The U.S. DOT has awarded $100,000 for a research contract for solar roadways. This innovative road-building idea proposes using solar panels in place of asphalt for road construction. Visit the Solar Roadway Website to get more information or listen below to an interview of Scott Brusaw, President & CEO of Solar Roadways (warning: you have to patiently listen to the up front station advertisements before getting to the "good stuff").

You can listen to an interview of Steve Heare, EPA’s Director of Drinking Water Protection. From the Around the Water Cooler show promo information: "He discusses state loans and the agency's new Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment that indicates a 20-year capital investment need of $334.8 billion for public water systems."

The Department of Homeland Security's Ready.gov site is now accepting registrations for coalition members for this year's readiness campaign. Those interested can join the effort by visiting their site at Ready.gov.

This year, those interested in helping spread the word can embed the following widget on their own Web sites:

This guide has been written to help those who have no previous experience with social media.

Your Social Media Journey Begins Here (Full document in PDF format)
Your Social Media Journey Begins Here (Full document in digital format)

Title Page, Introduction, and Table of Contents

1.0 You Are Not Prepared (Social Media Definition)

2.0 Pouring the Foundation (Setting up Gmail and an iGoogle page)

The Public Works site has undergone a redesign using the open source Web authoring tools by Drupal.

In August, I had the pleasure of presenting at the annual APWA conference. My portion of the presentation covered Web 2.0 tools, and how we can use these in our jobs. I was joined by Jay Socol and James Matney from Texas Engineering Extension and by Kim Smith and John Jainschigg with World2Worlds. For those who attended or anyone else interested in downloading the Powerpoint presentation, you can find it on the Slideshare Web site by clicking the link below: