Getting Natural Gas Service for Light Up Season

I'm not sure what it's like around the rest of the country, but things are starting to cool down a little bit here. Now that Fall is officially underway, we're fast approaching the time of year when natural gas service becomes more important as use goes up along with the cold weather.

In a deregulated market like Ohio or Georgia, this is the perfect time to switch natural gas providers and see if you can save money on your monthly bills. If you are in either of these deregulated markets, a recent press release from WhiteFence highlights OhioNaturalGas and GasGeorgia. With these two free Web sites, shoppers are given the power to choose and save on their natural gas service.

How long since you've compared natural gas rates? Now's the time to do it, before the bills start to climb. To read more about saving money during light up season, view the WhiteFence press release.

Half of American Homes Now Have an HDTV

A recent report released by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) shows that 53 percent of American homes now own a high-definition television set. HDTV ownership has spiked recently, as less than one quarter of U.S. households reported owning one of the advanced televisions just two years ago.

Interestingly, the reports also shows that only 69 percent of HDTV owners subscribe to high-definition service (up from 56 percent last year), meaning three out of ten HDTV owners aren’t getting the full HD experience.

Looking to get the most out of your HDTV? Check out WhiteFence to compare television offers from the top cable and satellite providers.

Home Improvents that can Save You Money

Did you know that the governments wants to help you make improvements to your home? Yes, it's true. The government wants you to be more energy efficient and boy have they got an incentive for you.

Earlier this year, Congress approved the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.It means that you can get a tax credit for purchasing energy-saving products like insulation, roofing, air conditioning systems and more.

Check out the article by The Philadelphia Inquirer for more information.

Monitoring Your Energy Use

Are your energy bills skyrocketing? One way to help lower them is just to monitor your energy usage on a daily even weekly basis.

The Energy Aware Clock (EAC) is a cool new gadget that can assist you in just that. All you do is set up the EAC in a room you want to monitor. It will show you the peaks and valleys of your energy useage.

Knowing how much energy you use at what time of day will help you become more conscience of changes  you'll have to make to conserve energy.

Read more about the EAC at Mother Nature Network and Unplugged.

Whole Foods Buys A Whole Lot of Wind Energy Credits

While Whole Foods might have taken a hit with the media and some of its customers lately over the remarks of the company's CEO, it's still looking toward a greener grocery future. The company recently announced that it has finalized the largest purchase of renewable energy credits ever made by a U.S. retailer.

Whole Foods's 776 million-kilowatt-hour purchase from wind farms will be equal to 100 percent of the its electricity use in its North American locations, and nearly 90 percent of this year’s purchase is helping to fund E.ON Climate & Renewables’ (EC&R) recently-completed Texas-based Panther Creek wind farm.

Nearly 90 percent of the renewable energy credits Whole Foods Market has purchased for 2009 came from a Big Spring, Texas-based wind farm, which is 50 miles east of Midland. The project is built and operated by EC&R North America, a renewable energy developer headquartered in Chicago, with development offices in Austin and Denver. The remaining RECs come from a number of different wind farms in locations across the U.S. and Canada.

“The Environmental Protection Agency commends Whole Foods Market for their continued commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing green power,” said Kathleen Hogan, director of the Climate Protection Partnerships Division at EPA. “As a partner in EPA’s Green Power Partnership, and by supporting renewable energy, Whole Foods Market is helping to move our nation into a clean energy future.”

The 2009 Whole Foods Market wind power purchase will help avoid up to 868 million pounds of carbon dioxide pollution. This has an environmental benefit that’s similar to taking more than 72,000 cars off of the roads for a year, or planting nearly 3.6 million mature trees.

For more, check out the Whole Foods official blog.

Comcast, DISH Network and the NFL To Put Fans In The “NFL Redzone”

If you are an NFL football fan who felt like there just wasn't enough coverage last season, the NFL Network has good news for you. Comcast and DISH Network both announced recently that they plan to offer the network's “NFL RedZone” channel this season. (Comcast customers will have access as of its Sports Entertainment Package.)

"NFL RedZone" is hosted by Scott Hanson from the new state-of-the-art "NFL RedZone" studio at NFL Network's headquarters in Los Angeles and debuted this past Sunday.

Produced by the NFL Network, the channel will air every Sunday from 1:00 p.m. EST through late afternoon games providing live look-ins and real-time highlights for every NFL game that afternoon. Throughout the NFL football season, the channel will move from game to game providing live action each time a team is poised to score inside the 20-yard line. The channel will also have in-studio coverage to provide real-time scoring and fantasy updates to fans.

If you have Comcast cable service or DISH Network, surf over to redzonetv.nfl.com to see if you can get your red zone fix this season.

J.D. Power and Associates: Bright House Networks Ranks Highest in Customer Satisfaction

For the third consecutive year, Bright House Networks ranks highest in customer satisfaction among U.S. telephone service providers in the South according to the report recently released by J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Residential Regional Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study.

Bright House highest ranking performance in the Residential Regional Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study was a result of highest scores in customer service, billing, performance and reliability, cost of service, billing, and offerings and promotions. The study was based on responses collected in July 2008 from more than 13,600 customers nationwide who receive their local and long distance telephone service from one provider.

J.D. Power and Associates reported that the 2008 study marks the second consecutive year that cable television providers have dominated the highest-ranking positions across all regions examined in the study. The study finds that overall satisfaction is higher among customers who bundle two or more services with one provider, compared with customers subscribing to phone service alone. Satisfaction among "double-play and triple-play customers"—those subscribing to some combination of telephone, cable and Internet service—is 25 index points higher than among those customers subscribing to just phone service.

Find Bright House Networks home phone plans and pricing available in your area.

AT&T; Launches New Entertainment Site

Last week, AT&T; announced the launch of AT&T; Entertainment, a new site that offers streaming TV shows and movies to watch on your PC. The online content is provided by numerous providers including ABC and NBC Universal (via an agreement with Hulu), CBS Interactive and others. The site is open to any user, not just AT&T; high speed Internet customers.

Content will include movies and TV shows (available after their initial network airing) from a variety of networks and studios, including ABC, Bravo, CBS Entertainment, CBS News, CNBC, NBC, Oxygen, Syfy, The CW, and USA Network. The site allows users to brows TV shows and movies alphabetically, by genre, or by network or studio.

AT&T; U-verse TV and Internet customers who visit AT&T; Entertainment can sign in to access U-verse Web Remote Access, a popular application that allows customers to schedule and manage DVR recordings directly from their PC.

To start watching, visit www.entertainment.att.net.

Japan Planning Massive Solar Power Plant in Space

As far-fetched as it may sound, engineers from Japanese companies Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and IHI Corp. are teaming up with an international research group to develop a satellite-based solar power plant that will beam green energy back to Earth.

The proposed satellite would feature four square kilometers of solar panels and be able to generate one gigawatt, which is enough clean electricity to power about 294,000 homes. All of that energy would be beamed down to Earth via microwaves to large, almost two mile wide receiving stations.

This system would avoid one of the biggest pitfalls commonly associated with solar panels: clouds. Far above our climate, the panels would be able to soak up the sun’s rays all day, every day. It’s not all good news though, as all sorts of new problems—such as the cost of lugging thousands of tons of solar panels into space and dealing with micro-meteoroids and space debris strikes—will have to be tackled.

Clocking in at a rather stout $21 billion price tag, the system will undergo extensive testing and trials before going full-scale. The Japanese government hopes to have a smaller-scale test unit in orbit by 2015.

I wonder what happens to a plane that flies through the beam.

The Value of Renters Insurance

One thing that I do whenever I go out of town (besides eat poorly) is worry about my apartment and whether or not my stuff is safe. Call me paranoid, but it's just what I do. For me, there would be few things worse than coming home from a trip to find that my apartment has been ransacked by a stranger. This is one of the main reasons I have renters insurance, and it really allows me to take a step back and not think about it so much.

According to a new AllState survey reported at USNews, one in three people think that renters insurance costs more than it actually does. Some respondents assumed that it costs as much as fifteen times the real amount. The truth is, there are many insurance policies that can be taken out for only a few hundred dollars a year. This is a small price to pay to protect your belongings, which can easily cost more than $10,000. Considering that apartments are 50 percent more likely to be burglarized than homes, the numbers start to point towards getting a renters insurance policy.

To read more about the AllState survey, visit USNews. If you're interested in renters insurance, you can always get help with WhiteFence.