A 100% Solar Powered City

Florida is set to create the world's first 100% solar powered city, Babcock Ranch, which will be powered by the world’s largest photovoltaic plant. In a joint venture between a housing developer, Kitson & Partners, and the Florida Power & Light company, the new development will be built close to Fort Myers. Babcock Ranch plans to create just under 20,000 houses with another 2 million square meters of shopping, commercial and semi-industrial development. The city will also be layed out with city-wide Wi-Fi and electric car charging stations.

The city will generate 100% of its power through solar means during the day, and then at night switch to an excess of electricity produced during the day that is exported to the grid. Construction of the $400 million solar plant is due to begin this year, with develoment of Babcock Ranch to commence during the summer of 2010. The whole project is estimated to cost $2 billion and to create 20,000 jobs.

Pirate Bay Founders Send To Jail

News has just broken that a Swedish court has found guilty and jailed the four founders of Pirate Bay, the world's most prolific torrent / file-sharing site. The men; Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde, have all been found guilty of copyright infringemnent and have been sentenced to 1 year in jail. On top of this they have been ordered to pay €2.7m in damages.

Via Twitter, Mr Sunde said: "Nothing will happen to TPB, this is just theatre for the media."

The biggest point that this case can possibly make is that these men have been sentanced and fined even thopugh there is no copyright content hosted on Pirate Bay. All they do is provide a directory service of torrent files.

Kutcher Beats CNN to 1 Million Follower

I posted yesterday about Ashton Kutchers challenge to CNN to get to the 1 million Follower mark, and guess what - he did it. Perhaps not surprising - seriously, who was going to try and get CNN there?

Anyways, here is the video he made as the 1 million mark drew in...



cheers to Kieran for throwing this at me

Jameson's Interactive Wall

This is pretty cool work from Jameson. Very similar to something I saw a while back on Contagious but I can't seem to find a link to it. If anyone remembers what it was or what it was for, let me know.

CNN Buys Twitter Account

A great story here that my mate Gav passed on to me.

Yesterday (Wednesday) CNN boasted it's Twitter followers by nearly a million with the acquisition of the '@cnnbrk' Twitter account. The account, currently the largest on Twitter with over 947,000 followers, was previously maintained by James Cox.

Unfortunately there are no financial details available regarding the acquisition but rumours are flying around the net that it may have exceeded 6 figures. More interesting then what the amount is, however, is that there was an amount at all, and it hasn't been denied. Twitter currently prohibit the selling of Twitter accounts and CNN and James Cox have in effect broken those rules. Twitter would be completely within their rights to close the account immediately.

What has also come out of this move is perhaps even more interesting. Ashton Kutcher, who is currently the second most follwed person on Twitter with 917,000 followers, has made a public challenge to CNN, as to who can get to 1 million followers first. Kutcher has agreed to donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day if he is first to the 1 million followers.

“I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter,” Kutcher said. “And so I just thought that was just kind of an amazing comment on the state of our media, and I said that, if I beat CNN to 1 million viewers, then I would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner–because I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

CNN have since accepted Kutcher’s challenge.