What Danger Do Blippy and Swipely Pose to Amazon?

“Providence Geeks Swipely mentioned in NY Times Bits blog - http://nyti.ms/9oMVVv”

The startup, based in Palo Alto, Calif., allows people to link their credit cards and e-commerce accounts to its site, so those people can share with friends and strangers everything they buy—from dinner at a local restaurant to their cosmetic surgery.

Here we go again. More foam.

Generating Megawatts Like Clockwork

Several start-ups are trying to develop tidal energy — water-powered turbines that spin as the tides come and go.

“The appeal is not how large it is, but that it’s carbon-free and it’s there,” Dr. Thresher said. “You don’t have to build transmission lines.”

Like wind power — and solar power as well — tides are an intermittent resource. Even in areas with strong tides there are times, near low and high tide, when currents are too slow to turn a turbine.

Mr. Sauer’s vision extends far beyond Eastport and the Western Passage, all the way to Florida’s Atlantic Coast. There, the Gulf Stream, known locally as the Florida Current, flows at a constant 3 knots.

There are huge technological and practical hurdles to putting turbines in that current, one being that the water is 1,200 feet deep; another is that it is 20 miles off shore. But Mr. Sauer has his sights on that prize. “That’s the mother lode,” he said.

Europe will be nervous and should be.