July 2007 Archives
It can't hold a candle to Intel's PowerTOP for Linux, but if you want/need to squeeze an extra couple of minutes out of your Windows Vista laptop's battery, then Lifehacker will show you how via a free little utility.
Yes, I recycled the graphic from an old post. I'm allowed.
Earth2Tech, which is quickly becoming my source for green VC news, takes note of a $300 million fund for cleantech and life science companies from Technology Partners. Already, Fund VIII's coffers have been inched open for Tesla Motors and a solar concern that's hush-hush for the moment.
Visit Earth2Tech's post (chock full o' tasty links!) for more info.
Update: VentureBeat has also noticed.
Remember TechTurn? Well, they're not the only enterprise IT asset recycling firm in town.
The folks over at Converge from Peabody, Massachusetts sent word today that they've hit an impressive milestone: responsibly disposing of 35 million pounds of computing equipment in 2006. 25 million pounds of it was remarketed (freshened up and resold) which is a win-win for customers looking for low-cost equipment and the environment.
That means that the company, via its "IT asset disposition services division" NextPhase, spared landfills of 67,000 servers, 80,000 computers, 66,000 printers and a whopping 450,000 monitors. Plus, let's not forget, the mercury, lead and other toxic chemicals they contain.
CEO Frank Cavallaro released the following statement to mark the occasion, " It is critical that businesses take a proactive approach to their IT asset disposal processes, especially as stringent environmental legislation surrounding e-waste becomes law and public perception of green-oriented companies grows."
Beyond the positive PR and the specter of the EPA knocking on your door, Converge argues that computer recycling is just plain good business. They've helped recover $28 million for their customers and partners from their old gear.
Sure beats eBay!
One way to get more battery life out of a laptop is to dig into the system settings and tweak away. One new tool from Intel goes even deeper...
PowerTOP requires a 32-bit Linux kernel (2.6.21 or later) and an Intel mobile chipset. Here's how it works:
PowerTOP is a Linux tool that finds the software component(s) that make your laptop use more power than necessary while it is idle. As of Linux kernel version 2.6.21, the kernel no longer has a fixed 1000Hz timer tick. This will (in theory) give a huge power savings because the CPU stays in low power mode for longer periods of time during system idle.However... there are many things that can ruin the party, both inside the kernel and in userspace. PowerTOP combines various sources of information from the kernel into one convenient screen so that you can see how well your system is doing, and which components are the biggest problem.
One brave soul boosted his battery life from four hours to seven, according to a testimonial. 64-bit support arrives as soon as kernel 2.6.23 is released, which is expected to include the tickless idle (NO_HZ) feature.
[via ecoIron]
Update: PC World has some background as well as a pretty good explanation on why PowerTOP, and initiatives like it, matter.
Colleague Dan Ragle, who compiles our weekly EIT Planet Product Guide, this week highlights an energy efficient external hard drive from Western Digital. The new My Books, which are becoming iconic in the world of external storage, now house the company's GreenPower desktop drives.
This is on top of its auto-on/off functionality that keeps the drive off until plugged into a machine and automatically powers down then the USB cable is pulled. I've used enclosures that have a switch in the back only to find out that I forgot to power it off overnight, so this feature alone scores big in my book (pun so intended).
New to the My Book line is the vendor's announcement of their GreenPower (GP) line of drives; making their company wide debut in the My Book series this month. First available in the vendor's Caviar drives (in 1 TB capacities), the GP drives boast reduced power consumption by way of three primary technologies: IntelliPower, which the vendor describes as a tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and cache size; IntelliPark, which automatically unloads the heads during idle; and IntelliSeek, which calculates optimum seek speeds depending on the physical location of the target data on the disk. According to the vendor, the technologies combine to reduce power consumption per drive by 4-5 watts on average. The 1 TB Caviar GP drives debut first in the My Book offerings; with desktop Caviar GPs to follow in August. The vendor plans to introduce GP versions of their WD RE drives (drives targeted to RAID implementations) and WD AV drives later in Q3.
The 500 GB version (model number WDG1C5000) retails for $219.99, though with a little looking around, you can score one for less.
Chipmaker AMD cares about the environment, and they want everyone to know.
The company this week released its 2007 Global Climate Protection Plan (PDF), which outlines how the company is reducing carbon output, both in-house and in data centers worldwide by means of its high "performance per watt" processors and baked-in virtualization technology.
Nestled in the feel-good report are some details on the power management features in the company's upcoming quad-core chips, codenamed Barcelona.
AMD’s native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors (codenamed Barcelona) are scheduled for introduction in second-half of 2007 and contain a redesigned microarchitecture that will enable new power-and thermal-management. Enhancements to AMD PowerNow! technology will enable systems based on native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors to dynamically adjust frequencies at the individual core level for further power consumption reductions.Another new power management enhancement enables Barcelona processor cores to reduce voltage levels, even while the memory controller runs at full speed. The system memory interface also includes a feature that powers down memory logic when not in use. AMD has also made extensive use of ‘clock gating’ in the Barcelona design to enable automatic shut-down of areas of logic not being utilized, resulting in further power savings.
To those interested in knowing how they are addressing sustainability beyond its own tech, the report also covers renewable energy, manufacturing, real estate, employee-targeted initiatives and their involvement in orgs that perpetuate the cleantech message like The Green Grid, Sustainable Silicon Valley, and Plug-in Partners. If instead you'd rather hear about some of the topics in the report, they are also hosting a podcast (MP3, 21 min 33 sec) hosted by Austin, TX mayor Will Wynn (they're a big employer in the area).
Solar installations just keep getting bigger and bigger. The latest is today's announcement that PG&E -- in the biggest deal of its kind -- is buying 553 megawatts from a solar plant that's being erected in the Mojave Desert by Solel. But put aside those mental images of acre upon acre of solar panels, this plant will use "solar trough" technology when completed in 2011.
Todd Woody over at Green Wombat explains:
Solel will use a more advanced version of the solar trough for its Mojave project, which will contain 1.2 million mirrors and 317 miles of vacuum tubing....Solar trough power plants use parabolic mirrors to track the sun and heat tubes of liquid to produce steam that drives electricity-generating turbines. The efficiency of solar troughs is quite a bit lower than other utility-scale technologies under development, but it's tried and true and that's what apparently attracted PG&E (PCG), which emphasized it was "commercially-proven."
You can catch more details in this post.
Yesterday, in an exceptionally ironic case of poor timing, many popular sites slapped up a "please wait" sign, prompting some to think (looking at you, Diggers) that the tubes finally broke at the hands of a lunatic admin.
What really happened is that power problems tripped up 365 Main, a data-center-away-from-home operator in San Francisco. Ironically, it may have been a "greener" power continuity system that led to yesterday's brief, if overhyped, outage.
Data Center Knowledge explains:
The 365 Main data center is supported by 10 Hitec 2.1 megawatt generators, which are tested every month. The 277,000 square foot 365 facility is partitioned into eight data center "pods," some of which remained online while others went dark.The facility's backup systems use flywheel UPS systems - rather than batteries - to provide "ride-through" electricity to keep servers online until the diesel generator can start up and begin powering the facility. A flywheel is a spinning cylinder which generates power from kinetic energy, and continues to spin when grid power is interrupted. In most data centers, the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) system draws power from a bank of large batteries. AboveNet, the original builder/owner of the 365 Main data center, was an early adopter of flywheel UPS systems, which have recently gained attention as a "greener" alternative to batteries.
Essentially, a succession of rapid-fire outages on the local grid caused the whole system to stall just before the generators could fire up. Just another case that highlights the battle between eco-technologies (though the flywheel concept is quite old) and inefficient, yet trusted and entrenched systems.
Update: Robert Scoble calls out Valleywag for the "drunken employee" story. And that concludes our geek drama for today.
Thermal mapping is coming to the data center in the form of new technology from HP.
Thermal Zone Mapping (TZM) gives server room operators a view of the hot and cool zones as well as air flows within a space. Armed with this map, they can address problem areas and tune their air conditioning for optimal results and power savings.
...As a result, HP said IT departments and data center staff can arrange and manage air conditioning for optimal cooling, increased energy efficiency and lower costs. The idea is to nip over cooling in the bud."My house has a much more sophisticated air conditioner than most data centers," said Paul Perez, an HP vice president for scalable datacenter infrastructure. "I can program it to vary the amount of cooling over time. We're trying to bring that level of sophistication to data centers."
An all-out implementation rings up in the neighborhood of $100,000. The technology joins HP's Dynamic Smart Cooling, a technology that automatically adjust cooling to providing chilled air where it's most needed. You can watch some videos on the technology at HP's website (hence the screengrab above). Dynamic Smart Cooling is due out this summer, or what remains of it.
GigaOm offshoot Earth2Tech takes a look at one sizzling area of investment among venture capitalists: cleantech.
Armed with a (soon to be Rupert Murdoch's?) Dow Jones VentureOne report, Katie Fehrenbacher notes that VC funding is rising dramatically year over year, culminating in 140 financing rounds totaling $1.28 billion in 2006. That's twice the money that went into the space in 2005. Overall, it echoes many of the same themes of this earlier post.
So what's in store for 2007/2008?
Below are the seven key and shamelessly borrowed trends that may dictate where VC cash ends up during the next several months...
- Internet/IT: “The IT and communications industries could and should become major cleantech players in 2007.”
- China: China is the home to manufacturing and thus the home to those nasty environmental effects. “Will China be a clean tech superpower or environmental pariah?”
- Water: Water management will be “as important as energy in 2007.”
- Toxicity: Concerns over toxins is rising and startups can offer nontoxic solutions.
- CEOs: High profile CEOs are leading initiatives, and this will continue in 2007.
- Carbon innovation: We need technology for a low carbon economy — this will effect “market creation and purchasing decisions.”
- Policy: Cleantech can mean jobs and economic development, and policy will support that.
Upscale e-tailer, RedEnvelope, despite doubling its data center footprint, has dramatically slashed energy costs thanks to 365 Main.
365 Main operates a handful of data centers across the US, primarily in California. RedEnvelope's servers are housed in a 4-story, 227,000 square foot site in San Francisco (handy data sheet here, PDF).
Since moving to 365 Main in July 2005, RedEnvelope has more than doubled its data center footprint and has scaled the number of hits it processes per second from 800 to 1700. The site, which specializes in all-occasion gift- giving, has also closed its redundant data center in the Midwest and moved its excess capacity to 365 Main, tripled its systems capacity and its storage capacity, and converted its point-to-point networks to an MPLS backbone.
RedEnvelope's smaller power bills aren't necessarily a result of more efficient servers, rather 365 Main bills for the electricity a customer consumes instead of charging a typical flat fee. This is a fantastic way to promote energy efficiency since it encourages businesses to operate efficiently in return for lower costs.
Flexible billing isn't the only way 365 Main is supporting clean tech. In addition to joining The Green Grid, their 136,000 square foot Newark, CA location is up for LEED certification.
Update: This is just bad timing. 365 Main has been affected by an unfortunate case of power issues affecting San Francisco, or according to Valleywag, a drunk employee (unlikely). Kiss that 100 percent uptime good-bye.
"It's not another dotcom bomb," says Cleantech investment principal Jan Dekker about the economic landscape that's showering green technology startups with VC cash.
The Cleantech Venture Network reports that North American and European venture capital investment in cleantech hit $US3.6 billion ($4billion [Australian]) last year, up 45 per cent from 2005 and more than double the $US1.7 billion pumped into the sector in 2004.
And Australia is seeing its share of a percolating green tech economy in part because water shortages there may lead to some interesting developments in the space. Regardless, Dekker's comment above reflects his belief that green technology, unlike the dot-com mania of years past, isn't burdened with creating, growing and serving the very same market. Eco-savvy ventures, in his view, address an existing one.
Hard drive maker Western Digital is planning to roll out energy efficient 3.5" desktop drives under the GreenPower name (GP). The drives are engineered to conform to the Energy Star 4.0 standard and consume 4-5 fewer watts than typical drives. Though that may not sound a lot, it adds up to $10 a year in energy savings. Multiply that by the number of hard drives in a typical office setting, and that can add up to real savings.
And the obligatory taking X number of cars the technology takes off the road? Well, just one in this case, and only for 14 days out of a year.
At the moment, Caviar GP models are available in capacities of 320 GB to 1 TB (SATA, 7200 RPM, 16 MB buffer, more specs here).
Enterprise-class versions are due to arrive sometime in Q3 2007, which may make a more dramatic difference in data center power consumption.
Besides providing "Fanatical Support," Rackspace is also billing itself as one of the greenest hosts in the biz, even as it lords over 30,000 servers. Though they don't virtualize currently (they plan to soon), the very nature of managed hosting makes it inherently more environmentally friendly according to an interview with John Engates, Rackspace's CTO.
The company also has plans for a 40,000-server facility that will be powered by renewable energy provider, Slough Heat and Power, just outside of London.
But as we mentioned before, the shocker is that Rackspace doesn't employ virtualization, at least not yet.
While virtualization may offer a few advantages to the environment, it is important to point out that in the long run, virtualization does not provide significant environmental advantages. Virtualization does enable IT managers to add more servers (applications) on to fewer machines, reducing the amount of hardware needed and power consumed. Reducing the amount of hardware can certainly cut cost, but virtualization simply allows a server's CPU to run at a higher utilization. And the higher the utilization of a server, the more power it consumes. The additional power cost from virtualized servers will offset any savings created by purchasing less hardware (as hardware is relatively cheap.)
Engates' also confirms that Gartner's prediction that power will consume 50 percent of an IT budget "are not at all unrealistic." Scary.
Catch more of the interview here.
The Toyota Prius has won the hearts of Silicon Valley drivers, edging out the ever-popular Camry, also from Toyota. There's little doubt that higher gas prices are contributing to its rank in the high-tech mecca, though the San Jose Mercury News report also mentions how the car's "status reflects the continued greening of Silicon Valley."
And it also doesn't hurt that its interior is a gadget lover's dream.
Prius sales are up 45 percent in Santa Clara County and 65 percent in the 11-county Bay Area so far this year. The model has been popular in California since it went on sale in 2000, but it is catching on nationwide. U.S. Prius sales through June, according to industry publication Automotive News, are up 96 percent compared with the first six months of 2006.
For the '08 model year, when the new EPA, "closer to real world" mileage guidelines go into effect, the Prius will be rated at 48 city and 45 highway.
[via Valleywag]
I've heard rain forests described as our planet's lungs, which makes the following tidbit from National Geographic disturbing. "...Swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year" due to deforestation.
Why it matters:
Deforestation also drives climate change. Forest soils are moist, but without protection from sun-blocking tree cover they quickly dry out. Trees also help perpetuate the water cycle by returning water vapor back into the atmosphere. Without trees to fill these roles, many former forest lands can quickly become barren deserts....Trees also play a critical role in absorbing the greenhouse gases that fuel global warming. Fewer forests means larger amounts of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere—and increased speed and severity of global warming.
Panama, in case you're wondering, is 29,000 square miles big, nearly 76,000 km.
OK, you're probably sick to death hearing that you should virtualize -- now, before all the glaciers melt! Are you just supposed to wave the VMware wand over your servers and enter this magical land of uber-utilization?
It seems that everyone is telling you that you should, but no one is telling you how, or at the very least, what it means for the modern datacenter. Art Sedighi over at Developer.com has got you covered with some articles that delve a little deeper beyond "just do it":
Service Virtualization: The Road to Simplification
See, now I bet you can't wait to get started.
Poor Sun.
In your online travels, you've undoubtedly read that you needn't look any further than 90 million miles for the cause of rising temperatures on Earth. I know I have.
It turns out that solar activity has been trending downward since the 1980's, contrary to the assertion that the Sun's been turning up the heat. Mike Lockwood, of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK and Claus Fröhlich (+1 science skills just for the umlaut), at the World Radiation Center in Switzerland have the satellite data to prove it.
"The upshot is that somewhere between 1985 and 1987 all the solar factors that could have affected climate have been going in the wrong direction. If they were really a big factor we would have cooling by now," Lockwood told New Scientist. He adds that he wishes he knew why the Sun's activity had changed in this way.The number of sunspots peaked twice during the 20th century, once in 1960 and then again in 1985 (see graphs, right), but have been dropping since.
Now that we settled that, let's start some rumors about other celestial bodies. You didn't hear it from me, but Jupiter...
[via Science Blog]
Would you rent a PC to save on your electricity bill?
The New York Times takes a look at Zonbu, a Menlo Park, CA-based company headed by Grégoire Gentil and Alain Rossmann that's offering a personal computer for these green times. Their little "headless" machine, also called Zonbu, draws just 15 watts because it uses 4 GB of flash memory instead of a hard drive, is passively cooled (fanless) and employs a power sipping VIA processor. They also throw in an additional 25 GB of online storage for free.
Other features include half a gig of RAM, PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors, an Ethernet port and six USB ports.
On the software side, it comes loaded with Gentoo Linux, Firefox, Open Office, Skype and an assortment of software for a total of 20 pre-loaded apps.
So what does it cost?
There's an upfront cost of $99 plus $12.95 a month under a cellphone-like 2-year contract but with a nicer cancellation policy. Doesn't seem like a terribly good deal for a system lacking essentials like a monitor and keyboard (though available as options). However, compared to the typical 200-watt computer, the 15-watt Zonbu costs $10 less a month to keep powered, according to the company. So, in essence, you would only end up paying an extra $3 a month, less if you prepay. Nice, but are people really willing to ditch Windows and Mac OS to go green?
You can get more information on Zonbu here.
Ah, Second Life. Tech's fascination still smolders for a variety of reasons (virtual worlds as a business model; real money, virtual goods; saucy legal antics... ). Some organizations are even using it as a podium for spreading their outlook or as an advertising medium.
EcoGeek highlights an effort by Second Chance Trees to greatly expand its virtual-to-real tree planting campaign via American Express' Members Project, which will fund a project that's deemed the most worthy by voters. Currently, it's near the bottom by number of votes.
But things get really interesting in the comments section. (Doesn't it always?)
One commenter points to an old post on Rough Type which posits that avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians. Oh, yes, he went there.
You see, an avatar is basically composed of crude geometry, a smattering of pixels and a database that serves as a vessel for its traits and virtual belongings. Of course, it takes electricity and gear on both ends to keep online alter egos "alive" but as much as a flesh and bone inhabitants on planet Earth?
If there are on average between 10,000 and 15,000 avatars "living" in Second Life at any point, that means the world has a population of about 12,500. Supporting those 12,500 avatars requires 4,000 servers as well as the 12,500 PCs the avatars' physical alter egos are using. Conservatively, a PC consumes 120 watts and a server consumes 200 watts. Throw in another 50 watts per server for data-center air conditioning...
Click on the post for the rest of Nicholas Carr's analysis, but it suffice it to say, it's pretty controversial as the comment drama over there proves.
Update: Wagner James Au is "Debunking 5 Business Myths about Second Life" over at GigaOM. None address carbon output but there's a dash of those aforementioned saucy antics. Thanks Alex!
You may be shocked (or not) to learn that Michael Dell drives around in a Hummer H2 when he's not tooling around in his Porsche Boxster. After talking up all the green initiatives at his company, doesn't this smack of hypocrisy?
Not so much.
Mark Ontkush at EcoIron thinks it boils down to practicality. For starters, having him putter his way to Dell HQ in a Smart car is probably a non-starter for a man of his billionaire status and importance to the company. What's more, his actions have likely helped to reduce carbon emissions the equivalent of an entire fleet of Hummers, if not more.
If you're not buying that explanation, take comfort knowing that at least David Pogue's Prius kind of brings things into balance. And it would be unfair to single out Dell. Both Jobs and Gates drive exotics that don't exactly sip gas.
Me? Not that you asked, but it's a Nissan Pathfinder, and I take a train to work most days when I don't telecommute. I will confess, though, that I've been waiting for Ballmer for put up a "For Sale by Owner" sign on his maroon Lincoln Continental. Sexy!
Power consumption used to be a footnote in marketing materials and data sheets. Now it's right up there after performance and price. Fuji is taking it one step further by making it the reason to check out their new PRIMERGY TX120.
About the size of a smallish desktop tower (3.89" x 15.7" x 13.38" or 99mm x 399mm x 340 mm, woo-hoo metric!), the SMB/SOHO-bound TX120 can be outfitted with a dual-core 2.66 GHz or 1.86 GHz Intel Xeon 3070 and two 2.5-inch SAS hard drives. But it's the way these components are arrayed that makes all the difference. They're lined up around a redesigned heat pipe air cooling system with fans at either end. Fujitsu notes that their box, unlike water-cooled servers, doesn't require much in the way of extra hardware, isn't prone to leaks and delivers the comparable levels of noise (32dB at work, 28dB idle).
All told, a fully configured machine draws just 175 Watts. According to the company, the TX120 consumes 39 percent less electricity during use and is responsible for 37 percent less CO2 compared to a typical server. And its compact dimensions means a lot fewer resources were used during manufacture and transport.
More specs and info here. No word on pricing yet...
[via Treehugger]
What geek-in-training didn't enjoy some time between the glossy pages of Popular Science? Well too bad! That's because some of their features are now Web exclusives.
Popular Science has put up a green version of its "The Goods" column (hit View Photos) with twenty gadgets that will help you cut carbon while draining your funds at lightning speeds. Though, truth be told, a handful of gadgets are within the reach of mere monetary mortals. Take for instance the Alto II bulb from Philips that addresses the main complaint against CFL's by cutting its mercury content by half of what's found in the typical lamp.
Another unexpected find among the exotic toys is the humble Dell D630 notebook that rocks a gold star from the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool in addition to its eco-friendly packaging.
But if you must splurge, consider the wood-burning dutchtub hot tub/ogre cookware pictured above. Only $6K!
Inspired by the Research@Intel day last month, Ars Technica writer Jon Stokes kicked off a series on how some R&D done today is expected to shape the computing landscape of (you guessed it...) tomorrow. He starts with something that's foremost on everyone's mind, energy efficiency.
Power savings is typically achieved by going small. This is especially true in the chip-making world where 65 nm chips consume less power than 90 nm chips. A welcome side effect is that they increase per-wafer yields as well. But now that businesses are looking for ways to wring out the most performance out of each and every watt, companies like Intel are willing to seriously entertain some dramatic architectural detours:
Perhaps the most important way that the Intel Terascale prototype, called "Polaris," controls power across the chip is by turning each tile on or off depending on its usage level and temperature level. So if a core is idle, then it can be put into one of two low-power sleep states; likewise, if one of the many thermal sensors scattered throughout the Polaris die reports that the area of the chip containing that core is too hot, that core is turned off.If a core is shut down due to overheating, Polaris will try to transfer its work to one of the other cores in a cooler area of the chip. This way, work can be dynamically moved around the chip from tile to tile in order to adapt to changing thermal conditions.
The article also hints that power consumption monitoring and management may creep into the administrative role as servers become energy-aware. A pretty interesting read...
Lenovo is shipping a new Energy Star 4.0-compliant mobile workstation just before the new standard takes effect.
The new ThinkPad T61p can run Windows, of course, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. It also sports all sorts of performance boosting tech like Ultra Connect II to improve WWAN and WLAN (including 802.11n) performance and NVIDIA's Quadro FX 57OM mobile graphics. There's also a roll/safety cage behind the 15.4-inch widescreen to help protect the machine from the dangers of business travel, cubicle warfare or brisk motoring.
Lenovo's new approach to cooling apparently shaves off a good 3 decibels during operation and keeps the insides 10 percent cooler. But the real draw (for us at least) is the eco-friendliness of the T61p and the new breed of green laptops from the company.
The new ThinkPad notebooks achieve up to a 70 percent improvement in efficiency over previous generation notebooks with power management features providing customers maximum energy savings up to 47 percent greater than before. These new notebooks are also rated silver by the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool that institutions use to evaluate, compare and select PC products based on their environmental attributes.
And if you have a slightly older ThinkPad, there's hope for you too. Owners of Intel Centrino Pro or Duo machines can download some software updates to get that Energy Star 4.0 glow. The love will also extend to new desktops like ThinkCentre M55, which achieves a 52 percent improvement in energy efficiency over its predecessors, thanks in no small part to its 80-plus power supply.
Prices for the T61p start at $1,814
[via Engadget]
The YouTube generation *hearts* Live Earth.
Microsoft is quick to tell the world that Live Earth set a new Internet streaming record this past weekend. All told, "MSN had received a total of more than 10 million video streams and has the most simultaneous viewers of any online concert ever."
And those streaming servers aren't done yet. MSN plans on keeping their Live Earth streaming site active "for the next several weeks." Given the controversies surrounding the concerts, those servers may have their work cut out for them.
Gore's musicfest didn't come and go without controversy. Now the event is being dissected to see what effect, if any, it will have on the world's eco-consiousness. The Washington Post hints that Live Earth may have done a good job at attracting folks that already do their part for the environment.
But Andrew Turner, 29, who had come to see his favorite band, the Foo Fighters, was not convinced. "I already recycle and wash my clothes at 30 degrees [centigrade, about 86 degrees Fahrenheit] and turn off lights and computers," he said. "So I have a suspicion that those who are coming today are those already interested in the message. I don't know how many more it will convince."
Yet, an event of this magnitude is tough to ignore. So even if Madonna & Co.'s traipsing around the globe put more CO2 into the air than a small town, it may have the intended effect of raising awareness...
John Buckley of Carbon Footprint, an organization that helps companies reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, said Saturday that Live Earth will produce about 74,500 tons of the gas."We would have to plant 100,000 trees to offset the effect of Live Earth," he said, speaking by telephone. But, he added, "if you can reach 2 billion people and raise awareness, that's pretty fantastic."
About a third of the Earth's population... Not too shabby!
Got yourself an iPhone? If yes, good for you! But don't just throw that old cell away...
exPhone: don't throw that old cell phone away - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
Secret, Efficient Power Supplies From Google - ecoIron
Popular Mechanics' Ultimate Guide to Sustainability - Popular Mechanics
Going Solar in Space - Treehugger
The Grass Is Still Greener At Live Earth - Gothamist
McDonald's Grease Powering McDonald's Trucks (Warning, creepy Ronald McDonald image festooned by french fries) - EcoGeek
DNA Test Indicates Very Green Greenland - The Washington Post
A new power strip design has the gadget blogosphere buzzing, and for good reason. In addition to striking industrial design, clamping onto a desktop/tabletop and stowing away cables for an uncluttered underfoot area, Gilles Belley's Energy Saving Adapters put an end to energy "vampires" -- those electronics that constantly suck power even when they're off.
The downside, it's just a concept. Hopefully somebody will take notice and snatch up the design soon.
[via Engadget, Yanko Design]
Saturday, July 7th, besides being a very lucky date (7.7.07), is Live Earth Day. Live Earth is a massive concert with over 100 artists held across a couple of venues worldwide meant to bring awareness to climate change.
Among those performing are Smashing Pumpkins, John Mayer, The Police, Dave Matthews Band, Melissa Etheridge, Kanye West, Beastie Boys, Madonna, Foo Fighters, Spinal Tap, Linkin Park, Lenny Kravitz, Shakira and tons more.
On TV, in the US at least, the acts will be broadcast on NBC, Bravo, Sundance, CNBC, MSNBC and Telemundo. More details and show times are available here. Online, the event will be simulcast on MSN.
If there was ever a C-level position that can effectively straddle business, technology and R&D, it might just be the CSO, or Chief Sustainability Officer.
In the article, "New Type of Executive Helps With Greening of Corporations", The New York Times looks into the ascendancy of this new breed of exec, which in some cases, actually has a strong say in how a company approaches the way it does business...
Since he became Dow Chemical’s first chief sustainability officer in March, David Kepler has been talking to Dow’s technology, manufacturing and finance people about alternative fuels and green products. “We usually agree,” Mr. Kepler said. “But if a critical environmental issue is in dispute, I’ll prevail.”Linda J. Fisher, the chief sustainability officer at DuPont, scuttled the purchase of a company that was not in a “sustainable” business. “We’re building sustainability into the acquisition criteria,” she said.
Later in the article, the flipside of her role is revealed. Part of her duties includes not overstating the "greenness" of the items DuPont produces, such as not hyping a product as green because of a tiny or incremental advance.
