WhiteSmoke, which uses Natural Language Processing to take our writing to a professional level. At the core of WhiteSmoke are the highly advanced grammar and text enrichment engines. WhiteSmoke technology detects and corrects even the most troublesome grammar errors. You know, the ones that go undetected by other leading programs. It suggests relevant synonyms, adverbs and adjectives that often enhance our writing.

I have no idea how likely this is to come to fruition - here’s the story I saw, via Slashdot - but it wouldn’t be easy to turn Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series into a bunch of long movies, a la “Lord of the Rings”. The essential plot element tying together the series - its version [...]

Back in 2000, a wander through the Telegraph’s archives tell me, the state Legislature was debating ” the possible need for the regulation of outdoor lighting in order to provide standards and guidelines for improving the efficiency, visibility and safety of New Hampshire’s nighttime environment.” - in other words, Dark Sky laws to cut light [...]

The two southernmost ski areas in New Hampshire - Pat’s Peak and Crotched Mountain - were open last weekend, the earliest they’ve opened in many, many years, and the Union-Leader’s Lorna Colquhoun has a story today about avalanche warnings in the White Mountains.
Cue the “see, I said Global Warming was a hoax” chorus.

This is an excellent story from Xconomy about a Canton, Mass. startup called Voltree Power that has found how to generate very small amounts of electricity from trees - enough to power such things as temperature or moisture sensors feeding into mesh networks, which can be important in predicting forest fires. The story is good [...]

“The war on cancer” was always the wrong metaphor - implying that a relatively short, sustained effort could “win” the struggle once and for all. Cancer is too many different diseases for that approach to be realistic.*
But the “permanent police action against cancer” (not quite so pithy, I’ll admit) may finally be succeeding in the [...]

Vermont Yankee isn’t particularly big as nuclear power plants go - 650 megawatt maximum output, or a little more than half the size of Seabrook - but it still produces about half the electricity that Vermont uses. That has made its continuing travails with collapsing water towers and suspect piping big news in that state, [...]

The tree from Farmington produced 154 viable seeds and 100 of them were planted in Shieling State Forest in Peterborough in May alongside a 19-tree control group made of American, Chinese and a hybrid American-Chinese chestnut trees. As of Sept. 15, 102 of the 119 total trees were still alive, including 87 from Farmington.

A startup called Amenico has purchased a long-closed tannery in Pittsfield and plans to create a big facility for turning used grease into biofuel. Here’s the description from the Concord Monitor story:

The business model begins with the purchase of vegetable oil from bulk providers in the Midwest. Amenico sells it at a discount to its [...]

I have a story in the Telegraph today about what appears to be the first lawsuit in New Hampshire over the installation of solar panels on a home. As I say in the story: “In modern America, you might say an industry isn’t real until it has been sued by a disgruntled customer. For better [...]

Microsoft has made available a workable, easy-to-use learning system for educators, LCDS (Learning Content Development System), a free, form-based utility that teachers can use to create e-learning content.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10075828-54.html?tag=mncol;title
Here’s another wind machine with greatly optimistic power ratings. That, along with a healthy price tag doesn’t bode well for the company’s long-term prospects.
The site has a long list of commenters on the wind machine. Most are thoughtful analysis of the specifications that serve as a guide to anyone thinking of installing any wind machine. [...]

I’m heading out shortly as part of a volunteer effort with StayWarmNH, the state-sponsored program to weatherize low-income homes. Last week I helped in two mobile homes in Concord, putting up plastic around windows, insulating wall sockets on exterior walls, adding low-flow faucets and the like, using kits given out by the state. Today we [...]

I listen to audio books/lectures a lot these days, since my commute lengthened last year. The most recent batch grabbed from the library included some sci-fi stories. Yesterday I was listening to “The Tall Grass” by Stephen Utley, which involves time travel back to the Devonian Period. Imagine my astonishment when the narrator mentioned that they would soon be returning to their real time … of Dec. 2, 2008! That’s barely a week away - what a coincidence!

From this week’s Ask the Pilot column on Salon about the seventh anniversary of the crash of a plan on departure from kennedy airport in New York, killing everybody:
Eighty-four months have passed since then. That’s 2,555 days and counting. In that span, our carriers have transported approximately 5 billion people and made more than 51 [...]