Solar Sailor - coming to San Francisco

Solar power is on the verge of becoming mainstream in the California housing market. The goal of a new bill passed in California is to create a million solar-powered homes. In addition, new solar energy start-ups such as NanoSolar are expecting to decrease the cost of solar cells by a factor of 10. So, it should be no surprise that here in California, even boats are going solar! Yes, a new solar-powered (hybrid electric + diesel) passenger ferry called the Solar Sailor is expected to begin operation by 2008, shuttling passengers to and from Alcatraz.

And while we're talking about alternative-fuel boats, there's also the EarthRace, a biodiesel powerboat that is circumnavigating the world, and happens to be in California right now. Check it out.. this is one of the coolest looking boats you'll ever see.

Cool Site: Farecast - predict when to buy airline tickets!

This is the travel site I've been wishing for! Have you ever wondered whether you should buy airline tickets now or wait? Well, now Farecast tries to help you out by predicting for you. It looks at historical patterns to recommend flight ticket purchases. Currently, it's in beta, and only covers the some common destinations. Hopefully they'll have full global city coverage soon!

They also have a blog.

How to Write a Good Prosper Loan Request

One of the most important things about getting funded on Prosper.com is writing a good loan description. A good loan description will have to accomplish several key things:
1. Describe why you need the loan.
2. Describe your current expenses. If you're getting rid of loan debts, what are the current debts and interest rates you're paying?
3. Describe your income (and/or your spouse if applicable).
4. Describe your insurance situation (are you covered with health, life, auto, home insurance).
5. Give confidence to the lender of your ability to repay the loan.
6. Tell your story - give the lender a good view of who you are, what your situation is. Let your personality shine!

Here are some examples of well-written loan requests on Prosper:
I Want to be Free - good detail
Debt Consolidation - good detail
Help Consolidate High Interest loans - good detail and story
Help Bring Barking Dog Coffee to Life! - Telling a good story

A few other useful hints:
* Include a nice picture of you and/or your family. Since the lenders can't meet you in person, it helps to make your request more personal.
* Don't end your listings on weekends or strange hours. Ending your listing during normal hours is better because as your listing is about to expire, it shows up high on the list of soon-to-expire listings and you want to maximize the people that see it near the end.
* Be honest. It's all about trust here, and your honesty will be appreciated.

ETFs for Dividends with WisdomTree

I've been searching for a good way to invest in dividend-paying stocks. The standard ETFs for this include:
* DVY - iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index, which covers mid-cap and large-cap dividend-paying U.S. companies.
* PEY PowerShares High Yield Dividend Achievers

Those are fine for covering the U.S. markets, but, now, investing in foreign dividend-paying companies got much simpler. A new ETF start-up, WisdomTree has launched a fantastic array of dividend-focused ETFs, for both U.S. and foreign markets. These are a great way to diversify your investments.

WisdomTree has a pretty good list of superstar names in the investing industry behind it, including Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel, and Arthur Levitt, former SEC chairman.

Are You Saving Enough?

One of the things I worry about is if I'm saving enough. MSNBC has a GREAT Special Report on Retirement Savings. Over 49% of GenX'ers are likely not saving enough for retirement. That's almost half the population in the future! That means people will have to work longer, or not retire at all. Perhaps even more alarming, over half the U.S. workers aged 55 or higher have less than $50,000 saved for retirement! Many of them may be able to rely on social security or pensions though, but pensions are fast becoming a thing of the past.

Click Fraud- Google Responds and completely discredits Auditing Sites!

Click Fraud- it's a huge problem, right? Well, maybe it's not as big a problem as you think. Google conducted a detailed study of click fraud, and in particular, looked at the reports from some click fraud detection firms.... and, they totally discredit them. In particular, Google claims the reports from ClickFacts, Click Forensics, and AdWatcher are erroneous and do not reflect the way Google actually counts clicks and charges for clicks.

John Battelle has a post on this. Read the Google Report Here.

The report is quite convincing- Google knows quite a bit more about click fraud than the click fraud monitoring firms.