An urban backyard wind generator

You may want to get off the grid, or the grid may just go away. In either case, you'll need to make your own electricity. Having a wind-driven power supply in your backyard - that the neighbors will allow and that doesn't kill off the local songbird population - is one solution. So here's the Windspire, an interesting model that Treehugger directed me to:

With its sleek, bladeless design and capacity to produce nearly 2000 kilowatt hours per year, the Windspire might just inspire some YIMBYism -- that's Yes, In My BackYard -- about wind power. At 30 feet tall and 2 feet wide, the propeller-less design is bird-safe, relatively quiet -- it produces about 25 decibels of noise at five feet, roughly equivalent to the average noise of a residential neighborhood at night -- and doesn't take much breeze to get it spinning; it fires up at 8 mph, and is rated to survive 100 mph gusts. It comes with a wireless modem that connects to your computer, so you can sit back and watch the energy in action at any time.