One of my work projects this summer was developing a website for an office complex in downtown Anchorage that just got a huge solar retrofit. The building now has 96 solar panels on its south wall that are rated at 180W each. The system has a potential output of 17.28 kW!

Along with building the website, I installed the monitoring hardware and software for the solar system. This keeps track of how much energy is being produced in real-time. A lot of the monitoring data is on the website, and it updates as often as every 10 minutes.

The website is nearly complete. The last thing being developed is a custom graphing system for the solar power data. The current graphs on the Solar Power Output page are provided by the software that comes with the monitoring hardware. Unfortunately these are not very appealing visually, and they aren’t as flexible as I’d like. The new graphs will be gorgeous.

Take a look at www.AnchorageSolarBuilding.com!

     

Once the semester is finished, there’s a lot in the mix for break. Along with the usual snowboarding, hanging out with family/friends, and generally having a blast, it’s time to focus down on business and make things work better.

One problem to solve with Green iPhone is the trust and speed factor for BuyBack customers that live in other states. A lot of people from out-of-state want to sell their iPhones, but some have a hard time taking the leap of faith in sending their iPhones to us before they receive a payment. They’re worried about fraud, and once that gets in their minds, the whole process sounds too long and complex. They think “It’s going to be a big operation to ship them the phone, and what if they never send my payment?”

I want to create a solution that’s very simple. It will solve both problems by showing the customer the hard fact (that we’re running a legitimate business and we have our reputation at stake. It would make no sense to ruin our business in exchange for stealing a few iPhones) and by giving them more opportunity to interact with the company.

This could be in the form of a customer portal. Once a customer contacts me via email, they will immediately have the option to call me and have me explain our legitimacy. Following the email, they will get access to their own user page on our website. Once they arrange to send a phone in with me, their panel will allow them to print a shipping label for their phone. The panel would also have a box showing how much money they will get from this transaction. Once we receive their phone, their page on the site gets updated and they get an email letting them know that we’ve administered their check.

This is be a big update. But it needs to happen before we begin buying from non-local customers on a large scale.

After being on Fiverr for a few days, I’ve made connections with very cool business/website owners, and have gotten to advertise their websites on my arm.

It sparks up interesting conversation wherever I go, and as I mentioned before, has lead to quite a few new business ideas.

Here are some of the people I’ve advertised for so far:

• WorldOfSolitaire
• SingleAlert
• SpidVid

WorldOfSolitaire is a web-based Solitaire game that has loads of options. All of the gameplay is in the browser, and you can even use custom backgrounds! I got a chance to talk to the site owner and was happy to advertise for him.

SpidVid is a new social platform for ‘Video Production Individuals’. If you like to do any type of video work, you can join the site and collaborate with other professionals.

Very neat stuff.

Fiverr is a new marketplace for Any and All services that people are willing to do for $5. You can browse the things that people are already doing, or make an account and offer up a service of your own.

I made a profile and offered to write a company name on my arm (and leave it there for 24 hours) for $5. So far I’ve gotten one order, and the idea sparked a handful of new thoughts on marketing and advertisement in a college setting.

I’m absolutely loving Colorado. I still like to see what the weather and snow is like at home, though.

There’s a fantastic Widget for Mac OS X Dashboard that shows webcam feeds and will update them automatically. I check on AK just about every day. It’s nice to see that things are going well back home, and comparing the weather is wonderful. Fort Collins is hovering between 60 and 80, while Anchorage is in the mid 40s.

Can’t wait to get home in November and do some backcountry boarding in Hatchers Pass!

The Brain Project is a website that I started working on for my  ’Intro to the Grand Challenges of Engineering’ Class. The project requirements were pretty broad:

Do a project on the Human Brain. Show that you’ve done your research and that you learned something new in the process.

Over the past month, our class has been looking at the Human Brain from a reverse engineering perspective. We’ve discussed ways in which humans have studied the brain, and how technology is advancing that research.

I decided to build a website that would label each region of the Human Brain, show (neatly) what we know about it, and give links to recent research/development articles about that region.

I’m quite excited about how the site looks so far. I’m still adding the content – take a look and let me know what you think!

Earlier today, a buddy of mine texted me to let me know that MMS was working on the iPhone. I was skeptical, but I tried it out and it works beautifully! I’ve been able to send and receive Images, Videos, and Voice Notes with no problems whatsoever.

I’m still on OS 3.01 with a hacked carrier file (so that I can tether my iPhone to my laptop and use it as a 3G modem). With the hacked carrier file, I have the MMS icon to the left of my text-entry box in the Messaging app.

I hear that OS 3.1 breaks the carrier file hack, so if you’ve upgraded to 3.1, you’ll have to search for another solution. If you’re still on 3.01, however, head over to Help.Benm.At on your iPhone browser, and install the carrier profile for AT&T.

Note: The carrier hack has been known to break Visual Voicemail. My visual voicemail isn’t working anymore, but tethering is much more valuable to me. – I’m not responsible for anything you do to your iPhone!

My iPhone Solar Charger has been featured on the front page of the popular DIY site Instructables.com!

Instructables is a fantastic site. It’s filled with DIY projects from all categories. I was considering building an iPhone app for the site at one point, but the project didn’t end up following through. None the less, this is awesome!

I have many plans for design-revisions, so hopefully further versions will do even better.

Check out the tutorial at Instructables!