Monday Links: September 8th, 2008

Alrighty.  After a weeklong hiatus, I’m back with a fury and a bunch of links for your viewing pleasure:

• Here’s a great NY Times article explains a major hurdle to widespread wind power: not technology, just updating and modernizing the power grid (costly, but possible without waiting on further innovation).  Matt Yglesias says in response:

[A modern grid] would be expensive to build — $60 billion they say. At the same time, that’s six months worth of Iraq spending [...] You hear a lot of talk about “green jobs” and it sometimes seems disingenuous [...] But the jobs associated with upgrading the electrical grid would obviously have to be done in the United States and the green element is extremely real.

• Real Simple magazine offers a guide to compact flourescent lightbulbs that won’t make you feel like you’re in an operating room.

• Here’s an incredible story, via Mental Floss, of the first woman to ROW from California to Hawaii.  Think about that for a second [pause]…that’s right, quite a distance to row.  Have a gander at the boat she used, then take in the blog and podcasts she updated as she went.  Impressive all around.

• Online presentation host SlideShare held a “World’s Best Presentation” contest.  The winner, “THIRST,” is a stunning gut check about water scarcity around the globe.  Well worth the two minutes it takes to click through.  [Hat tip: Tim Berry]

• Leave it to the Mythbusters to use an 1,100-barrel paintball gun to paint the Mona Lisa in less than a second [via Gizmodo]:

• After slamming a recent crop of start up companies for their lame websites, tech blogger Robert Scoble praises “the ‘gold standard’ of recent start ups” in the online space.  Since I think our audience here ranges from the tech-obsessed early adopter set (your dashing authors) to the folks who we’ve introduced to the blogosphere via this site, I’m curious to see if you’ve heard of (or, better yet, use) any of the companies Scoble lists.  My list is after the jump…:

I love Tripit, and use it constantly.  Let’s say you get an eticket from an airline or a confirmation email from a hotel/rental car provider.  Simply forward the email to your tripit account and BAM, all your travel info in one place, sorted and made pretty.

I use Kayak frequently for finding flights (think cheaptickets or Orbitz, but more nimble), but I’ve heard that American Airlines and others are not going to allow Kayak to access their flights in the future (bummer).

Jarred has given me a couple of shirts from Threadless (“I Listen to Bands that Don’t Even Exist Yet” being the best one), and I think they’re a cool offbeat shirt shop.

I used to rely on Pandora for long nights writing my thesis in the library, and I had a generally pleasant experience…although it seemed to include a few no name, awful bands in the mix on occasion.

I Twitter on occasion, though I’ve never found it particularly useful (though you can follow me @tayloransley if you like, whooooo)

I do most of my online banking/budgeting through Mint, and I highly recommend it.  I used Wesabe previously for the same purpose, but I’ve come to think that Mint is a better product.

I mentioned in my last post my newfound love for Posterous, and I clearly love Wordpress since I’m. Using. It. Right. Now.

What start ups do you depend on…or at least know by name?