Nearly two weeks after the software giant Microsoft revealed the idea behind its energy management tool Hohm, the company made the singular Web application, still in beta, available for general public on Monday.

However, going by the information that has come forth from Microsoft's Hohm product development team, the launch of the Hohm site - which would give people a starting point for reducing home energy use - was not a totally smooth one, as it was somewhat flawed by a DNS problem on Microsoft's side. But, once that hiccup was sorted out, the service met its goal of being an 'easy to use' one!

Hohm's energy-efficiency recommendations are courtesy to the actual "brains" behind it - namely, an existing database that was licensed by Microsoft from the US Department of Energy and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. As such, much of the crucial information on how to cut energy bills has been available for some time on these sources, though in a disorderly and not-so-catchy form.

The Hohm site appears to be quite an eye-opener - what with rendering invaluable information about certain hitherto little-known facts, like a home's air leakage rate; the capacity of a refrigerator expressed in cubic feet; location of radiator ducts; capacity of the water heater; and other similar 200 questions about energy saving that are oft considered too complex by most people!