Zible

I'd like to buy a highly efficient water filter to make healthy, potable, odourless drinking water in my home. The tricky thing is, how do you measure efficiency?

There is a debate going on at MetaEfficient about what constitutes efficiency. The reverse osmosis water filtration process is put forward as a solution even though it consumes electricity and outputs more waste water than it outputs drinkable water. Does that sound efficient to you? Me neither. The meta-efficiency is measured as follows:

"When assessing a product, we consider not only its energy efficiency but also its embodied energy, toxicity, affordability, and usability."

That's sensible, but you can't roll all these things into one score because they are measured by different means. Furthermore, people have different perceptions of what is important. $100 might be a lot of money to me but it could be cheap to you. Environmental impact might be important to you but it might be critical to me.

The solution would be to rate products on separate factors and provide multiple scores, e.g.

• Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): taking all environmental impact into consideration, measured in a unit such as joules. Incredibly hard to do accurately.
• Usability: gauging how well it does the job and how easy it is to use. Scored out of 100.
• Retail price: in £/$/€
• Running cost: in £/$/€

Only when you separate the important aspects of a product and measure each one in an standard unit can you compare products effectively.

It takes a true geek to do such in depth research and comparison for water filtration systems. It will happen eventually – the internet's global reach makes in-depth comparison a viable business proposition. But in the meantime, can anyone point me in the direction of a highly efficient household water filter, regardless of cost?

A top executive has argued that government regulation may be required over the position of search results in Google.

Bad idea.

Government regulation is the absolute last resort. It might start with good intentions and the Government might have a light touch, but it would open the floodgates. Regulation only becomes more onerous and cumbersome over time. It stifles businesses ability to innovate, it slows progress and it takes some of the fun out of business.

In the free market, if Google screws up, we can go to Yahoo or Bing or another search engine. If they all screw up, a new competitor will rise. It is a self regulating system.

I trust an honest company (such as Google) more than any government, sadly.

Extreme close-ups are a piece of cake with Magic Touch. In 3 minutes, I knocked together this impressive zoom:

Click to zoom in.
Please enter your unique code for JS file!

Very handy for showing huge photos without taking up much screen space.

Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone 3G and other big news.

Edited from 1 hour and 27 minutes into just 60 seconds…

On Monday, I made the most extravagant purchase of my life. My new wraparound sunglasses cost a cool £4,620. There is no famous brand name etched on the frame and they are for night time use only. It's what's behind the glasses that counts.

Three days earlier I'd visited Sheraz Daya at the Centre For Sight to see if he could correct my eyesight through laser eye surgery. My infallible optometrist of 17 years, Nigel Burnett Hodd, was cautious about laser surgery, but he recommended that if I did have it, I must go to Mr Daya.

The results of my eye examination gave Mr Daya total confidence that he could fix my short sightedness and astigmatism. Not only could he return my sight to 20/20, he believed he might do even better.

I didn't know then that better than 20/20 was possible. But I do now. Just 24 hours after surgery, my eyes were tested again and I now had 20/20 vision in my right eye and at least 20/15 vision in my left. They might improve further still over the coming weeks. For comparison, my eyes had previously been around 20/100 while the best a human can see is about 20/10.

The operation itself took about 45 seconds per eye and was almost painless. I had been sedated but was still conscious. Mr Daya was pleased with the operation and my sister drove me home with my new sunglasses and a collection of eye drops. For 4 weeks I will wear the sunglasses while I sleep to prevent me from rubbing my eye and I shall administer eye drops regularly during the day.

The outcome is remarkable. My left eye sight is outstanding – better than I have ever experienced with glasses or lenses. My right eye sight is good enough for all daily tasks though my hunch is that I will need repeat laser surgery to improve it further. If so, that will happen in 3 months at no additional cost.

I'll update this post later with a review of my progress.

6 months later…

I can still see clearly and my vision has been stable since the operation 6 months ago. I had a check-up today at Centre For Sight, Queen Anne Street, London. My eyesight remains better than 20:20.

During the 6 months, my eyes have felt dry on perhaps 5 occasions late at night. This is a minor side effect of Lasik treatment and though the discomfort is minimal, it can be cured with eye drops. I experienced no other side effects.

IntraLasik surgery is life changing. No more contact lenses, solutions, glasses, irritated eyes – just crystal clear vision. It costs a few bob, but it is worth every penny. The results should last until middle-age when eyesight naturally deteriorates, at which point, further operations can assist.

If you are considering IntraLasik surgery, I highly recommend you discuss it with Sheraz Daya at Centre For Sight.

Video search company Blinkx has made it possible for anybody to make money from the videos they post on their website or blog.

Their clever technology (called AdHoc) analyses the content of a video and then displays relevant adverts for it. When someone clicks one of the adverts in the video, they share the revenue with you.

Here is an example:

Did you notice the advert above the video? It took less than 1 minute to set that up.

How to do it

1. Find a video you want to share( go to YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe or a.n.other).
2. Copy the embed code from that site.
3. Paste the embed code into the form here: http://adhoc.blinkx.com/newvideo
4. Enter a password and your PayPal email address.
5. Blinkx analyses the video and outputs the embed code for your website/blog.
6. Write your blog post / webpage as usual and paste in the Blinkx embed code.
7. Someone watches the video on your site and clicks the (contextually relevant) advert. You earn money! Blinkx pays it into your PayPal account once you've earned $20.

The catch

The big downside is that an advert costs only $0.05 and Blinkx only pays you some of that (they don't declare how much, but I guess 50%). So it is going to take a loooong time before you can give up your day job. On the other side, 5 cents per click is amazing value if you are an advertiser, so get over to Blinkx and set-up a campaign to get some cheap traffic.

If you've used Blinkx AdHoc on your website, please leave a comment and tell us how much have you earned from it.

For the last 600 miles, my Volkswagen Polo 1.4tdi has been running on a mixture of diesel and vegetable oil.

It's an experiment I've been wanting to run for 2 years but I'd been put off by the antiquated Inland Revenue taxation regime on fuel. That was scrapped recently so you can now put vegetable oil in your car without paying fuel duty. (Check that your car can run on biodiesel before trying this!).

I have done no modification to my 2001-built VW Polo so I was a little apprehensive for fear of damaging the engine. The car is designed to run on diesel, but the handbook states that it can run on up to 50% RME (Rapeseed-Methyl-Esther) mix, so I should be safe. Some diesel engines require modification because vegetable oil is more viscous and puts more strain on the fuel pump. It can also be harder to start the engine in winter.

To minimise the risk, I used a 1:4 mixture in my first tank. My mix is:

• 80% diesel
• 20% vegetable oil

The fuel tank capacity is 10 gallons (45 litres). So I put 9 litres of vegetable oil into the car, then filled it up with diesel.

The price of diesel recently rose above £1.00 per litre. Vegetable oil costs about 55p per litre in the supermarket. So, by using a 25% mix, I saved about £4.05 on a tank of fuel. On my next tank, I will use a 50% biodiesel mix, and will save over £10 per tank.

There was no noticeable change in the average MPG (miles per gallon) – I recorded 68mpg which is what I achieve with standard diesel.

Biodiesel is, arguably, better for the environment than diesel. It comes from a renewable source and the CO2 emissions are equal to the sequestrated amount when the vegetable grows, so it is carbon neutral. However, some people believe that it is contributing to the destruction of rainforest as Malaysia, Indonesia and other developing countries cut down their rainforests to plant palm oil, which can also be used as a biofuel.

Seeing as I am burning sunflower or rape seed oil, I don't think I am having a direct effect on rainforests. But if I wanted to run the ultimate biodiesel car, I would copy my mate Adam and collect used vegetable oil from the local fish and chip shop, run it through a filter then stick it in my car. It's free and it's an otherwise waste product. Everyone's a winner!

If you want to investigate biodiesel, there are lots of useful websites. I recommend this one to start with.

A British company has come up with an ingenious method of turning potatoes into plastic. Vegware uses the technology to create disposable items such as cutlery and tableware.

It's cheap too – a mixed bag of 10 knives, forks and spoons is only £2.97 (about $5.90US). For mass caterers, a bag of 1,000 knives costs £29.90 +VAT and shipping (about $59US).

The cutlery gets its strength from potato or corn starch and its actually stronger than standard plastic cutlery. Being made from vegetable matter, the products are totally biodegradable, so they are dramatically better for the environment than plastics made from oil.

Order online…

• Biodegrable starch cutlery
• Biodegradable plastic bags
• More Vegware products…

Congratulations to Rubicon Retail and Fresca for winning the Best use of e-commerce in a retail environment in the European Retail Solutions awards. I know how committed Fresca is to building it's e-commerce platform so I'm chuffed to see the team recognised in the industry awards.

It's one thing for a web development team to build a one-off store but it's another to build a customisable e-commerce platform that can unleash a brand new store within 3 months. E-commerce providers have lots of clients, all asking for different features and in pressing timescales – it's a demanding, high pressure task.

It's worth pausing and looking at how far things have come from those crazy dotcom days. Back then, a world class e-commerce site would have cost you a few £million (and it was destined for failure). Nowadays, it'll only cost about £8,000 a month, and it'll generate £millions.

Before you sign the road pricing petition that has swept the UK, read what you are signing and do some research into whether you really support it. The petition reads as follows:

The idea of tracking every vehicle at all times is sinister and wrong. Road pricing is already here with the high level of taxation on fuel. The more you travel – the more tax you pay.

It will be an unfair tax on those who live apart from families and poorer people who will not be able to afford the high monthly costs.

Please Mr Blair – forget about road pricing and concentrate on improving our roads to reduce congestion.

Let's disect these statements…

The idea of tracking every vehicle at all times is sinister and wrong.

The big brother concern is quite right. However, it is up to the UK as a nation (providing the government listens to public opinion) as to how the vehicle usage data is used. I don't like the idea of being tracked everywhere I go, but if I know that the data can only be accessed and used for specific and agreed purposes that I can trust in that, then I don't mind. Obviously we don't want an Orwellian future, but we can avoid that with the proper use of technology. The "idea" of tracking every vehicle at all times is not sinister and wrong – it is how that data may be used that could be sinister and wrong.

Road pricing is already here with the high level of taxation on fuel. The more you travel – the more tax you pay.

Current motoring taxation is collected through road tax (your tax disc) and fuel duty (the tax on petrol/diesel). The current system cannot be used to affect our behaviour in regards to reducing congestion. It has no way of creating a financial incentive/disincentive for driving at a certain time of the day. Is that a really such a big issue? We would all like to reduce congestion, but if avoiding traffic jams was that important to us, wouldn't we change our behaviour voluntarily and choose to go to work before or after the rush-hour? Also, taxation on fuel is cheap for the government to collect which helps keep the (astronominal) public sector costs down. Plus it is true that the more you travel the more fuel you consume, therefore the more tax you pay. So, it would seem that taxation on fuel is effective plus there is a financial incentive to drive a higher MPG vehicle (therefore, reducing your environmental imapct). Perhaps there is a case for scrapping tax discs and increasing duty on fuel (to make up the difference).

It will be an unfair tax on those who live apart from families and poorer people who will not be able to afford the high monthly costs.

This claim is nonsense for two reasons. Firstly, the person can choose when to travel to minimise the price of their journey. Most journeys to visit family will be at weekends when traffic is lighter and travelling at this time will cost less or may even be free. This new system could in fact work out cheaper for low income people if they use it wisely. Secondly, if the government is seeking to raise the same amount of motoring revenue as is currently raised, the overall taxation burden across the UK will not rise. In practice, it may rise because, characteristcally, the government will spend more than it plans to, the system will have technical problems and the cost of raising the tax may be higher than the combined cost of current fuel tax and fuel duty. But as far as I have understood (and a clearer breakdown from the government on its exact plans would be appreciated), the government does not intend to use this new pricing structure to increase the total tax burden – on average we will still pay the same amount each. Pay-as-you-go road pricing is a fair model because you pay for what you use. You pay for how much you travel just as you pay income tax depending on how much you earn and VAT depending on how much buy.

Please Mr Blair – forget about road pricing and concentrate on improving our roads to reduce congestion.

We should welcome all ideas and for improving our transport system and should critically analyse every one of them for pro's and con's. The governments' idea of road pricing via satellite tracking is no exception. It should not be dismissed in a whim as this petition does. It should be debated openly with the involvement of the public, planners, scientists, economists and politicians.

Read the research

• Department for Transport, Study report – the original report into the potential for road pricing using satellite tracking.
• BBC News – At-a-glance: Road charge plans – A summary from the BBC about the proposal.
• Petition against travel tax – the petition signed by 1,112,045 people so far.
• The Association of British Drivers – this hard-line motorist lobby is aid to have started the petition. Controversially, the ABD believes the climate change is a myth. If only they were right that the biggest challenge ever to face humankind was in fact an illusion.

Other thoughts

Many questions arise from the governments' dramatic road pricing proposal. Here are some of my thoughts. Please add your thoughts below.

• If under the proposed new system we remove tax fuel, how will we tax farm machinery, lawnmowers and garden machinery, recreational vehicles and how will we deal with the Irish and French who will want to buy tax-free fuel in the UK?
• How easy would it be to tamper with the black box and avoid paying the fee?
• If vehicles were tracked, the data could be used to solve more crimes, solve them faster and solve them cheaper.