The Super Bowl Goes LED

The Super Bowl Under LEDs

You may possibly recall that when we converted our building into the Geek House we swapped out all of the lighting for ultra efficient LEDs. I also did this at my house when we gutted and remodeled it, and now even the Super Bowl has gone green!

Turns out the University of Phoenix Stadium, where they played the Super Bowl, recently upgraded over 780 metal halide fixtures with 44,928 Cree XLamp MK-R LEDs. Those LEDs need just 310,000 watts of power, compared to the 1.24 million watts required by the metal halide bulbs.

They also put out double the illumination, and power on instantly! Which is good because if you remember the Super Bowl blackout a few years ago, it took about 20 minutes for the old bulbs to turn on!

Anyway, if you’re still burning incandescents you’re way behind the curve. You can get cheap LEDs that’ll save you a bundle at WalMart or on Amazon. So what are you waiting for?

Google Earth Pro is Now Free!

Google Earth is a free application that lets you virtually fly around the globe and check out satellite or even 3D versions of just about everything. But Google has long offered an upgraded subscription service called Pro that offers additional features like GIS data imports, advanced printing and saving modules, the ability to convert GIS data such as Shapefiles, into KML files, higher quality image exports and more imports, and a bunch of other things that map geeks will… well, geek out about.

Well, that upgraded Pro version can now be had at absolutely no charge! And I have no idea why! Someone over at Google just decided to make it free. So let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, ok?

Annoyingly, you have to actually fill out a form and have a license emailed to you before you download and install the Pro version. And after you install it you’ll have to log in and let Google track everything you do with it. But hey, they used to charge $400 for it and now you get it for free! So that’s good, right?

Be DIY Ghostbusters with Ghost Ark

If you’re convinced that your house is haunted, but you just haven’t quite been able to prove it to anyone yet, never fear because Ghost Ark thinks they have just the $200 gadget for you! Their pocket ghost detector has everything you need to track down supernatural beings including an electromagnetic field meter, high-sensitivity microphones, radio frequency sweeping, and sensors for both atmospheric pressure and temperature.

You can’t quite get one yet, but you can leave your email on their website and get notified when they are ready to ship you one.

Google Now Gets Integration with 3rd Party Apps

If you’re an Android user, you may be pleased to know that Google Now is being updated to allow integration with 3rd party apps. A whole new batch of integrations already in the works include TripAdvisor, Waze, Ford, Pandora, Shazam, eBay and more!

My guess is that in the not too distant future pretty much everyone is going to try and get their apps working with Google Now, so we’ll probably end up with a nightmare of a notification situation there cluttering things up. You’re going to have to eventually go in there and really narrow down the list of things you give access to, but hey – I’d rather have too much of a good thing than not enough!

Extend Your Own Strength with X-Ar

By the way, I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to Michael Hehr today! And thanks for passing along this cool clip of the X-Ar Arms from Talem Tech. They’re an exoskeletal arm support system and… well, here’s a little clip…