I find it funny and frustrating at the same time that this "new" technology that is making such a buzz these days (AJAX) is technology that has been around for years. We were working with XMLHTTPRequest stuff in mozilla more than 2 years ago. The problem seems to be we didn't have any really great applications that used it. Now Google uses it for some web apps and now there's a book coming out on it: ( at amazon) Crap, I guess there are 3 books out or coming out on it. This is a technology I think is great and I for one am going to make sure I'm up on it.

Oh, and if you want to read some online articles about the technology developer.mozilla.org has a whole section on it.

Well, I've finished the next 2 versions (0.3 and 0.4) of the tutorial. v0.3 adds the ability to install on Firefox, Thunderbird or Sunbird and v0.4 adds a javascript xpcom component to the mix. I'll be cleaning them up and posting them tomorrow or over the weekend.

I've been noticing more extension tutorials and docs appearing on the web lately and that is awesome. I still am not sold on Mozilla's documentation efforts, but things are just getting going over there so I'll cut 'em some slack. As I get things nailed down over here I'll probably start contributing some documentation to their wiki's at wiki.mozilla.org and developer.mozilla.org (still don't know why they have 2).

By 2015 I'll be able to recycle 95% of a new car. If I lived in Europe or Japan. Laws are going into place that will require new cars sold in those markets to be 95% recycleable, up from I believe 80% these days (or by 2007 maybe). Europe will also be requiring automakers to set up collection centers where consumers can recycle their car at no cost. And not just the new, nearly completely recycleable cars, but the old ones too. You can check out the article over at nytimes.com.

In other good auto news, SUV sales are down ( nytimes.com). The article also says that we are driving less. I was curious how high the gas prices would have to get for this to happen. I was just talking to my roommate about this yesterday. Our lives and culture is so centered around the ability to travel freely that it really is a big adjustment to lessen the amount of miles we travel in the car. I think what we will see more of is people getting more efficient vehicles so they don't have to change their lifestyle patterns so much. Apparently we are driving less for 4 weeks straight now, which is good news too.

Finally, I just want to voice my hopes that one fallout of the gas woes we are going through now due to the destruction caused by Katrina and Rita in the gulf is the hightened awareness of alternative fuel. CBS Sunday Morning had a segment last week about a truck stop that sold Willie-Diesel (check out the website). It's a biodiesel blend and he's selling it in about 6 places in Texas, one in California and a couple other states (there's a map on his website). I was very excited to see that bio-diesel made it to a national news magazine program, plus the people they interviewed who were using it said their engines were running better and they were getting better gas mileage. That was great news because I have read that mileage acutally drops a little, perhaps Willie just found a better blend. There are a couple of places in the SF Bay area you can get BioDiesel and it runs in regular diesel vehicles, no modification needed (in most cases). Google for biodiesel and you'll find lots of info!