ThomasNet, the leading business to business site are rolling out a new look to their flagship website www.ThomasNet.com, to finish up a great year in 2009.  This redesign is the result of ongoing multivariable testing and conversations with their users results to improve the layout to better designed to serve their users.

Brendan O’Connell the Whois.com contact and admin for the website, sums up the redesign in this way,

“The success of Thomsnet hinges on adhering to the principles of user centric design. Serve and respond to the user and the rest will follow.”

Catalyst Group  New York, the  company that ran a widely reported usability study comparing Google to Bing, was also employed in the redesign process to conduct lab based usability testing with Eye Tracking and “talk-aloud”, to help complete the research picture – supplementing what users “say” with what their eyes “see.”.  This information was incorporated into the new site, making it easier to navigate and search for products.

Another major improvements to the site come with page speed performance.  The new site has been tested to load 50% faster, which is not only good for search engines but for users as well. Google.com recently announced that web page loading speed may become a significant ranking factor in 2010  

With gasoline and diesel powered vehicles, one of the biggest option choices facing buyers is engine size. 4 cylinders? A V6 maybe? Or even a V8? That’s an important decision since the engine is at the heart of a vehicle. But when it comes to electric vehicles, the heart is no doubt the battery. This is why Tesla has announced battery options for its upcoming Model S electric sedan, and it is why Nissan is suggesting that it might eventually offer different battery options with its LEAF electric car.

The Detroit Bureau writes:

a senior Nissan planner tells TheDetroitBureau.com that the company eventually give [sic] BEV buyers the electric vehicle’s equivalent of choosing engines, offering an array of different battery packs. That would allow a motorist to choose between a lower-range, lower-cost pack, or batteries delivering perhaps twice the mileage, at a higher price, of course. And, as battery technology improves, eco-minded motorists might also be offered batteries that would add a bit more muscle to their green machines.

This makes a lot of sense because batteries will no doubt change a lot over the next few years. Big breakthroughs could happen, costs could go down faster (or slower) than expected because of mass-production, fast-charging stations could pop up everywhere, auto makers could be misjudging demand for EV, etc. A lot of things could happen, and the best way to be prepared is to plan electric cars that are customizable and modular.

I hope that other auto makers working on electric cars are taking notes and planning to offer different battery options. No everybody has the same needs, and one-size fits all could compromise the success of EVs.

Photovoltaic specialists met last week, May 12-16, in San Diego under the auspices of the IEEE Electron Devices Society, for their 33rd annual meeting. For the first time the meeting included a two-day breakout session, The PV Accelerator Forum, devoted to exploring how photovoltaics can be kick-started to achieve an earlier commercial breakthrough. There were some substantial surprises.

If you asked a solar expert ten or fifteen years ago what the game plan was for photovoltaics, the gist would have been this: develop silicon cells, relying on scraps and techniques from the semiconductor industry, without expectation of a commercial breakthrough; then turn to second-generation thin-film materials like CIGS and cad-tel, which would be much cheaper and more fit for mass production. By early this decade, however, it seemed clear that PV was not shaping up as planned. The second generation materials were not materializing on schedule, and the cost of solar electricity was still nowhere near competitive. Particularly disconcerting was the 2002 decision of British Petroleum, which was billing itself as the world’s biggest solar company (among other things), to terminate U.S. production of cad-tel and amorphous silicon cells, as reported in the January 2003 issue of Spectrum magazine.

Now there are some new twists and turnsâ¿¿essentially, three very positive developments that would not have been generally anticipated a decade ago. First, silicon-based solar technology has decoupled from the semiconductor industry and is achieving steady cost reductions, so that those following PV discern a kind of Mooreâ¿¿s law at work. In 2005, production of silicon for solar cells already surpassed production of silicon for semiconductors.

Second, the industry has become so confident in that evolutionary path, policymakers and planners have started to set dates when they expect PV-generated electricity to be competitive with the major sources of electricity sold on the grid now. And third, while the incremental path promises a commercial breakthrough within ten years, it’s suddenly looking like second generation technology may be arriving after allâ¿¿in which case wide commercialization of PV could occur much sooner.

In recent years, global PV production has been increasing at a rate of 50 percent per year, so that accumulated global capacity doubles about every 18 months. The PV Moore’s law states that with every doubling of capacity, PV costs come down by 20 percent. In 2004, installing PV cost about $7 per watt, compared to $1/W for wind, which at that time was beginning to stand on its own feet commercially, Last, year, as recently noted in this blog, average global solar costs had come down to between $4 and $5 per watt, right in line with the PV Moore’s law. Extrapolate those gains out six or seven years, and PV costs will be below $2/W, making photovolatics competitive with 2004 wind.

Remember, wind electricity generally is generated in large farms, so that its price has to be competitive with electricity generated from other sources that’s the wholesale electricity cost that accounts for only about half of total electricity costs in a typical customer’s bill. But solar, being distributed, competes with the retail price if the PV generating cost is comparable to the total delivered cost of electricity, which can be as high as 20 cents per kilowatthour in the United States and upwards of 30 cents in Japan, thatâ¿¿s good enough.

Planners and regulator are starting to believe in the PV Moore’s law. The European Union’s PV Tech Platform has set the year 2015 for achieving grid parity the point where solar electricity can be sold competitively into the grid. As early as 2010, solar electricity prices in extreme southern Europe might go as low as 17 or 18 cents/kWh. California also expects to see grid parity within a decade, and Southern California Edison has a program to put subsidized PV roofs on large commercial buildings, predicated on the goal of obtaining PV capacity at a cost of $3.50/W within five years.

So some noteworthy things have happened on the way to this year’s PV accelerator forum. But what was getting the most buzz in the technical conference, which attracted a record number of attendees from around the world, was next-generation PV. Sessions dedicated to next-generation materials like cooper indium diselenide and cadmium telluride were packed to the gills, with people craning their heads in from the hallways to catch snatches of talks. One company is particular has been growing like gangbusters in the last couple of years, with a rather simple CdTe module that it claims to be producing at a cost of barely over $1/W.

By Joe Brown

Without full details or even a reasonable explanation from General Motors, many people are scratching their heads as to why the all-but-signed deal to sell their subsidiary, Opel to parts-maker Magna, fell through.

Was it driven by the report that came out today stating October was the carmaker’s best year over year in a long time? I hope not. Regardless of the dynamics of the decision, I think this will go down as a key lesson in future business textbooks and case studies about the dangers of mixing Wall Street with Capitol Hill.

At this moment, our friends in Germany fall somewhere between annoyed and completely miffed. The thought–at least according to German workers–is that GM will likely make more cuts than Opel would have. Further, officials orchestrated a “bridge loan” to ensure Opel’s solvency while a buyer was found which they thought was finalized when Magna’s aspirations to become an even bigger player than it already was.

My concern lies with the solid relationship America had fostered with Germany may be strained slightly. The U.S. government is now the majority owner of GM (although they immediately issued a statement attempting to wash their hands of having any input in the decision) and their close ally is Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

The Chancellor and her cabinet had strongly supported and worked feverishly on doing whatever it took to make this deal happen. Now, her office felt completely blindsided by this and I bet only stronger and more critical comments will be out from them in the coming days. One official from Merkel’s office stated that she is considering a call to President Obama to voice her displeasure.

“After many promises and months of negotiations, GM has left workers out in the cold. This attitude from General Motors shows the ugly face of turbo capitalism. It is completely unacceptable,” according to the Chancellor’s deputy leader, Juergen Ruettgers.

True to the old adage, you can’t please them all; the US finds itself smack in the middle of a situation they probably didn’t realize before becoming a majority shareholder of a giant company. Even Russia–strong supporters of the Opel-Magna deal–released a statement from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s office calling the decision, “absolutely astonishing.”

I worry that it may be difficult for our government to save face despite the best public relations money can buy stating they had no influence on this decision (which I do believe) yet they are technically the majority owner of the company. When’s the last time you heard of a group with a controlling interest (51 %+) in an organization not have any influence on a decision of this magnitude? It just doesn’t happen and is quite the conundrum.

Now, GM execs are scrambling to update a new restructuring plan for Opel and Vauxhall.

Joe Brown

In an “encyclical” letter issued this past summer, Benedict uses such phrases as “democracy at risk,” “dysfunctions and deviations,” and “grave imbalances” to describe the current system of maximizing profits through outsourcing of production from high-priced developed countries to low-cost developing nations. Globalization has developed at a “ferocious pace” that is leading to “new forms of economic marginalization” caused by tens of millions of people losing their jobs or being employed in deplorable conditions. “The current [financial] crisis can only make this situation worse,” according to Pope Benedict.

The growth of multinational companies and international financial institutions has led to an “economic scene marked by grave deviations and failures” and requires “a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise,” writes the Pope. “Without a doubt, one of the greatest risks for business is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limiting their social value….Outsourcing of production can weaken the company’s sense of responsibility toward the stakeholders, namely the workers, the suppliers, the consumers, the natural environment and broader society — in favor of shareholders, who are not tied to a specific geographic area and who therefore enjoy extraordinary mobility.”

The Catholic Church’s “growing conviction” is that business managers must not only look out for the interest of “proprietors” but must “assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business” — workers, suppliers and local communities in which they operate.

The Pope says that governments have contributed to growing social and global inequities by providing tax incentives and by lowering environmental and labor standards to attract companies to locate production in their countries. These inducements have led governments to “downsize social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market,” writes Benedict. The result: “grave dangers for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social state.”

Citizens have grown to be “powerless” in the current economic system, the Pope states. Workers’ unions are in decline and workers are losing their proponents. As such, the Catholic Church says the promotion of unions that can defend the rights of workers from being exploited by companies and governments “must therefore be honored today even more than in the past as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level as well as the local level.”

The Pope says the “dignity of the individual” is being compromised by the “systemic increase of social inequity both within a single country and between the populations of different countries.” These growing inequities caused by the corporate pursuit of profits are “placing democracy at risk,” writes the Pope. “Progressive erosion of ‘social capital’ — the network of relationships of trust, dependability and respect for the rules, all of which are indispensable for any form of civil co-existence — [are] at risk.”

Business executives’ focus on short-term profits, even at the expense of the long-term viability of the corporations they run, requires “further and deeper reflection on the meaning of the economy and its goals as well as a profound and far-sighted revision of the current model of development, so as to correct its dysfunctions and deviations,” writes Pope Benedict. Without some type of modification — without the guidance of “charity and truth” — globalization as it is currently practiced “could cause unprecedented damage and create new divisions within the human family.”

Benedict says that “commercial logic” must now be redirected away from the investment class “towards the pursuit of the common good.” For this to happen, politicians must step in. “It must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.”

However 500 furloughed employees will be returning to work

Caterpillar said on Oct. 26 it was cutting about 2,500 jobs and had started to bring more than 500 laid-off employees back to work, in a sign of improving economic conditions.

About 550 furloughed U.S. employees have returned or will return to work before the end of 2010, including support, management and production employees, the company said.

“We are pleased that signs of recovery in the global economy allow us to return a selected group of laid-off employees to work,” said Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens. “But it’s important to remember that we are not close to the record-breaking demand we experienced from 2004 through 2008.”

Also on Oct. 26, Caterpillar began notifying about 2,500 laid-off U.S. employees that they would not be returning to work, without giving details. “The company is offering a separation package for those employees. A breakdown of impacted employees by location will not be provided.”

Since 2008, Caterpillar cut 18,700 jobs during the economic downturn.

Caterpiller reported third-quarter earnings of $404 million this is  down 53% from a year earlier, as revenue fell 44%.

Here’s a project from back in 2001 that might be of interest to some of you. It is a guide on how to build your own hot air pencil for SMD soldering.  He is using a super cheap 45W soldering iron from “the shack” combined with a pump type desoldering tool and an aquarium pump. He says it works pretty well, and we don’t see why it shouldn’t. This is a pretty elegant solution. There are also some more recent versions of this mod, but the idea is basically the same.
buy CNC related books and tools

This is Keith Johnson’s article from The Wall Street Journal’s Blog:

Like the “Jaws” character in the old James Bond movies, it seems nothing can stop the U.S. wind power industry.

So far this year, the U.S. has installed 5,800 megawatts of wind power—again, more than at the same time last year (4,200 megawatts). That’s nearly as much as the industry initially expected to install during the entire year.

That brings total U.S. wind power installations to more than 31,000 megawatts, which leads the world. (That’s the equivalent of 31 nuclear power plants on paper, and about 10 nuclear plants in reality.)

The U.S. wind industry is still nervous, though, and expects fourth-quarter performance will—finally–fall short of last year’s pace. The industry wants more help from Washington: “A firm, long-term national commitment to renewable energy” is still needed to boost wind-turbine manufacturing, said AWEA chief executive Denise Bode.

One American wind-power company seems to be doing alright at least. General Electric dominated the third quarter, supplying the turbines used in 10 of the 23 wind farms that were built.

Of the 51 farms currently under construction which have announced tbeir turbine maker, GE has 21. Other manufacturers in the hunt are Siemens and Vestas, with 8 farms each. Notably absent from the current pipeline—Spain’s Gamesa, one of the global heavyweights

Thanks for the tip to http://toolanddieing.com/

David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau

Washington — The nation’s auto suppliers urged the Senate Friday to boost credit to the struggling industry.

Dave Andrea, vice president, industry analysis & economics for the Original Equipment Suppliers Association, testified today before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy urging Congress and the Obama administration to take new steps to help suppliers.

The administration created a $5 billion supplier support program for General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC Tier 1 suppliers in March — a program since whittled down to $3.5 billion that many argue is inadequate and doesn’t cover enough suppliers.

Andrea urged the Senate to assure sufficient capital for restructuring, consolidating, and diversifying the industry; address specific needs of small suppliers for sufficient capital for ongoing operations; and create technology funding programs that support long-term innovation.

“Bankruptcies are happening and will continue to happen,” said Neil De Koker, president and CEO of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association. “Suppliers continue to struggle under the weight of this economic crisis, and we are eager to work with the members of the Subcommittee in a coordinated effort to preserve the industry’s employment base and technology innovation going forward.”

But officials in the administration note that there haven’t been as many bankruptcies by suppliers in recent months as forecast. The Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association had predicted 50 to 60 additional supplier bankruptcies in the months following GM’s bankruptcy filing.

But MEMA notes at least 47 suppliers sought bankruptcy protection this year — including Visteon Corp., Metaldyne Corp. and Lear Corp.

And suppliers have for the most part been able to get private financing during bankruptcy — though some have relied on automakers for part of their bankruptcy financing.

Last month, GM said it would speed payments to suppliers. Starting Nov. 1, it will pay suppliers weekly rather than every 47 days.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm met with top Obama administration economic advisers in early August, seeking $1 billion for a program to help suppliers obtain credit to diversify into other businesses. The state has a $12 million pilot program to offer loans to Michigan suppliers on a much smaller scale.

But so far the administration has shown no appetite to do more to help suppliers.

One area for which suppliers might get help is if the administration agrees to their request to increase the limits for loan programs within the Small Business Administration as current limits typically do not cover the investments suppliers make to assist with the design, engineering and tooling for a component on a new vehicle program.

Automotive suppliers are the largest manufacturing employers in eight states: Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee. They employ more than 500,000 people directly.

Leading PV Technology and solar-polar manufacturer, Suniva, plans to invest $250M in the Saginaw, Michigan area.

Emma Hughes, from PV-tech.org, wrote:

Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm has announced that Georgia-based Suniva will invest US$250 million in a new solar manufacturing facility in Saginaw County’s Thomas Township.  With this development, Suniva will create 500 new jobs over the next five years subject to receiving a Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee, which the company recently applied for.

“Today we welcome Suniva to our growing list of world-class green manufacturing leaders that are establishing operations here,” Granholm said.  “They’re coming here for the skilled workforce, strong work ethic and competitive business climate that are synonymous with Michigan.”

The Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA), on Michigan Economic Development Corporation recommendation (MEDC), has approved a PV Michigan Business Tax (MBT) credit valued at US$15 million over five years.  Michigan’s PV MBT credit provides a refundable tax credit for the construction and operation of a facility that develops and manufactures solar PV technology, PV systems or PV energy.

“For the United States to reach its potential as a leader in renewable energy, it must support not only new innovative technologies, but also must revitalize its manufacturing base to aid these technologies in achieving swift scale,” said John Baumstark, CEO of Suniva.  “All states have a powerful role to play in bringing new jobs and new technologies to market, and we applaud Michigan’s efforts.
from joe at Tool and  Dieing Blog