Energy Resources & Configuring Themeroller

Hello everyone,

Last post I talked about a great feature that I found is using RSS feeds with Google Spreadsheets, how to do this could be found here. This is such a great feature because what we need for our project is many resources about energy saving. And what RSS feeds in Google Spreadsheets does is gather that information and display it. However, one difference in the gathering is that what is imported to the sheets is not permanently saved. The command =importfeed(url, , T/F - Display the headers of what is gathered. Title, url, summary..., # of entries you want to gather from the feed.) will gather what you want from the feed and update itself every time a new entry is entered in to the feed.

Other things that I have gathered for the project that does not have an automatic gather, which I wish it did..., is videos and other information such as websites, articles, and news entries. These resources can be permanently saved, however it is so much pain in the butt because it is done manually. But through the gathering process I did learn a lot of things myself that I did not know of.

TED is one of the great websites that I stumbled over about today's technology, issues, and energy topics. Information on this website could really educate a person on what is going on in today's technology, issues, and learning. One great topic was a boy named William Kamkwamba who was 14 years old and read a BOOK about windmills at a library. He later then went back to his village and built a windmill out of a bicycle and wood.

The next thing that I believe that would be great for our project is podcasts. All the information gathering that I gathered, whether it be RSS feeds, videos, and websites, I always saw a podcast feature also. A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and downloaded, and could be listened to via a computer or a ipod. For the competition this could be used by the students or whoever is on the website to listen to the podcast that talks about how solar energy works or how to make a solar panel.

The last thing that I worked for this week was themeroller. I am designated to make different themes that pertain to the different universities in the US so they could use our website for their university if they choose to do so. I have made a couple of themes that I believe closely match the university, however, I am unable to run it with the website as of right now so I cannot really tell if it is close or not. I have to speak with my group member George to get it going.