News Briefs

Turn right, save the environment

The United Parcel Service (UPS) has managed to cut down on 31,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions and three million gallons of gas. They achieved this impressive feat by nearly eliminating left-hand turns from their delivery routes. The company uses a software program to map out every one of its delivery routes and reduce the number of left hand turns to as few as possible without extending the route. The drop of the left hand turn also resulted in 28.5 million fewer miles traveled by their delivery trucks. UPS currently has more than 95,000 delivery trucks.



Ask, and you shall receive

The search engine Ask.com will begin branding itself as “the Internet’s least intrusive search engine.” This is being done in an effort to be different from Google and Microsoft, who store search data for 18 months. The privacy control that will be employed by the company is called “AskEraser” and will be unveiled next Tuesday. Ask.com is hoping this will bring more traffic to its site. The company is currently the fifth largest search engine in the U.S. with a three percent market share. Google has the largest market share with 55 percent followed by Yahoo at 19 percent and Microsoft at 14 percent.



San Francisco to encourage solar power usage

The city of San Francisco announced a plan to give companies and residents rebates and government-funded loans to bring down the cost of installing solar panels. The proposal would give $3000 to $5000 to city residents and up to $10,000 for companies to install solar panels on their roofs. Currently, it would cost $24,000 to install a 3-kilowatt solar panel system. The city rebate and other refunds available through state and federal tax credits would drop the cost to $11,000. The plan will need to be approved by legislators and voters before it can fully take effect.