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There are free translation engines out there such as Google, and Babelfish. While they are certainly a step in the right direction, if you actually know anything about the language you are trying to translate into, you will quickly realize that there is a lot of room for growth. My mother tongue is Hungarian and I have taken on a little bit of Spanish over the years. I can tell you that machine translation can be quite useless most of the time. The only way where I can see any use for them, if you have a translator plug in for your blog, like I used to do. It actually did marvels for my traffic on this blog. Unfortunately, I had to get rid of it because it the software was full of bugs. Believe or not, I used to get dozens of visitors from Brazil for the term “Pamela Anderson video.” And I didn’t even have the real home video on my website, just a slide show video of pictures of the model fully clothed, but it brought the visitors in. So, free translation engines have their place, but would you trust them with an important document? I suggest that you don’t.

It is still your best bet to hire a knowledgeable human being for the task. The wonderful thing is that it doesn’t have to brake the bank any more, although it won’t be free translation. You can out source the work to an Indian translation company, for instance. One example is IAFL Translation and Interpretation Company is located in New Delhi. It seems that they go beyond just translation, they also do interpretation as well in case you need some one to translate for you live at a business meeting, for instance.

The Smart Fortwo is a subcompact city cruiser first launched in Europe in 1998. There, parking spaces are scarce and low fuel mileage means a great deal to motorists. You can basically fit three Smart Fortwos into what you could only park one normal size car. It is achieved by “nosing in” the car in a space that is normally used for parallel parking, a practice that was banned in Germany. That has to do with not only its size, but also its “turning radius” which is the car’s ability to make sharp turns.

Having safety in mind, the small Smart was designed to leave the nose of the car entirely to be a crumple zone and the engine was placed in the back. The engine was originally only 600cc in displacement and the newer generation sports only turbo-charged three cylinder gasoline or diesel engines. They have now increased engine size to 700cc and the Smart car was also redesigned. Power output of the engines range 50hp to 61 hp for the gasoline engines and 40hp for the diesel engines. There is talk of Brabus, the company that also makes performance upgrades for Mercedes cars, to create a 100hp version of the Smart car. Top speed is around 90mph. Fuel mileage is around 50 mpg for the gasoline engine and about 69 mpg for the diesel. The base model starts at $12,000 and tops out at $17,000.

The funny thing is that they are an off shoot of the Mercedes-Benz, but apparently the company doesn’t like to advertise it, even though early European models even sport the Mercedes logo.

The Smart Fortwo is now distributed in the United States. It remains to be seen if people will take this vehicle seriously. Smart is counting on U.S. gas prices to remain high as the major draw to purchase this rather unconventional (or cool, depending who you are) looking car. The problem is that the Smart car was designed for city use and doesn’t do as well on the highway. While in town driving can be terrible in the U.S., most of the driving is done on the freeways that require get-up-and-go from vehicles, which can be a problem if you only have 50hp to work with. Another problem that may stand in the way of this vehicle that there area lot of SUVs on the roads in America 3 times the size of the Smart car. A collision of any degree may have dire consequences of the people inside of the Smart Fortwo.

Let’s talk about pricing for a second. While $12,000 may not sound all that bad, keep in mind that, for instance, the base Volkswagen Rabbit (used to be Golf) starts around $15,000 and it seats four people and it is capable real highway travel.

Google Sky is an add-on to the already popular Google Earth program. Google Earth is a a free software you can download from Google. It compiles satellite images taken above the the surface of the Earth and compiles them in such a way that one can literally travel from one corner of the globe to an other and zoom in on a particular point of interest. In more popular places, the resolution (the detail of the images) is so great that you can see the cars in the streets at the time the image was taken.

The Google Sky feature does basically the same thing, but for the sky above a particular point above the Earth. If you click the icon depicting the planet Saturn on the top tool bar pretty much smack in the middle, the view will flip around and you’ll get to see what the sky looks like at that particular time form that location. The software will point out the constellations, a feature that can be turned on and off just as with certain features of Google Earth when you are look at the surface. Celestial objects are divided in several different groups that can be made appear separately or together in Google Sky. One such group is the planets of our solar system. Another, objects you would be able to see if you stood outside on a dark night. Yet another is objects discovered by use of the Hubble Telescope in orbit. You can also follow the path of the Moon.

Once you click on an object, Google Sky will zoom in on it and a small window will pop up containing information about it. Just as with places on the ground, you can mark them so that you can find them more easily later.

The feature should really prove useful to those who live in a bigger city where the light coming form the surface masks the celestial objects.

The database includes 1 million stars and 200 million galaxies.

As of August 30th, there is one annoying bug in Google Sky. If you happen to click on one of your bookmarks that is located on the surface of the Earth wile in Google Sky mode, the software gets all confused and is not capable to switch for sky view to ground view on it’s own, a problem that should be fixed in later updates.

To obtain Google Sky, one doesn’t need to install anything in addition to Google Earth as it is included in it. If you already have Google Earth installed, just wait for it to update on it’s own or initiate the process manually.

Watch a video review of Google Sky.

The Porsche 911 was first introduced in 1964. It was designed by the same engineer as the Volkswagen Beetle: Ferdinand Porsche. He gave the Porsche 911 the same basic mechanical design: real-wheel drive with the engine in the rear. Up until the late 1990’s it was also air cooled. The engine was a six cylinder with an opposed layout, or boxer configuration which is still almost exclusive to the Porsche 911 with the exception of Subaru. The engine size has ranged from the initial 2.0 liter to 3.8 liters in production vehicles. Horsepower has ranged from the modest 130 to whopping 400+ in the 911 Turbo today.

The engine is placed over the rear axle for better weight distribution and to give the rear, driven wheels more traction. However, early Porsche 911’s still suffered from considerable over steer, a condition caused by having too much weight in the rear of the car. When going around the corner at high speeds, the car’s rear would try to “overtake” causing it to spin out. Over the years, Porsche tried to fix the problem by giving the 911 a longer wheel base (this is the distance between the front and rear wheels) and sliding the engine closer towards the middle of the vehicle.

In an international poll for the “Car of The Century”, it came in the 5th place only behind such iconic cars such as Ford Model T, the Mini, the Citroën DS and the Volkswagen Beetle. Please keep in mind that the first four were designed for the masses. They were cheep, easy to build and mess produced. The Porsche 911, however, has always been a sports car and therefore expensive that only a few could afford. It still managed to have a huge impact on the automotive world for four over decades and continues to shape of what we consider fast, slick and cool.

An interesting fact that there are many variations of the 911 that are even more powerful and especially built for the race track. These are 964, 993, 996 and 997. However, these are only internal designations and were always sold as Porsche 911s. Carerra, GT3, Turbo refer to the specific trim within the model.

Porsche 911s are iconic for a reason. Their unique design sets them apart from the rest of the cars on the road. The manufacturer has worked hard to maintain the quality and image of the vehicle for over four decades now. Owning a Porsche 911 is still synonymous with prestige, wealth and driving for the sake of fun rather than necessity and it is still the symbol independence.

Porsche 911 - The best video clips are here

Solar energy comes in a couple of different forms. Most people are familiar with solar panels, they are becoming more and more commonplace on roofs of houses especially if you live in the South-West. Solar panels are based on the principles of photovoltaics where photons excite electrons in silicon crystals. However, there is another path to solar energy and that is through the solar thermal process.

Thermal solar energy is the technologically unexciting way to capture the Sun’s energy with parabolic mirrors, placing a glass tube at the focal point of the light and running liquid through the pipes allowing it to heat up. The heat generated is used to make steam to spin a traditional turbine just like in a conventional coal-fired plant. So, it isn’t anything fancy or technologically advanced, but it works nonetheless. There is only one other such a power plant in existence to the author’s knowledge in the California desert, which was built in the seventies in a response to the oil crisis.

The one in Nevada is built on 350 acres just minutes south of Boulder City, NV in the Eldorado Valley and is visible from the highway. If you driving from Las Vegas, take highway 95 to the south. You will have to drive through Boulder City on Hwy 95 (just follow the signs) and minutes outside of town you will see an exit to Searchlight. Take it, and head south. In a mile or so you will see the solar energy plant on the right hand side.

As of June of 2007, it is not operational yet, it looks like there is still quite a bit of work done. When complete, it will generate enough power through solar energy to satisfy the consumption of tens of thousands of homes. The downside is that power generated this way is still three times more expensive than employing a coal-fired plant.

One major advantage of harnessing solar energy this way as opposed to solar panels is that it is quite low tech compared to photovoltaics. The silicon crystals needed to generate a flow of electrons when hit with sunlight are formed by baking the compound in an oven through a period of time then slowly cooled to allow the crystals to form. It requires the right equipment, which is expensive. Even with larger production volumes solar energy through photovoltaics is quite a bit more expensive than conventional power. Solar thermal power has a similar problem, however since its technology requirements are low, economics of scale should more easily close the gap.

Nevada Solar One is Nevada’s first solar power plant and is located a few miles outside if Las Vegas.

Solar Thermal Energy Plant - The best bloopers are a click away