Energy Department offers prize to create mobile apps that already exist

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• He must have gotten this idea from the:

  "Government Department of Redundancy Department of the US Government"

  They are very good at their jobs.

• Horse is gone, Steven Chu will now close the barn door...

• This is what the Lords of Central Planning don't understand about capitalism: the app developers spotted the market for these apps, created them and put them on the market before the clowns in Washington held their first meeting to discuss brainstorming about the subject. The developers didn't need a stinking "prize" to do it, their prize was getting them out there and selling them and pocketing the profits. That's why capitalism works, because people can apply their own initiative and their own ideas to serve a market and reap the rewards without waiting for some jack-off in an ivory tower to do the thinking for them. This is why the US was making personal computers while the USSR was still trying to increase steel production. This is why the stinking USSR fell apart. This is why the US will fall apart unless we tell these egotistical Obamunist empty-suits to get lost and stop trying to run everything like they were the only people on earth with any brains. They're nothing but hyper-educated morons.

  • Thanks for the tip.. I'll go for this prize perhaps

    the first app mentioned in all the cut-pastery of blogs is "uMeter", which has less than 1000 downloads, and apparently can't be logged into, according to user reviews. Possibly ESL dev, too. Not sure if DailyCaller, Drudge, others even bothered to pull it up.. Note also complaints of scam potential with the strange follow-up emails. Sweet jeebus, at least find a good app example. I'd wager some goon at DoE actually did look at a few.

    http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/umeter/id440296397?mt=8
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tekever.more.channel.javaandroid.umeter

    Plus, uMeter doesn't appear to meet the requirements of the contest at all. Entry apps are supposed to consume data rendered in a common, public format, and mash-up with whatever other data is relevant, not "talk wirelessly to power meters in some vaguely described fashion". I can't even tell how I would figure out what protocol i should expect the various devices to support with uMeter

    From a total of 10^5 in prizes for students and enthusiasts, we leap into comparisons to a rapacious and brutal regime controlling an economy at least 10^7 larger, born in bloody rebellion, pogrom and repression.

    And DoE will permit the entrant to keep their intellectual property, and SELL a version if they want. Would Khrushchev?

    I already make money out of Google's Android Market (now Play).. I already know most of the apps are complete shit. I have no problem with this little expenditure to stir the pot

    • Dude my power provider already has it setup so I can log on and check my power use. Your whining is rather retarded. Regardless paying $100 grand for this app is a waste of tax dollars.

      • Not whining at all bro. In fact, i'm looking at protocols & APIs, just like those other retards at Oracle, Belkin, Austin Energy and Dominion Virginia Power have.

        Standards in information age are a good thing. Most of the protocols over which we enjoy this discussion were developed in government and academia.

        And its not $100K for One App.. Its broken down into multiple prizes, including some set aside for students. Its a pittance, really, and may generate interesting outcomes

        • Sorry but with all the government waste nothing's a pittance.

        • Hey i'm with you on that, generally.. feds have wasted trillions and I have no f-ing idea how they are going to unbury..

          but this little idea is simply not as retarded as the OP makes it sound. If power industry can deliver usage data in a common format over the Internet (without requiring consumers to install wifi in their meters), then you've got a platform for new competition in the applications that consume that data

        • Anyone iwth eyesight can walk over to their meter and watch the little wheel turning. The faster it turns, the more power it's using. No ocmputer, no app, no internet access just plain old common sense and eyeballs!

        • You've given me a stellar idea. I can create a screen which shows the cumulative walking-distance-to-power-meter saved by checking the app. Urban Hipsters love this sort of thing. You have saved .45 kilometers of walking to check your power consumption 37 times! They love their metric, too

          I can follow up with a FLOTUS-born guide to restoring the caloric imbalance, due to Failure To Move. She can wield a broccoli stalk like a bludgeon

          Then again, Urban Hipsters like their high-rise apartments with their bleeding edge phones, too, and may not actually be able to locate the meter. Perhaps the app can indicate that its 7 stories down, in a locked utility closet.

          Google Navigation directs them to the stairs.. huzzah android.content.Intent.ACTION_VIEW, if i can extract that utility closet geolocation.. bleaaghh..

        • Urban Hipsters like their high-rise apartments with their bleeding edge phones

          Speaking of those phones. I see all these people protesting Exxon and their income, are carrying ipods and iphones, yet none of them seem to have a problem with the fact that Apple is the most valuable corporation in the world!

        • It wouldn't do any good. Those that can even read would be confused by a spreadsheet. They only understand what the MSM and their professors and assorted handlers tell them.

        • Really. Whyle they are bowing down to the memorial statues to Steve Jobs, perhaps someone should slip a copy of his personal worth documents betweent the pavement and their noses

        • I like it. It is bound to be a hit. Don't forget to apply for government financing before you shut it down due to an unforseen downturn in the market.

  • Education does not intelligence make. Proven over and over the past 3 years.

• They say there is no such thing as an IQ in negative numbers. But I think we're getting close here.