Energy Circle : Technology Watch

New Year's Resolution: Monitor Your Electricity Usage!

Will — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:31:07 +0000

First of all, Happy New Year! We're all recovering from a relaxing and, for some of us, pretty exciting holiday break, but we're psyched to be back online and amped up to help all of our readers find new, unique, exciting and effective ways to save energy over the coming year, which we hope you'll all be enjoying in cozy, healthy homes.

While the hour for New Year's Resolutions has come and gone, we got to thinking about one that makes it onto a lot of folks' lists - spending less money in the coming year. A great way to achieve this resolution is to insall an energy monitor in your home. After all, how can you determine whether you're spending more or less money on your utility bills if you have no way to measure your energy consumption?

Heard about energy monitoring, but not sure how it works? Well, there are basically three types of energy monitors; while none of them will directly impact your energy bill, we've found that the presence of an in-your-face display (or an online display that's easily accessible) has a real behavioral impact that can lead to significant savings. If you notice, for example, that your home is using more electricity than usual, you're apt to go around and turn off a few lights.

The three types of monitors are:

1) The basic whole-house monitor, which measures how much total electricity your home is consuming at a given moment. The Blue Line is a good example of this type.

2) Circuit-by-circuit monitors, which monitor how much electricity individual circuits are using throughout your house, allowing for in-depth analysis of your home's power consumption. The Powerhouse Dynamics eMonitor is an example of a circuit-by-circuit monitor.

3) Individual appliance monitors, which measure how much electricity a specific device is using, and how much it's costing you.

Without further ado, if you're one of those who's eager to reduce your footprint and take some pain out of your utility bills this year, here are a few of our favorite energy monitors to help get you started:

The Powerhouse Dynamics eMonitor

The Powerhouse Dynamics eMonitor is the most advanced home energy monitor on the market today. It monitors your home's electricity consumption circuit-by-circuit, and the sleek online dashboard gives you a ton of data, so you can determine where your home is using the most energy, and take steps to reduce it. It also provides month-over-month comparisons, analysis of vampire power, and a whole bunch of other cool information about your electricity consumption.

The Blue Line Powercost Monitor (Wi-Fi Edition)

If the Powerhouse Dynamics eMonitor is the Cadillac of energy monitors, the Blue Line with Wi-Fi is the Smart Car. It's affordable, easy to install, super useful, and super sleek.

While the standard Blue Line Powercost Monitor is a solid energy monitoring product in itself, the benefit of wi-fi compatability is that you can access your data from anywhere - on vacation, for example, you can check to make sure you didn't leave any lights on (or that burglars didn't enter the house). You can view data from a computer, tablet, or mobile device; and it's all in one place, easy to read and easy to understand. Smart stuff.

The Blue Line Powercost Monitor (Standard Version)

The Blue Line Powercost Monitor without Wi-Fi is a great option for the casual New-Years-Resolutioner just dipping their toes into energy monitoring. Coming it at under 100 bucks, it's easy to install, and easy to use. A handheld, wireless monitor allows you to view your home's energy consumption in real-time anywhere in the house, and, should you choose to upgrade, you can always add the wi-fi module later on.

The Owl Electricity Monitor

The Owl is a stripped down, easy-to-use whole-house energy monitor. It has a nice clean display which, if not overburdened by massive amounts of data, requires a simple input of electricity rates and consistently displays an accurate reading of your total energy consumption, and the amount of dough it's costing you and your family. It doesn't have any of the online data storage that the Blue Line Wifi and the eMonitor have, but it's also a lot less expensive. Wicked easy to install, too.

Be sure to check out the rest of the cool energy monitoring products we have in stock, and feel free to get a hold of us with any questions about what the best electricity monitor for you might be. We're happy to help.

Oh, and best of luck in the New Year, whatever your resolutions are.

Here's a quick video that explains how easy it is to install a Blue Line Powercost monitor:

Cyber Monday: How to Reduce the Energy Consumption of All That Stuff You Just Bought.

Will — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 21:34:43 +0000

So, if you're one of the 122.9 million Americans who went out shopping for Black Friday, you're probably pretty excited about your new toys. But have you thought about the extra energy that those new electronics, appliances, tools and toys will be using?

Thankfully, electronics and appliances are getting more energy efficient by the year, thanks to standards like Energy Star. But even if your home will be outfitted with a second or third TV this year, not to worry. Here we have three easy ways to reduce the energy consumption of your electronics, in order of simple cost-effectiveness.

Unplug everything whenever you're not using it.

Most of today's electronics continue to draw power when they're turned off. Surprising, maybe, but true. This phenomenon is called "vampire power" and it costs homeowners a lot of money. The cheapest way to do away with vampire energy consumption is to simply unplug electronics when you're not using them. The problem? It can be hard to remember to do that sometimes. The solution? Read on.

Plug everything into power strips, turn them off when you're not using your stuff.

If you have a bunch of electronics in one place -- say, your TV, DVD player, video game consoles -- you can save yourself some trouble by plugging them into a power strip and turning it off when you're not using those devices. This is pretty simple in principle, but we all forget to turn the power strip off from time to time. An easier way?

Use smart power strips.

There are a number of smart power strips out there on the market, and they work in a variety of ways, but the premise is the same: a smart power strip makes it super easy to cut power from the devices you're not using. One of our favorites is the BITS Smart Power Strip. Here's how it works: you plug one primary device (say, the TV, or the computer) into a control outlet. You plug any peripheral devices (printers, DVD players, etc) into controlled outlets. Whenever you turn off the TV, the rest of them have the power to them cut off automatically, eliminating vampire draw. There are also "always on" outlets for any devices -- a DVR, for example -- that you don't want to have the power cut on. Easy peasy.

For more holiday gift-giving goodness, be sure to check out our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Gifts of Efficiency.

5 Reasons Home Performance Businesses Should Sign Up for Google Plus (Google+).

Will — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:32:10 +0000

This morning Energy Circle's CEO Peter Troast and I sat in on a webinar by Chris Brogan about using Google Plus (Google+) for your business. Chris Brogan is among the few people who can legitimately claim the title of "social media guru" -- he's a New York Times Bestselling Author on the topic, and his new book, "Google+ for Business: How Google's Social Network Changes Everything" is set to come out around holiday time next month. Most likely, it will be the definitive guide to using Google Plus for businesses. (He's also offering a couple more webinars on Google+ if you'd like to join one.)

Anyway, we came away from the webinar with a few good nuggets. Google Plus Business Pages are still relatively new, and it's interesting to see how businesses are using the platform. While it may seem like Twitter and Facebook are enough work already -- "why do we need another social media platform?," you're asking -- there are a few solid reasons that Google Plus is worth jumping into for Home Performance businesses.

That's not to say that Google Plus will replace Facebook or Twitter; they serve their functions well, Google Plus serves its own. But check out the following insights, courtesy of Brogan, and let us know whether you agree, or if you think Google Plus will flounder (as some have suggested).

Facebook is great for connecting with people you already know. Google Plus is better for connecting with people who share the same interests as you.

Despite the presence of business pages on Facebook, it's still a platform that's largely geared towards connecting with people you already know. On the business side of things, it's great for connecting with friends and family, existing customers, and friends and family of existing customers. Most of the businesses that I "like," for example, are businesses that I have some connection with -- either they're local businesses that I'm familiar with, or they're run by people I know. Twitter, on the other hand, is all about extending your social network beyond people that you know personally. (For example, I'm reluctant to request friendship on Facebook from someone I don't actually know, whereas on Twitter I'll follow all kinds of people depending on whether they post interesting things, without any hesitation.) Google Plus gives you the best of both worlds. Because of the "circle" setup, which lets you group your contacts into circles like "friends," "family," "colleagues," "energy people," etc, it's much more conducive to reaching a broader audience than Facebook. You can pick which circles you share which content with, which means you don't need to be best friends with every one of your contacts.

Twitter is great for short interactions. Google Plus is better for longer conversations.

Twitter is all about conversation, but because of the way the timeline works (and because of the famous character limit), it's difficult to get too in-depth. Conversations that begin on Twitter will often end up on a blog comment stream or in some other location. Google Plus is better for going in depth, because, like Facebook, it allows you to comment directly underneath any given piece of content. So, for example, if you post a video, every comment made by every one of your contacts will show up directly beneath the photo. Anyone who views the photo will be able to see the whole conversation, and can contribute without having to worry about whether they missed part of the conversation. It's all in one place, it's easy, and it doesn't have the character limit that Twitter has.

Google Plus "Hangouts" let you video chat with up to ten people. (More than Skype).

Video chatting is a very cool way to connect with people. You can have meetings, you can have discussions, you can have casual chats, whatever you want. Skype is a great service for video chats, but Google Plus actually lets you involve more people on the call than Skype -- up to ten. So if you have colleagues who are out of state, or if you want to just connect with other Home Performance pros around the country to discuss a topic, or if you want to save on driving time (and gas) with clients, hangouts are a great feature.

Your Business Page is your business card.

Brogan emphasized in the webinar that Google Plus is still driven largely by individual profiles. We can surmise that this is because people would rather connect with a person than with a "brand," but Brogan illustrated it by pointing out that 1,530 people are currently following Ford Motor Company. 19,605 people are following Scott Monty, Ford's social media director. That's a pretty big gap. The takeaway: focus on building your individual profile, and direct people to your business page as need be (use it like a business card). This is a different animal entirely from Twitter, where your individual profile and your business profile wouldn't be directly connected, and it's also different from Facebook, where people are more likely to "like" a business page than to try and befriend the business owner (unless they know him personally, of course).

Google is the #1 Search Engine in the world.

As Google+ continues to unfold, one thing that we do know is that it's Google. Sparing you the geekery, there are some very smart SEO folk who are making a compelling case that the value of participation in Google Plus is even greater than Facebook and Twitter. Google is the biggest search engine in the world by far, and it's well accepted that one of the primary reasons they created Google Plus was to enhance the quality of their search results by incorporating social data.

Also, while we're still waiting to see how Google Plus will integrate with Google Places, it's definitely gonna happen. If you want your website and your Places page to perform well in search, it's a good idea to stake your claim in Plus.

Skeptical? Enthused? Feel free to chime in in the comments section.

For more info on how social media can benefit Home Performance businesses, check out our free White Paper on the subject.

Google's Real-Time Insights Tool: The Easiest New Way to Do Local Keyword Research.

Will — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:59:36 +0000

We routinely advise Home Performance contractors and businesses to do keyword research around the topic of home energy efficiency to identify the keywords people are using to seek out your services.

Doing keyword research is useful not only for the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your website, but for providing a window into how people are thinking about the industry. For example, a homeowner may remain unaware of the whole-house approach to building performance, but she does know that she has a mold problem. Consequently, she goes online and searches for "mold," or "mold problem," or "moldy basement" -- the thought of searching for a "home performance contractor" might not occur to her. Consequently, if you operate in an area that's humid, and where mold problems are typical, it's not a bad idea to include a page on your website dedicated to mold remediation, tying it back to ventilation strategies and the whole-house approach.

But search volume for the industry's big keywords will vary greatly by region, so it's a good idea to do a little research in your own market to find out what problems people are having and how they're searching for the answers.

Thankfully, this process just got a little easier. Google has a new tool called "Real-Time Insights" that helps you find the right Google tool for the information you're looking for. It helps you find information about what people are looking for, how they're looking for it, what videos they're watching, what links they're clicking on and what they're saying about various topics.

We think it's worth a gander, so here it is:

For more information about keyword research and Search Engine Optimization in the Home Performance field, check out these previous posts:

Keywording Strategies for Energy Efficiency and Home Performance Professionals

Energy Efficiency, Home Performance, Weatherization -- How Will Your Customers Find You?

10 Things to Do Once Your Website Goes Live

Google Insights: The Best Tool for Local Keyword Research

And be sure to check out our FREE white paper on web marketing for Home Performance pros: Putting Your Website to Work: Best Practices for Home Performance Professionals.

The Nest Learning Thermostat

SageFriedman — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:56:37 +0000

There has probably never been as much widespread excitement about a thermostat, or almost any energy efficiency product, as there currently is about the Nest Learning Thermostat. People appear to actually be salivating at the prospect of getting their hands on one, and the media hype machine is almost as frothy as it was about the iPhone 4S.

I’ll admit that the Nest excites me too – I mean, a motion sensor equipped, Wifi-enabled, weather aware, mobile app connected, self-programming thermostat that looks more elegant than an iPhone and works with most residential HVAC systems? Sounds pretty freaking awesome to this efficiency gadget nerd.

The Nest promises to learn your heating and cooling needs over the course of a week, and continue to tune them over time based on your actual behavior. It has a motion sensor driven auto-away feature that kicks in if it doesn’t detect any activity for two hours, so that you don’t spend your money heating an empty house. The savings come from the programming schedule that it develops, the auto-away feature and by shaving just a tiny bit off your ideal temperatures. Nest Labs projects that their thermostat will have an average annual savings of $173, putting the payback period for this $249 device somewhere in the 18 month range (heavily depending on seasonality, climate, and how much you paid for shipping). That is notably longer than a typical programmable thermostat ($50-75), which could pay for itself over a single heating or cooling season, but in line with a number of other Wifi enabled and mobile app connected models.

Here at Energy Circle we are big fans of programmable thermostats and most of the folks at EC-HQ are as excited about the Nest as I am (except for Alex who is holding out till it can play Angry Birds). That said, we also know that programmable thermostats only deliver savings if they are programmed, and in most cases reprogrammed seasonally. Sadly, the history of utility and community programs promoting the use of programmable thermostats has shown that people treat their thermostat with the same lack of respect they gave their VCR’s clock. Worse still, this is archetypal of the wide spread UI problem that has hindered adoption of far too many energy efficiency gadgets –a mix of complexity, limited design investment, and (perhaps appropriately) limited consumer willingness to adapt their behavior to maximize the technology.

The Nest’s learning/self-programming and elegant UI promises to overcome this hurdle. However, the proof will be in the learning algorithms’ actual performance over the course of a year, and we are as excited as anyone to find out if it delivers.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Home Performance Businesses: The Basics.

alexeaton — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:25:15 +0000

Pay per click advertising (PPC for short) often intimidates small business owners. There’s something about the idea of paying for people to click to your website that becomes an impossible hurdle - what if the clicks aren’t real? What if I spend too much and don’t make any money? How do I know it's working? But the reality is that these same questions apply to essentially all traditional marketing efforts. Whether it’s an ad on Google’s search results or a more traditional print or TV ad many of the concerns are the same. The good news is that Google AdWords has many advantages over those traditional advertising channels.

PPC and Organic Search: Better Together.

Data indicates that pay-per-click and organic search perform best together -- so if you’ve been spending time fine-tuning your website with fresh, keyworded content to perform better in organic search results, you’ll be more successful if you have a PPC campaign running simultaneously.

As an added benefit, organic terms that convert can be added to your PPC account, so you can regularly tweak your PPC campaign to increase your chances of success.

Particularly for “branded” searches (that is, when someone searches for your company with your company’s name as a search term, rather than one of your offered services such as “energy audit”), it’s important for your company’s information to be displayed as prominently as possible. Organic search results, paid search results, anywhere on the page that you can get another link to your site will give you an advantage over competitors who are trying to capitalize on your site traffic.

Budget Controls.

Pay-per-click is budget-controlled, so you never have to spend more than you want to. You can control your budget on a daily basis, and analytic information allows you to understand how much you are paying per click, per conversion, and per acquisition. This gives you far more control than most traditional advertising campaigns.

Targeting.

PPC allows you to slice up your targeting in a number of ways: by state, city, zip code, country, time of day, day of week, language, and even mile-radius around geographic points. This allows you to target only those potential customers who are most likely to convert for your business.

Landing Pages.

Landing pages that are created to coincide with a specific campaign give you a huge advantage over traditional advertising channels, which typically only provide your business’s name or a phone number. The advantage to landing pages is that they give you the power to control the entire user experience after they click the ad: for example, if your ad is targeted towards a state incentive program, you can brand your landing page with a logo representing the program, and information and calls to action that revolve around the specific deal offered.

Landing pages are also conversion-oriented: equipped with a contact form that users can fill out right on the page, they make it very easy for visitors to contact you. Compare this to a print ad, where people will at most see a phone number (which, even if they take the trouble to call it, may not necessarily lead you acquiring their contact info), and you’ll see the advantage.

Rather than risking losing a potential customer to voicemail, or directing them to your generic homepage where they may not be sure if they’re in the right spot, a landing page provides the opportunity to write highly targeted, specific, sales-oriented copy. A short contact form is a low barrier opportunity for conversion, as it doesn’t require a ton of work on the part of your visitors.

In short, pay-per-click advertising can be a very effective, affordable way to drive traffic to your site and increase business.

Any questions? Feel free to chime in in the comments, or to get a hold of us. We’d be more than happy to chat more extensively about how PPC can benefit your business.

Vampire Hunters: Tackling Vampire Energy in the Kitchen.

Will — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:42:39 +0000

Halloween is fast approaching, and today, as we continue in our quest to seek and destroy all the vampires in the house, we move on to the kitchen.

Although now particularly well known for its harboring of vampire energy sources, the kitchen does in fact have some standby power sources lurking inconspicuously.

You know all those clocks in your kitchen? On the microwave, the range, the coffee maker? The ones that all show different (wrong) times? They’re vampires. That means that they’re using energy, and costing you money that you could be putting towards your kids’ college funds, even when you’re not using them.

While vampire energy sources typically draw very little power individually, collectively they can add up to a good chunk of change. For the frugal homeowner or apartment-dweller (and in this economy, who isn’t frugal?), it’s vital to know at least how your home is using energy, so you’re not taken by surprise when your utility bills shows up.

Using a Kill-a-Watt energy monitor, we tracked down some of the common vampire power sources in the kitchen. Here’s what we found for vampires:

Microwave: 3 watts
Coffeemaker: 1.14 watts
Gas range: 1.13 watts

Total: 5.27 watts

Now, 5.27 watts isn’t a lot of electricity, but let’s remember that this is electricity that’s being used constantly, around the clock, year round.

5.27 watts / 1,000 X 24 hours X 365 days X 16 cents per kWH = $7.38 per year.

That’s a small amount of money, for sure. But it’s a small amount of money that I’d be willing to bet you had no idea you were spending. And combine it with the other vampires in your house, it adds up. Particularly when you think that you could be spending that money on something useful, like a college education for your kids.

So what do you do? While devices like smart power strips can be useful for combatting vampires in other parts of the house, the best solution in this case is to just unplug the vampires. (We know a gas range would be tough to unplug, but a coffeemaker and a microwave you can just unplug or plug into a regular power strip - just be sure to turn it off when you're not using them.)

Other appliances in the kitchen may draw a significant amount of power -- the toaster, for example; or the refrigerator -- but since most toasters only draw power when you’re using them (and are often only plugged in when you’re using them), and the refrigerator is actually on all the time, they don’t qualify as vampires.

Be sure to check out our posts on the essential tools for fighting vampire energy, and vampire energy in the home office for more information about how you can save money on your utility bills every month by taking a few easy steps.

Any vampires we’ve missed so far? Let us know!

Solar PV Now Cheaper than Grid Electricity?

Will — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:34:08 +0000

We’ve always advocated energy efficiency as the cheapest solution to reducing carbon emissions, fighting climate change, and having a more environmentally friendly house. And it’s true: energy efficiency should be the first priority for anyone looking to save money on utility bills and reduce their impact on the environment.

But one component of our argument seems to have changed. We've typically argued that home solar PV systems, while sexy, aren't generally a cost-effective home energy solution. While we believe that efficiency solutions like insulation and air sealing should always be the first step toward home energy savings, it appears as if home solar PV systems are making great strides toward cost-effectiveness.

Solar Electricity is Now Cheaper than Grid Electricity in Many Parts of the Country.

We were tipped off by the good folks at Green Building Advisor yesterday that the cost of a typical solar photovoltaic system has dropped to about $4.50 per watt here in Maine. (And Maine, you may know, isn’t a particularly sunny state.) That’s down from about $8.00 per watt in 2010, and works out to about 14 cents per kWH, which is 15% cheaper than grid electricity. And that’s before tax credits.

As Thompson points out in GBA, we still have a financing problem: PV systems require an upfront investment that buying electricity from the grid doesn’t typically require. But that’s a policy question. The simple fact is that solar power is rapidly becoming affordable.

To Make it Even More Affordable, Reduce Your Demand First!

To reduce the amount of that upfront investment, t’s important to keep in mind your total electricity demand before running out and buying a home solar system. If you can reduce your home’s total energy demand before investing in solar, you can vastly reduce the amount of money you’ll need to invest in that system upfront. Check out our “Getting Started” series for information about how to reduce your home’s electrical demand.

In the mean time, we think it may be worth checking with your local home energy auditor to determine what the best steps are for reducing your home’s energy demand, and, perhaps, moving toward renewables, in your area. Let us know what you find out.

This is a big deal, and one worth celebrating. Cheers.

NAP Time: Is Your Business Name, Address, and Phone Number Consistent? Everywhere?

Will — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:27:03 +0000

We’ve argued this before, but we’re afraid that the significance of our point may have gotten lost in various seas of bullet points of important factors for Local SEO. So, we thought it was worth emphasizing:

Your NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) should be consistent everywhere on the web that it’s listed.

This may sound trivial, but it’s not. Here’s the deal: Google and other search engines are increasingly looking at consistency of your business’s Name, Address and Phone Number to identify your business. Each place on the web that it’s listed -- on your website, on your social media pages, and on business directories -- is called a “citation.” The more citations, the better; but it’s essential that in each place it’s listed it’s consistent. This lets Google and other search engines know that it’s really your business that’s being mentioned. If one listing isn’t consistent, it won’t be considered a citation and won’t give you any Google juice.

Your NAP is your fingerprint.

Much like no two people have the same fingerprint, no two businesses (hopefully) have the same NAP. Two businesses may share a name, of course; two businesses can share an address; and two businesses can even share a phone number. But the combination of the three ensures that the business being mentioned is, indeed, the business that Google thinks it is.

Number of Citations is Important, but Consistency is More Important.

The greater the number of times that your Name, Address and Phone number is listed across the web, the better your chances of showing up high in search results for keywords related to your business; but any NAP that isn’t consistent with the one on your website won’t be counted as a citation, so consistency is crucial.

Make your NAP prevalent on your website as well as business directories.

Make sure that your NAP is consistent across each directory that it’s listed on, but also make sure that you list it on every page of your website. We recommend including it either in the header, footer, or sidebar of your site to ensure that it shows up on each page, and that it’s consistent everywhere.

Feel free to get a hold of us if you have any questions, or to sign up for a free, no-commitment web strategy consultation. We’d be happy to hear from you, and, as always, wish you the best of luck in your business!

Vampire Hunters: How to Tackle Vampire Energy in the Home Office.

Will — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:29:08 +0000

October is almost halfway over. Halloween is almost here. Vampires continue to suck money from your pocket every month.

In this second installment of our "Vampire Hunters" series leading up to Halloween, we're going to take a look at the home office to see where vampires are lurking.

Vampire power, you'll remember, is the energy consumed by devices when they're turned off or are in sleep mode. It's the silliest type of energy consumption, because it's energy consumed for something that you're not even using. Not even a little bit. And it costs you money. And it destroys Appalachia, etc, etc. Bad stuff.

The good news is: you can reduce your vampire energy consumption by just unplugging your unused electronics or appliances, or by plugging them into a power strip and turning it off. You can also use a number of tools to track down energy vampires to identify which ones are costing you the most money, so you can focus on those.

Hunting down energy vampires is a fun (believe it!) activity for the family. I went around the office and measured a few things with a Kill-a-Watt to get an estimate of what a typical home office setup would consume. The following figures are all for the devices in standby mode unless otherwise noted. Remember, standby power will vary greatly between manufacturers and models of each of these devices, so to get more precise figures for your home office, make a project of it!

Computer - 6 watts

Computer monitor - 4 watts

Cordless phone - 2 watts

Printer - 4 watts

Computer speakers (on with no music playing) - 3 watts

Wireless router (off but plugged in) - 2 watts

These numbers add up to about 24 watts of electricity that's being consumed all the time. While that may not sound like much, it adds up to about $30 per year at 15 cents per killowatt-hour, only for the electricity consumed while you're not there. And, remember, that's not the whole house, it's just the set of electronics sitting around your computer.

Here's a quick video explaining how a Kill-a-Watt electricity monitor works, and how you can use it to figure out how much power each of your electronic devices consumes, and how much it costs you per day, per week, per month and per year:

Know of any other office vampires? Let us know.