Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

In the future, electric cars will work together with the smart grid to charge at off-peak hours and put energy back into the grid when its needed. For the first time, we're seeing this plan in action. Automakers and power companies have talked for years about the day when electric cars could work together with the smart grid by charging only during off-peak times and even giving energy in their batteries back to the grid.

Apple 's spectacular rise continues.

Using a system of sensors and cameras, the new program lets city engineers control traffic signals in real time in response to changing road conditions. Sitting in traffic isn't just unpleasant; it also wastes gasoline and is a major trigger for heart attacks, among other health problems. And of all the places to get stuck in traffic, Midtown Manhattan may be one of the worst.

After a year of Zipcar availability in Baltimore, a survey finds that Zipcar membership means less driving, more public transportation, more exercise, and better quality of life for everyone. Zipcar debuted in Baltimore a year ago. The company has since gathered feedback from the new Zipcar drivers there to determine exactly what happens once car sharing is introduced in a city.

Instant access to almost any song you can think of, free personalized radio--digital music's time has come. How can you take advantage of the streaming riches without tanking your workday? With the U.S

Solar panels give you clean energy, yes, but it turns out that's not all. Just by putting them on the roof, you'll start saving cash on your cooling and heating bills. Installing photovoltaic solar cells is a great way to easily tap into an environmentally-sustainable energy source, and in sunnier parts of the world it's even feasible to use them to actually make money by selling power back to the grid as part of a smart grid installation

Most social networks are aimed at the young. Not so for Proust.com, a memory-sharing service that collects remembrances of things past.

India's Tata Group--known as the maker of the world's cheapest car--is setting its sights on the world's cheapest home, with a $720 flatpack house that can be constructed in a week. The world's cheapest car is manufactured by the Tata Group. So is the cheapest water filter

With 500,000 downloads in less than a month, a neo-noir thriller by newcomer Justin Eugene Evans shoots down the standard distribution model in favor of video-sharing site VODO. For director Justin Eugene Evans, making the movie was the easy part.

The death of large predators isn't just a tragedy, it can lead to the utter destruction of whole ecosystems--something that is already happening in many parts of the world. You may not have noticed, but we are in the early to middle stages of the Earth's sixth large extinction event. Compared to the

Amazon's Kindle textbook rental offer will likely be awfully tempting to penny-pinching college students.

Adobe Buys Echosign . Desperately keen to preserve its flagship PDF format in a complex and changing online world, Adobe has bought "the premier electronic signature provider" to enhance PDF security with automated secure signatures and form-filling for advanced digital contract drawing-up. The PDF is not going anywhere yet..

We're all human, you know? That's roughly the trick that the hackers most likely relied on when, earlier this year, they managed to steal over 24,000 files from a defense contractor

Twitter might boast more than 200 million users, with over 70% tweeting from outside the U.S., but Sina Weibo is fast catching up, with 140 million users and 10 million new accounts added each month. The latter service, often referred to as the "Twitter of China" (much like the Facebook copycats ) is considered by many to be a knockoff of the microblogging platform. Yet while there are many similarities between Twitter and Sina Weibo, the services are actually being used in very different ways,

Fresh from injecting cash into a reviving MySpace, JT's also pushed money into augmented reality firm Dekko. It's in stealth mode, but here's what we know.