By Jeff Zbar 
www.chiefhomeofficer.com

Let’s survey the landscape of my home office’s technology graveyard: I have an old PC — circa Last Century and long since obsolete; a once-coveted, leading-edge Nokia analog cell phone my daughter now uses as a playtoy; two CRT monitors long ago replaced by flat-panel monitors; a few keyboards, mice and other gadgets and hardware that serve no purpose but to keep me from having to dust the shelf-tops on which they rest. They consume my space. There has to be a better solution.

Enter MyBoneYard, an online service designed to help people ditch the old tech.

This is no idle concern. The mercury, chemicals and various elements that exist in PCs and monitors is enough to make your body glow green. Once crushed and in the landfull, these nasties leech into the groundwater, polluting the environment and the water that irrigates our crops, quenches the native fauna — and flows through our taps. read more »

You've got your new large-screen HDTV set up, and you have plenty of your favorite DVDs waiting to be viewed. Now all you need is the right sound. When you sit down to watch a movie -- or live music concert -- in your own home theater, you want to feel as though you're in a real movie theater. The audio is just as important as the picture quality, which means you should take great care in shopping for the right receiver and speaker pieces. As you shop for audio components for your home theater, first check out "HDTV – A beginner's guide." Then, consider the following points:

The AV receiver
Most average home theater users don’t need to buy separate tuners and amplifiers for the different channels. The easiest and perhaps most cost-effective way to get several pieces all in one package is to go with an audio/video receiver, which lets you plug in most, if not all, of the pieces in your system, including your television. read more »

Do you often sit in rush hour traffic, engine idling, going nowhere fast? Is your commute taking longer than it used to because of all the other cars on the road? America's urban commuters now waste an entire workweek each year -- some 38 hours -- stuck in traffic, according to a traffic study released late last year by Texas A&M University's Texas Traffic Institute.

Not only is that wasted time you could have spent doing something constructive, it's a major problem for the health of our planet. Idling car engines are a significant contributor to the greenhouse emissions leading to global warming which has become, in the last 15 years or so, a major issue of international proportions. But there are steps commuters can -- and should take -- to reduce their impact on the environment. read more »

When it comes to upgrades, the airlines are caught in what is viewed by many to be a real Catch-22. Like any business, the airlines have an obligation to maximize revenue and make money for the company. Part of this revenue is generated from the outright sale of tickets in their Premium cabins – First Class and Business Class. However, they also have an obligation to their best customers, namely the frequent flyer and more specifically the Elite flyer. Maintaining, and even growing, the base of frequent flyers of an airline depends almost entirely on the “value” of their frequent flyer programs, especially for Elite members. The value of most programs is often judged by the number of seats an airline allocates for either free or mileage upgrades in the very same Premium cabins they are obligated to sell. Hence the Catch-22. read more »