• New Birth for Australia's Eco Label – Details about the recent restructuring of GECA, the environmental standards/labeling organisation.
• Ultracapacitor Buses – Interesting collection of technologies for powering buses using electricity.
• Recurrent, ProLogis team up for 4.8 MW of rooftop solar in Spain – Clever: leasing roofspace across Spain to support solar energy generation. Interesting that the US company's move overseas is due in part to faltering domestic support for solar. Will be great to see more of these kind of initiatives rolling out in coming years.
• why i am not afraid to take your money, by amanda fucking palmer – Amanda Palmer on the "backlash" from asking for money as an artist. Amen…
• Nissan expects initial orders for its LEAF electric vehicle to top 20,0000 units – Nissan looks on track to deliver the LEAF soon – check out the video for what looks like a production prototype in action.
• Want to know why Australia (Adelaide) is out of water? This is why. – Document with simple visualisations outlining why water consumption for key agricultural crops in Australia is a significant cause of river flow problems and suggesting that water is underpriced (a position that I agree with given my understanding of things).

These links come from my Delicious feed.

• Why we don't ride in the door zone – Sydney Cyclist – When I'm riding I often ride in the traffic lane rather than the bike lane to avoid car doors (many of the lanes in Sydney are placed right next to parked cars). This video explains why…
• Surface Area Required To Solar Power The World – Interesting visualisation of the land mass required to provide for all our power using solar technology. While solar is not the answer (and has scalability issues esp. due to resource use/efficiency) it does present an intriguing perspective.
• Introducing About NSW – maps, census visualisations, cross search – Seb Chan, Dan MacKinlay and Renae Mason talk about About NSW – an innovative project out of the Powerhouse Museum. A number of my friends/colleagues worked on this project and it's definitely worth checking out!
• Eco houses snap together using Lego-style blocks – Eco-friendly "Lego-style" bricks for DIY home builders… too cool. (via @pennyhagen)
• yikebike – Self-described as an "electric mini-farthing" – looks fascinating…
• Snow Leopard saves millions of kilowatt hours of electricity? – ComputerWorld crunches the numbers to work out how much energy Snow Leopard (Apple's new operating system) will save compared to the previous version.
• The great give-away: Allocating permits under an emissions trading scheme – David Jeffery on a recent study that suggest the government's plan to give away permits actually results in a profit for affected industries.

These links come from my Delicious feed.

In my (admittedly limited) reading about the proposed emissions trading scheme here in Australia, I get the impression there’s two primary objections (mostly from business, but also the opposition party – coincidence?) to the trading scheme.

The first is that a scheme will raise prices for the Australian public for goods from high-emissions industries, like electricity. I suspect this is to raise public opposition to the scheme, but I think that we’ve mostly overcome this objection.

The second seems to be that the scheme will negatively impact exports for these products, which in Australia will have a significant impact on exports. An extension to this argument is that producers in countries that don’t have such impediments will be able to undercut the price of Australian companies’ produce.

Over the jump I’ve put together some initial thoughts on these objections and the Government’s proposed approach…

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• GreenXchange: Sustainable Innovation Meets the Creative Commons – This is an awesome initiative with great potential – a partnering of Nike and Creative Commons among others to open up sustainability inventions for businesses and researchers to further develop and use.
• Why Doesn't Green = Better? – Joel Makower nails it – this is what I was aiming for with Arketype and I think it is the key to us achieving broader uptake of sustainable products…
• Better Place Australia – Get Involved – I'm really excited by this concept after seeing Shai Agassi's (the founder) speach at TED. Happy to see it might be coming to Oz…

These links come from my Delicious feed.

I’ve just finished uploading and captioning on Flickr the few photos I took while in Hong Kong.

For some reason I felt really self-conscious about taking photos on the trip, so most of them are taken on the one “tourist” day I did, when I went to Lantau Island to see the cable car, Big Buddha, Po Lin temple and the Tai O fishing village.

Thankfully some other folks have taken some great shots of the other interesting things I saw, like Man Mo temple, the Peak, Tsim Sha Tsui at night and the experience of catching the MTR rail service.

I’m still waiting for Google Street View to launch in Hong Kong to see if they snapped me as the Google car rolled past. Might be the most fortuitous holiday snap of them all…

While in Hong Kong on my recent holiday (I hope to have some photos and thoughts up on Flickr soonish) I picked up a Novation 25SL mk II. I wanted something a bit smaller for live performance (the previous 49 note keyboard took up a lot of space on stage) that didn’t lack the various faders, controls and triggers of the M-Audio Axiom 49 that I’ve been using for some time.

Over the jump is my first impressions of the Novation, specifically as used with Ableton Live…

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Over at the Zumio blog I’ve posted about a recent career shift to start at Inspire Digital. Over the jump is a bit more on how I came to the decision, what it means for Arketype and where I see things heading…

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So in my recent busy-ness, I’ve neglected to post on what’s been happening in Fuzu land…

First single

We recently ran a competition asking folks to choose our first single from our new EP The Point – which they thankfully did

We’re kicking off with Fire Exit, which you can check out on
MySpace or download from the Fuzu website (does anyone know where the download link went from MySpace’s player? We’ve enabled downloading, but can’t seem to see the download option in the player anymore…)

Launch gig

We’re booked in to launch the EP at the Supper Club on 9 July.
The Rapids and Sean Carey, who also engineered the EP, will be joining us for the night.

We’re looking forward to officially launching the EP and showing off the limited edition packaging; each is hand screenprinted and numbered, and featuring fab artwork from We Buy Your Kids.

We’ll also be playing the tracks off the EP and debuting some new material. Should be a fun night

iTunes

The Point is now available on iTunes – which is always a buzz. We’d be stoked if you could leave a review as well. (And just a note that you can also get our previous EP Between The Lines there too…)

• Ross Gittins – "It's gamesmanship, and we all lose" – "If [Kevin Rudd's] latest compromise fails, it will be because of an impasse between those decrying the scheme as too tough and those objecting it isn't tough enough. Such a failure of will reflects no credit on any political party or interest group involved. All the political parties are playing games for their own short-term advantage."
• NSW Switches Its Brain Off – NSW continues to lead the way in stupid, short-sighted decisions. Can we, like, sack the entire government and opposition and start again?
• Unleashed: The numbers prove Turnbull wrong – "The federal opposition is calling for the re-introduction of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) to deter people from risking the dangerous journey to Australia in unseaworthy vessels in the hope of seeking asylum. The protection of life is a worthy aim indeed. But Mr Turnbull has got it wrong."
• The Crisis of Credit Visualized – Excellent visualisation of how the credit crisis came about using info-graphics.

These links come from my Delicious feed.

This is a fantastic video – via Digital for Good: