Ryan started it off with:

Look at just the $90 billion in stimulus. The vice president was in charge of overseeing this. $90 billion in green pork to campaign contributors and special interest groups. There are just at the Department of Energy over 100 criminal investigations that have been launched into just how stimulus…

Biden responded with:

His colleague. . . runs an investigative committee, spent months and months and months going into this. . . .Months and months. They found no evidence of cronyism.

Biden shoots back by bringing up letters that Ryan wrote asking for stimulus funds for Wisconsin energy efficiency projects:

I’m not allowed to show letters but go on our website, he sent me two letters saying, “By the way, can you send me some stimulus money for companies here in the state of Wisconsin?” We sent millions of dollars. You know. . .

Ryan admits as much:

On two occasions we – we – we advocated for constituents who were applying for grants. That’s what we do. We do that for all constituents who are…

Biden’s response:

I love that. I love that. This was such a bad program and he writes me a letter saying – writes the Department of Energy a letter saying, “The reason we need this stimulus, it will create growth and jobs.” His words. And now he’s sitting here looking at me.

And by the way, that program, again, investigated. What the Congress said was it was a model. Less than four-tenths of 1 percent waste or fraud in the program.

And all this talk about cronyism. They investigated and investigated, did not find one single piece of evidence. I wish he would just tell – be a little more candid.

And Ryan’s final jab at green jobs before the moderator changes the subject:

Was it a good idea to spend taxpayer dollars on electric cars in Finland, or on windmills in China?

The electric car that Ryan is talking about is Fisker Automotive, which may or may not have been a good investment for the DOE to make, but which used some of the funds to manufacture its first car in Finland, and design its second car, which is supposed to be built in the U.S. A big chunk of the DOE loan was actually blocked, because Fisker didn’t meet its milestones with its first car, and was forced to raised private funds to replace that lost loan.

Fisker made it into both the first Presidential and the Vice Presidential debates!

Image courtesy of richiec.

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Based on the app race, Ron Paul would win the nomination

The Ron Paul App (free) has biographical details, voting records, books and links to websites about Ron Paul. It even has a Words with Friends portal so you can find other supporters to play with. Other apps for Ron Paul fans include Ron Paul Mobile ($0.99) and Ron Paul Words of Wisdom ($0.99).

Rick Perry also seems to have an official iOS app (free) that looks to be just a fundraising tool. Upon install, I was presented with a login screen and had to go the main website and sign up before I could make it past the screen. Even after I signed up, I still couldn’t log in, though, so it’s not really a very strong competitor. Amazingly, no other Republican candidate seems to have an official app.

If you want a quick overview of the primary race

Pocket Polls (free) covers all the candidates, giving their positions on a dozen of different issues such as abortion, gun control, and immigration. If you want a thumbnail sketch of each candidate, this is the app for you.

If social media presence is important to you

If you’re into social media, the 2012GOP ($1.99) app is your go-to app for deciding who to vote for. This app takes all the candidates’ Twitter accounts and lets you examine not just their tweets, but how often they’re retweeted and the tag clouds of what they’ve said. Ron Paul has double the mentions of Mitt Romney, but Newt Gingrich has them beat hands down in terms of followers, and Buddy Roemer has the most retweets.

If you want your iPhone to quickly decide for you

Candidates (free) will ask you your opinion on 16 different issues and allow you to weigh the importance of each. At the end of the quiz, it will rank candidates (including President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, as well as Republican primary candidates) based on how their positions match up with your answers, and you can click on each candidate link for more information.

If you’d rather make a more informed decision

Proud Republican ($1.99) aggregates news from 15 different national sources such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Post so you can read what others are saying about candidates and the election. The app even integrates conservative talk radio sources, too, so you can hear live what’s being said about the race on-air.

If you just want to keep track of the race

Maybe you live in one of the states that doesn’t usually have an impact on the national primaries, or you want to see how your candidate is doing post-election, then USA Election 2012 is ($0.99) the app for you. While not directly Republican-focused, since that party has the primary-season spotlight right now, that’s what the app is currently directing its attention. Once the Republic candidate is settled, it should provide a more balanced perspective.

Read a variety of polls to see who’s ahead, find out how fundraising is going (according to the app, Mitt Romney is winning this one) and read news about the economy and general election stories. This may not help you decide who to vote for, but it will help you keep track of who’s winning and give you an idea of why.

Which criteria you use to decide who to vote for — either on your home screen or in the ballot box — is up to you. If you live in Iowa though, be sure to download the Iowa GOP app (free) which gives you detailed information about the caucuses and how to get involved.

Disclosure: No actual endorsement is being made of specific candidates or parties, and no apps were provided free for this overview.

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It’s an ambitious undertaking but one that can promote energy efficiencies on a massive scale in the long run. The other goal, of course, is to create demand for services that will lead to the creation of new companies and jobs.

So here’s the big plan: The Department of Energy will launch a pilot program called the Home Energy Score, in which the government will offer software and guidelines for energy audits. Developed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the software lists 40 items that an energy auditor should check when visiting a home, such as heating and cooling systems, lighting and insulation.

The auditor enters his observation into the software program, which then spits out a score of between 1 and 10 that reflects how energy efficient the home is compared with other houses in the neighborhood. The software also will help the contractor come up with a list of recommended improvements, their costs and the time it would take for the investment to pay off (here is an example of an audit report).

The idea is to make it easier for consumers to understand the energy audit process and pick credible companies to do the audits and upgrades. The inspiration for Home Energy Score came from the Energy Star program for appliances or fuel economy labels for cars.

The government will test this new, voluntary program in 10 communities first, and then expand it national next year, said Energy Secretary Steve Chu at the press event with Biden. The DOE will have to work with local governments, utilities and other organizations to test the consumer response to this program before launching it nationwide (here is a list of the 10 test sites).

In theory the energy audit report also will help consumers line up financing for doing the upgrades. The Federal Housing Administration will develop a 2-year pilot project to standardize low-interest loans for homeowners to do energy retrofits. The loans will likely to be around $12,500 on average (up to $25,000), and borrowers can take up to 20 years to pay it back, said the Secretary of Urban and Housing Development, Shaun Donovan, during the press conference.

The FHA is looking for banks to do this pilot program. The government wants to craft lending rules for this program so that the banks will find it profitable for them to participate in. Donovan said the FHA will guarantee up to 90 percent of the loan – that means the government will pay the loan if the homeowners default. The loan guarantee also should lead to lower interest rates and other benefits, he said.

Aside from touting the new home energy efficiency programs, Biden also used the opportunity to promote an extension of a popular Department of Treasury program that gives renewable energy project owners a rebate worth 30 percent of the cost of each project. The program is set to sunset at the end of this year, though project developers can still claim the money if they start construction before the end of the year.

The program, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is meant to help developers offset their project installation costs, particularly at a time when getting bank financing to do so is difficult. Biden said 4,000 projects have benefited from the program.

Both the solar and wind trade groups have been lobbying Congressional leaders to extend the rebate program. It’s unclear yet whether this program will gain support in light of a shift in the balance of power in Congress, particularly the House of Representatives. The administration will have to figure out how to extend their favorite spending programs and already, it’s had internal discussions about discontinuing a program that offer loan guarantees to renewable energy project developers.

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Photo courtesy of Robert Donovan

While I fully support the stimulus package’s investments into energy innovation, I’m not sure the metrics are doing exactly what the White House is purporting, which is trying to “prove” that the stimulus is working with data. I think it’s still waaay too early to do that. However, I think in general, the stimulus funds have been allocated in a smart manner, despite the innate difficulties of bureaucrats trying to pick winners and losers, and some potential missteps.

Biden also didn’t mention the fact that a significant chunk of the funds haven’t been handed over yet, and the deadline to allocate the money is looming on Sept. 30, 2010 (it’s use it or lose it by that time). A couple of weeks ago, Inspector General Gregory Friedman said that even though the DOE had increased its staff to try to get all the funds out of the door, “two of the Department’s major projects have less than 50 percent of their Recovery Act funds obligated. And, as of the date of this review [Aug. 4], none of the programs has obligated 100 percent of their respective funding.” I think Friedman’s report is one of the reasons for the press conference today.

In Biden’s speech, he spoke about battery plants, solar thermal in the Mojave Desert, and the smart grid, and specifically called out a meeting with the CEO of LED chip maker Cree. Here are the metrics that are supposed to prove the stimulus funds are being spent well. The U.S. is now on track (thanks to the stimulus) to:

• Cut the cost of solar power in half by 2015. In addition, the report says the cost of power from rooftop solar panels will drop from $0.21 per kWh in 2009 to $0.10 per kWh in 2015, and as low as $0.06 per kWh by 2030. The cost of utility-scale solar projects will drop from $0.13 per kWh today to $0.06 in 2015.

• Cut the cost of batteries for electric vehicles by 70 percent between 2009 and 2015. This means that an all-electric vehicle will fall from $33,000 to $10,000, and the cost of typical plug-in hybrid batteries will drop from $13,000 to $4,000. The weight of a typical electric-vehicle battery is forecast to decrease by 33 percent, from 333 kilograms to 222 kilograms, by 2015. The lighter battery means a lighter car, which means less energy is needed to power the car. A typical battery is expected to last 14 years in 2015: more than three times as long as the current 4-year lifetime.

• Double U.S. renewable energy generation capacity and U.S. renewable manufacturing capacity by 2012. Stimulus funds will double renewable energy capacity from the 28.8 GW of solar, wind, and geothermal generation that has been installed as of 2008, to 57.6 GW by the end of 2011, and double renewable energy manufacturing capacity from an annual output of 6 GW of renewable equipment (like wind turbines or solar panels) to 12 GW by the end of 2011. This will increase the U.S. share of global manufacturing of solar photovoltaic modules from 8 percent of all production, to 14 percent by 2012.

• Green Jobs. The real metric that critics of the Obama administration will look at is how many jobs were created, given the stimulus is supposed to stimulate the economy. Steven Chu said these above breakthroughs are helping to create “tens of thousands of new jobs,” and helping the U.S. to “continue as a leader in the global economy.”

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Hardware

• Thickness: iPhone 9.3 mm; EVO 12.7 mm
• Display size: iPhone 3.5 in.; EVO 4.3 in.
• Display resolution: iPhone 960×640; EVO 800×480
• Rear camera: iPhone 5 MP; EVO 8 MP
• HD video recording: iPhone yes; EVO yes
• HDMI out: iPhone no; EVO yes
• Front camera: iPhone yes; EVO yes
• Kickstand: iPhone no; EVO yes
• Dual microphones (noise cancellation): iPhone yes; EVO no

Software

• OS: iOS 4; Android 2.1 (2.2 promised soon)
• Navigation: iPhone no; EVO yes (two free apps)
• Video chat: iPhone Wi-Fi only; EVO Wi-fi/3G/4G (two apps)
• Multitasking: iPhone limited; EVO full
• Carrier support (U.S.): iPhone AT&T; EVO Sprint
• Mobile broadband support: iPhone 3G; EVO 3G/4G (WiMAX)
• OS updates: iPhone via iTunes; EVO OTA
• Hotspot: iPhone none; EVO mobile hotspot (carrier charge)
• Flash support: iPhone no; EVO Flash lite yes, Flash 10.1 coming

It may seem like I’ve stacked the deck against the iPhone, and perhaps so. I do believe the iPhone 4 is a sweet smartphone, and it has the full Apple ecosystem behind it, which is powerful stuff. I also believe that the Sprint EVO 4G is the most advanced smartphone hardware available — that high-res iPhone screen aside –and it can certainly hold its own in this head-to-head comparison.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Will Metered Mobile Data Slow the App Market’s Growth?

UPDATED

So far, they’ve told us that the DOE has now finalized the loan guarantee (it was a preliminary commitment before). The federal funding will finance construction of the first phase of Solyndra’s factory, which they say will make 3,000 construction jobs eventually employ 1,000 workers. More to come.

UPDATE: Following the announcement that the loan guarantee has just closed, Vice President Biden said, “These are jobs that won’t be exported.” The technology being produced at the factory will reduce carbon emissions equivalent to pulling some 25 million cars off the road, he said. “You guys have figured it out” at Solyndra, says Biden, and in the process created more jobs.

UPDATE: Secretary Chu is also emphasizing jobs — after all, this loan guarantee is being supported by stimulus funds. Chu says that because of this loan guarantee — the first one to go out since the 1980s(!) jobs will be going to Americans. He expects Solyndra’s groundbreaking to “kick off many more” and “start the second industrial revolution.”

UPDATE: Biden referenced unemployment numbers out this morning, calling them much too high but the lowest they’ve been in a year. “Less bad isn’t good,” however. One of the tools for creating jobs — green jobs — is the Recovery Act, he said.

UPDATE: The Governor brought out his one liner: “Hasta la vista to global warming.” He’s calling today a “big celebration” and an example of how to protect jobs and help both the environment and the economy. Referring to the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. factory that Toyota just announced it will be closing in spite of the state’s financial incentive offerings, Schwarzenegger said having the Solyndra plant located in Fremont is a point of pride for him, because “the city is still stinging from losing NUMMI jobs.” The Governor is pushing for state legislators to pass Assembly Bill 1111, which would exempt new manufacturing equipment for cleantech companies from sales tax.

UPDATE: Solyndra CEO and founder Chris Gronet has some kudos to offer Silicon Valley. In 2005, the first cylindrical solar panels that he would later pursue at Solyndra were made in National Renewable Energy labs in Colorado. “But it was in Silicon Valley that we made it a commercial offering.” At this point, he said the plan is to cover “all the available rooftops.” Because of support from the White House, Department of Energy, Congress, the Governor, and others, he says, “we are able to build Fab 2 right here to help the economy and the environment.”

UPDATE: Chu, Schwarzenegger, Gronet and Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman, along with some Solyndra employees, all grabbed shovels and made a show of digging dirt for a photo-op. They all shook hands, and there you have it: Solyndra’s groundbreaking is now officially official.

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Earlier this month, Dare to be Creative announced MainMenu 2.0, an update to its system maintenance utility for OS X. This lightweight application allows you to clean up your Mac, improve system performance and free up hard disk space — all directly from the system menu.

The new release offers a range of improved functionality, an informative system menu icon, and integration with the Growl notification service. This review will offer an overview of MainMenu’s key features, and explain how the software can assist with running a fast, healthy Mac.

The Interface

The Main Menu

MainMenu resides in the OS X menu bar as a small icon, offering a compact drop-down menu when clicked. This details the various categories of maintenance functions that can be performed, relating to the system, network, user, disk, and applications. It is also possible to run pre-defined batches of tasks together.

The final item in the menu provides access to MainMenu’s preferences, covering options such as whether the application should launch automatically, the appearance of the menu bar icon (several options are available), and whether the application should display a visible log as maintenance runs.

Improve System Performance

A number of options within the menu can help cut back on clutter and speed up your machine. These include the ability to re-build your Spotlight index for faster searching, and repair disk permissions to improve disk access speeds.

None of these are guaranteed to provide a dramatic increase in system performance, but can certainly have a noticeable impact when combined with clearing temporary files and caches (see below).

Re-claiming Disk Space

A variety of operations aim to delete unnecessary temporary files eating up hard drive space. These include the ability to remove Logs, Temporary Files, .DS_Store Files, and various system caches.

Clearing Browser Cache

Usefully, the menu also offers a central point for cleaning up your browser cache — across any (or all) of the web browsers you may have installed on your system.

Regular Maintenance Scripts

OS X has a variety of scripts (cron jobs) built-in for performing system maintenance, set to run automatically at a particular interval. Main Menu offers an easy way to execute these maintenance operations manually.

Time Savers

A degree of the functionality offered centers around quicker access to operations that would otherwise require running commands in the Terminal (or deep within System Preferences). A few of my favorite time-savers are:

• Showing or hiding invisible files in the Finder
• Relaunching various services such as the Dock, Finder, Airport, or Menu Bar
• Disabling Dashboard (a great way to speed up older machines)

You’re also able to Force Quit or Force Restart any application currently running. This is particularly useful if, for some reason, you are unable to Force Quit an app through the Dock.

Batch Mode & Growl Support

Another useful feature allows you to create a batch of several commonly performed tasks. A batch can be executed with one click, not requiring you to select each maintenance operation individually.

Batching Tasks

The limitation apparent here is that only one “batch” can be created. It isn’t possible to create several different sets of actions, each with a different name — a feature that could be particularly useful.

The latest release of MainMenu adds one final feature: Growl integration. This is a useful way to notify you when a maintenance task completes, and can help to streamline all your system notifications through one central system.

Conclusion

After experimenting with MainMenu for a few days, I can see it being an application I continue to use regularly. Although it seems a little unnecessary to run maintenance operations every few days, I certainly appreciate the in-built shortcuts for restarting services and adjusting Finder display preferences.

Whether you’re a seasoned Mac user who understands the need to flush your DNS cache, or a beginner looking for a simple utility for keeping your machine clean and tidy, MainMenu is certainly worth looking into.

MainMenu costs $20, and a trial is available as a free download from the MainMenu website. It runs initially in a 15-day trial mode with all features active — more than long enough to experiment with the utility and determine whether you use it enough to purchase a license.

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• The $3.4 billion program will provide between $500,000 to $20 million in grants for deploying smart grid technology, plus between $100,000 to $5 million for deploying grid monitoring devices. Electric utilities, grid operators, appliance manufacturers, corporations and other applicants planning to invest in smart grid technologies can qualify for matching grants worth up to half of the investment.
• The $615 million demo program is open to regional smart grid projects and utility-scale energy storage demos (including ultracapacitor, flywheel and advanced battery technologies), as well as the installation and networking of grid-monitoring technology.

As we noted earlier this year, lawmakers left the process for doling out most stimulus funds fairly open in an effort to limit fights over earmarks in the $787 billion package. So lawmakers left general initiatives open to interpretation by agencies like the DOE. Yesterday’s announcement covers the most detailed plan so far for stimulus-funded smart grid initiatives.

Biden announced the programs at an event in Jefferson City, Mo., yesterday, where the administration also announced plans to have industry leaders meet early next month in Washington, D.C., with DOE chief Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to start developing industry-wide standards (critical to smart grid deployment, as we’ve noted) and commit to a deadline for them to go into effect. If you have another 2 cents, you can toss them in there.

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Gore has outlined a five-step plan to achieve his goal of generating 100 percent of the U.S.’s electricity from renewable sources in 10 years. Though Obama hasn’t agreed to Gore’s lofty goal, he has committed, in varying degrees, to implementing Gore’s recommendations. Obama has promised to boost the energy efficiency of federal buildings, work with governors to promote clean energy, invest huge amounts in our electrical infrastructure and help Detroit retool to become a leader in green cars.

The elephant in the room is still the issue of carbon regulation. During the campaign, Obama said he was in favor of a cap-and-trade scheme, but since the economic crisis has taken the spotlight, carbon mitigation has been quietly looming in the corner. Putting a price on carbon, either through a carbon market or with a tax, as Gore himself suggests, is the greatest boost the government could give clean technologies.

But the cynical question posed by MSNBC isn’t how far Gore can push Obama to clean up our energy sector; it’s how much will Obama ask Gore to publicly temper his climate crisis rhetoric? While Obama has said renewable energy and energy efficiency will play vital roles in boosting the economy, he probably won’t go as far as Gore would like, given the stormy financial climate.

So, can Obama fight for cleantech while battling a recession? We hope Gore is able to explain how the only way to fight the recession is with cleantech.

Image courtesy of Change.gov

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Palin cites an audio clip, from an interview Obama did with the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year, released promoted online Sunday. In the section she cites, Obama explains the impact his cap-and-trade carbon scheme will have on coal power: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” Obama said. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” The Obama campaign responded, calling the quote “wildly edited.” That hasn’t stopped the RNC, which has reportedly already incorporated the sound byte into a new robocall.

This isn’t the first time the McCain campaign has attacked the Obama campaign over comments regarding coal. In September, Joe Biden made a gaffe and was videotaped telling a rally-goer: “We’re not supporting clean coal.” He and his running mate are, in fact, supporting clean coal. Palin cited this incident last week in an attack on Obama’s energy plan during a policy speech at the facility of thin-film solar startup Xunlight in Ohio.

Looking at Obama’s full interview with the San Francisco Chronicle shows that he does indeed support clean coal, so long as the market will support it. “The point is, if we set rigorous standards for the allowable emissions, then we can allow the market to determine and technology and entrepreneurs to pursue, what the best approach is to take, as opposed to us saying at the outset, here are the winners that we’re picking and maybe we pick wrong and maybe we pick right.” No wonder venture capitalists prefer Obama to McCain six to one.

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