, "Your odds for success are greatly enhanced if you speak the 'language' of those with whom you are dealing. So, if you want to manifest in the universe, you have to speak in the same language as Spirit. When the Creator said 'let there be Light,' there was Light!"

Then the author makes the observation that if we are made in the spiritual likeness (not a physical likeness) of a Creator, what we speak becomes manifest.

Is it possible for you to picture a creative force, purring in neutral, waiting for instructions in order to leap into gear? Imagine it. If there's not a force of some sort, where does life spring from? There is something, somewhere that creates. Whether we conceptualize it as a Being or a Force isn't, perhaps, as important as simply acknowledging that it exists.

And we are products of it. Therefore, we are like that which creates. A creator or creative force gives birth to beings which can create.

So, create!

But first let's ask what it is that every single person wants? What is the one thing that is universal, no matter what culture, what socialization, what beliefs, what conditions any human being lives in? What is the one absolutely universal desire that drives us and makes us do what we do - even if what is done is unwise, unkind or immoral?

That desire is happiness - to either find it or to maintain it. People are driven to make money not because money itself is a bed or food or happiness. But because money might be one small component - buying the bed or the food - on the path to happiness.

So choose happiness first. You have the power to choose among your emotions. Clearly, the choice to feel unhappy is counterproductive.

Isn't that what the movie The Secret suggested? If a person says, "I'm miserable," she not only remains miserable, but calls down upon herself yet more misery.

If we say, as Wayne Dyer wisely but simply suggests, "I choose to be HAPPY," we call to ourselves happiness.

It's impossible to hold a miserable thought and a happy thought at the same time. We can only hold one thought at a time. Our emotional "body" will simply pick one if we make no conscious choice. Be conscious, choose happiness.

There is more power in making the choice to be happy than in any other choice you can freely make.

Dr. Blythe Ayne has written several books that help guide people to better health and happier lives.

She received her Doctorate from the University of California at Irvine in Social Sciences. She lives on ten acres of forest in the state of Washington where she works to support the natural habitat.

Visit http://www.BlytheAyne.com/blog to learn more.

©BlytheAyne

View Article_Source