Inbox clean out...

I use Google Alerts to help me find the stories I post, and I can usually come up with a theme within a day or two, so I save the emails. But lately I've had a few orphans in my inbox, stories I thought were cool, but I couldn't come up with anything related to them. So I've decided to just put them all in this post. :)

Yahoo! News posted a story a little while ago that notes the stigmas attached with shopping at Goodwill or consignment and even using layaway are disappearing. Being budget-minded has apparently even caught on with the rich, Yahoo! noted, who are buying nearly a third more fast food than last year. People seem to finally have cottoned on to the idea that it's okay to say "I can't afford it."

Yahoo! also posted a story on what appears to be the oldest photo in existence of people. Granted it was taken in 1848, so that's not THAT long ago in the grand scheme of things but still pretty cool. The daguerreotype appears to show two men standing on a river's edge in Cincinnati. One man seems to have a foot resting on a wooden beam while the other is standing on the beam.

The last story is from CNN. While it dates from this past summer, it has only been sitting in the inbox for five weeks. :-P I promise. Four former Harvard students have found a way to harness the energy released from your foot when you kick a soccer ball. Their "Soccket" retains that energy and a plug in the ball allows you to power electronic devices like cell phones and lamps. The inventors believe it will do the most good in places like the Alexandria (South Africa) township where it was road-tested during the World Cup.

(Photo courtesy of Yahoo!)