July 2008 Archives

Is there a green connection in the Facebook Scrabble/Scrabulous drama? One tech writer seems to think so and he brings up some good points...

Coding green for the future - InfoWorld

There's a huge difference, however, one that makes Scrabulous, in my view, a far greener application. The designers of Scrabble Beta decided to employ animation. Lots of animation. Pointless animation that brings nothing to the game-playing experience -- unless you count a longer wait as "something." Waiting for the game to load. Waiting for the board you're playing to spin and grow larger when you're ready to play a turn. Waiting for animation showing your points adding up.

Scrabulous, on the other hand, has little to no waiting. It's quick, efficient, and snappy. And it has an elegant UI that makes it exceedingly simple to use. It's no wonder the game has proven so popular -- and addicting: The learning curve is minute and the game play is quick and seamless.

AT&T Joins Green Grid - IT Business Edge

Yesterday, AT&T announced that its AT&T Services affiliate has joined the Green Grid, a non-profit group of nearly 200 members sharing information with the unified goal of improving data center efficiency.

Go Green (Really Green) With Your Hard Drive - Small Business Computing

The company built the drive housing out of bamboo and aluminum, materials that are, respectively, the most renewable wood and the most recycle-able metal in the world – according to Matt McRae, Fabrik's vice president of marketing.

"The bamboo is not a veneer. It's a solid, structural, functional element of the drive," he said. "Moreover, it's steam-pressed with water - without any glues – and it's grown local to our manufacturer in China, which reduces the cost and carbon footprint of shipping it over long distances."

Accenture Aims to Measure IT's Carbon Footprint - InternetNews

The suite has power information for a wide variety of enterprise IT hardware, like IBM and HP servers, cooling devices, switches and other equipment found in a datacenter. Each piece has a power rating, so as you shuffle gear and play what-if scenarios with the gear, you can find the sweet spot for both power and dollar efficiency.

"It really empowers you to say as an IT exec 'I need x amount of dollars, this is why I need it,' and say with confidence when you will be net cash flow positive because of these changes you will introduce," said Bonecutter. "It also lets you avoid chasing things down a rathole on implied savings. People think virtualization is automatic savings, but in some cases it's hard to quantify it."

Green IT finds favor among Indian firms - ZDNet Asia

India is facing a power shortage of 70,000 megawatt (MW). As a result, to maintain power supply, much of corporate India has had to rely on generators that run on diesel and cause pollution. And with the soaring crude price, Indian enterprises are faced with escalating energy bills.

Ravichandran said: "Although the desire to create a greener planet will drive some implementations, the primary driver for green IT adoption in Asia-Pacific is the cost savings provided by higher energy-efficiency."

Now that Dell's online store is carrying them, we can delve into the specs.

Video and audio are integrated, not terribly surprising. The power supply is 87 percent efficient, well above the green 80-plus benchmark. One startling revelation is that the bamboo sleeve option inflates the price by $130! The wireless keyboard and mouse option adds just $50 to the price, however.

Needless to say, a top-of-the-line model easily crosses the $1,000 mark. Dell's shipping estimate is August 12 (as of this writing). Min/max specs below.

Processor

Base: Intel Pentium Dual Core T2390 1.86GHz
Max: Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 2.6GHz + $625

OS

Base: Windows Vista Home Basic SP1
Max: Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 +$150

RAM

Base: 1GB Shared DDR2, 667MHz, 1 DIMM
Max: 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2, 667MHz, 2 DIMMs +150

Hard Drive (No SSD option!)

Base: 160GB SATA, 5400RPM
Max: 320GB SATA, 5400RPM + $100

Optical Drive

Base: 8X Slot Load Dual Layer DVD+/-RW Drive
Max: 6X Slot Load Blu-ray, DVD+/-RW & BD-ROM + $250

Wi-Fi

Option: Wireless-N Networking +$70

Standard ports:

GbE Ethernet Port
Five USB 2.0
IEEE1394a port (4-pin) (Firewire)
HDMI
DVI
AC adapter connector
S/P DIF Out
Headphone (front); Line-in / Line-out (back)

Dimensions:

Length: 196.5mm - 7.7" (with sleeve)
Height: 71.5mm - 2.8" (with sleeve)
Depth: 211.5mm - 8.3" (with sleeve)
Weight: 2.18kg - 4.8 lbs (with stand)

Remember Dell's tiny, green PC concept? Well now it's (almost) official.

Later today, Dell is expected to start selling its new Studio Hybrid line of desktop PCs, arguably the company's first real shot across Apple's bow, design-wise. As you can see, bamboo (the middle one in the pic) appears to be the fashionable and eco-friendly enclosure of choice lately. Judging from the image, it will also be available shrouded in colorful plastic.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, though. The computer, by virtue of its size, uses a lot less material in its manufacture and it draws less than 65 watts. Early reports peg the starter Studio Hybrid at $499 for a 1.73GHz dual-core Intel CPU and 2GB RAM.

We'll have more details as they surface.

[via Electronista and Engadget]

Update: According to the press release, the case "sleeves" are interchangeable. There's also an HDMI port for hooking it up to an HDTV. Options include built-in Wi-Fi, a Blu-Ray drive, TV tuner and wireless keyboard and mouse.

Green credentials include Energy Star 4 compliance, a recycling kit, 30 percent fewer packing materials (by weight) and 75 percent fewer manuals and printed pack-ins (also by weight).

The official Studio Hybrid page is http://www.dell.com/hybrid, which should be going live any minute now...

In February, D-Link debuted new network switches with some power management smarts. Which is great small businesses but not necessarily the best solution for home networking.

That all changes today with new Xtreme N series Wi-Fi routers featuring the company's Green Ethernet technology, which, in short, powers down unused ports and determines cable length to optimize power flow. In a similar manner, the new routers now offer a scheduling option.

The D-Link Green Wi-Fi Routers achieve optimal energy savings when used with the Wi-Fi Scheduler, which provides a user-selectable radio shutdown option (adjustable by day and start/end times). Under the most favorable conditions with no wired links active and Wi-Fi turned off, users may achieve the following power savings when compared to a D-Link conventional router without Green technology: DIR-655, up to 32%; DIR-855, up to 41%; and DGL-4500, up to 31%.

Not only is this a way to conserve energy, but shutting down the unit's radio is a great way to enhance security during the hours that no one is using Wi-Fi a the household.

Prices are $149.99 for the DIR-655, $359.99 for the DIR-855 and $239.99 for the online gamer oriented DGL-4500. And in a shameless "display" of green gadgetry, the DIR-855 and DGL-4500 rock OLED network activity panels.

Neat!

Clad in bamboo and recyclable aluminum; nestled in environmentally responsible packaging; and mated to an Energy Star power adapter, Fabrik is billing its SimpleTech [re]drive as the "world's most eco-friendly external drive."

You see, it automatically powers on and off with your computer. Not the biggest innovation, mind you, but it sure beats discovering that your drive has been spinning all night for no reason as has happened a zillion times to this blogger.

At $159.99 for 500GB, it's a little pricey (roughly a 50% premium), but it sports a distinctive look and some software to make backups a painless affair. For both PCs and Macs, the [re]drive ships with wizard-driven software to automate backups and even create a disaster recovery CD for PCs. Another bonus for PC users is anti-virus detection to help make certain that malware infested files don't befoul your backups.

Don't forget the Turbo USB 2.0 interface that promises to speed things up by up to 25% over plain USB 2.0.

And what's a backup solution without a cloud-based alternative these days? Fabrik makes 2GB of encrypted, online storage available via Fabrik Ultimate Backup. Unlimited capacity costs $5/month.

Poor Tesla.

It lacks the intrigue of the spectacularly bizarre case of Bo Stefan Eriksson and the bisected Ferrari Enzo, but here it is. It was only a matter of time, I suppose. Electric car or not, there's no fighting physics.

The scene was captured by lucky photographer Alex Volkov. Jalopnik has the details.

How time flies! System Administrator Appreciation Day has arrived.

If you're a sysadmin, THANK YOU! If your aren't one, go thank them now for cleaning up after your computer disasters, turning a blind eye to your Web addictions and generally helping to keep you productive and employed.

Yes, I'm guilting you. Go, now!

High fuel costs aren't just hurting commuters. School districts with fleets of school buses are also feeling the pinch. Reuters brings word of some schools that adopted a 4-day schedule, not just for a smaller fuel bill, but to help cut costs across the board.

"For rural school districts where buses may travel 100 miles round-trip each day, there certainly are transportation savings worth considering," said Marc Egan, the director of federal affairs at the National School Boards Association.

Egan said about 100 schools in as many as 16 states have already moved to a four-day school week, many to save money on transportation, heating and cooling.

Sure, like businesses that shift to 4-day workweeks, there are savings and CO2 reductions to be had. But there are some other pleasant side benefits too.

Webster County School District in Kentucky switched to a four-day week four years ago under economic duress -- a state budget crisis left the school in limbo, leaving the district with the option of dropping school days or cutting staff and programs.

The district ended up saving tens of thousands of dollars in fuel and energy costs, helping to cut total costs by 3.5 to 4 percent, said James Kemp, the superintendent of the Webster County School District.

The shortened week at Webster also brought unexpected benefits such as improved attendance and a boost in student performance.

"If we were to go back to a five-day week, the school board and I would be run out of town," Kemp said.

Good news all around. And a three-day weekend? Show me a kid that wouldn't love that?

Tiny and cloud-connected PCs seem to be the wave of the green computing future. Unless you're a gamer, digital artist, coder, video editor, Vista enthusiast...

All joking aside, if most computer users are honest with themselves, they'll find that don't really need a firebreathing, quad-core desktop that gives major appliances a run for their money consumption-wise. No, most just need an email app, a web browser, IM, photo viewer and a multimedia player. That's because you kids today socialize on Facebook/MySpace; use Gmail and IM to communicate; and fiddle with iTunes to load up their iPods.

To capitalize on this trend, Mountain View, CA-based CherryPal has just launched its $250, Freescale-based, Debian/GNU Linux-powered C100 desktop. The paperback-sized unit (no keyboard, mouse and monitor, of course) boots in a mere 20 seconds; contains 80 percent fewer components than traditional PCs; is designed to last 10 years; and consumes just 2 watts. Storage is a bit on the meager side, but a non-issue if you have fully embraced living in the cloud.

Specs? Glad you asked:

• Freescale’s MPC5121e mobileGT processor, 800 MIPS (400 MHz) of processing
• 256 MB of DDR2 DRAM
• 4GB NAND Flash-based solid state drive
• WiFi 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
• Two USB 2.0 ports
• One 10/100 Ethernet with RJ-45 jack
• One VGA DB-15 display out jack
• Headphone level stereo audio out 3.5mm jack
• 9vDC 2.5mm 10 watt AC-DC adapter power supply
• Weighs 10 ounces
• 1.3" high, 5.8" x 4.2" wide

Make no mistake, they didn't just cobble together a stripped down terminal and slap Linux onto it. There's some innovation under the hood in the form of HyperCloud, which the company uses to describe its hardware and software platform. Plus, it marks a mini-resurgance of the Power processor on the desktop.

The CherryPal also offers a patent-pending single software layer technology. This collapses the operating system and browser into one layer, where there had traditionally been three separate layers. It makes the computer exponentially faster and virtually eliminates any risk of bugs or viruses for the user.

CherryPal is also the first company since Apple Computers to use a Power Architecture-based processor in a personal computer by employing the Freescale MPC5121e mobileGT processor. This chip allows for built-in graphics and audio processing, all while consuming only 400 MHz of power.

If it all sounds good to you, they are accepting preorders now. CherryPal C100 desktops are scheduled to start making their way to waiting hands by the end of the month (next week to you and me) at the latest.

Thanks Dan!

The biggest knock against SSDs, even with the new "affordable" models hitting the scene, is the price. But now comes word that recent, underwhelming reports regarding performance and power savings are due to none other than Windows Vista.

Now, we know that as an OS, it's a bit (how do I put this nicely...) bloated, but is it fair to lay the blame on it? According to SanDisk's CEO, yes.

Speaking during SanDisk's second-quarter earnings conference call, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eli Harari said that Windows Vista will present a special challenge for solid-state drive makers. "As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid-state disk," he said.

This is due to Vista's design. "The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls," he said.

That's interesting to hear because Samsung makes no such claims and its MLC drives -- the same tech SanDisk hopes will repeal the Vista performance tax -- are already in production. Plus, didn't Microsoft learn a thing or two about dealing with flash memory with ReadyBoost?

Either way, no need to fret. Over at Datamation David Storm has a pretty good overview of how things stand now if you're considering outfitting that new laptop with SSD. There's also a cool mention of SSDs in the datacenter, but I shudder to think how much those arrays cost.

[via Engadget - Good luck, Ryan!]

Toner from soy beans? Yup.

SoyPrint, from PRC Technologies, is a line of aftermarket toner cartridges for laser printers. Described as the first of its kind, the cartridges do not harm printers (I would hope not); aim for price parity with the brand names; and are made in the U.S.A.

In case you're wondering, conventional toner is a not-so-natural, oil-derived chemical cocktail. According to Wikipedia...

The specific polymer used varies by manufacturer but can be a Styrene Acrylate Copolymer or a Polyester Resin. Toner formulations vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and even from machine to machine. Typically formulation, granule size and melt point vary the most.

And despite the wealth of digital, info-keeping gadgets (some would argue because of), we sure like to keep those laser printers humming.

PRC made the following statement, "U.S. businesses, schools, institutions and governments consume over 100 million cartridges per year." The president of parent company Print Recovery Concepts, Debe Overhaug, spells out the impact of all those office drones printing out their emails, reports, resumes and evening commute Sudoko puzzles. "That means the United States consumes as much as 50,000 tons of petroleum-based toner powder each year. Now every office employee can help reduce dependence on oil every time they put a toner cartridge in their printer."

Is the switch to soy the answer? If the quality and price are comparable, and we're not depleting our soy crops as a result, I see little downside.

Thanks Dan!

For a while there it looked like the ambitious projects like T. Boone Pickens' plan to build expansive wind farms along Texas' panhandle was in danger. The trouble revolved around transmission lines, or the lack of them. In fact, even at this early stage, wind turbines are routinely shut off because there's not enough transmission capacity.

Now The New York Times reports that Texas regulators have given the green light to a nearly $5 billion wind energy transmission plan.

Texas regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project, providing a major lift to the development of wind energy in the state.

The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.

Here are some of the essential details.

Transmission companies will pay the upfront costs of the project. They will recoup the money from power users, at a rate of about $4 a month for residential customers.

Details of the plan will be completed by Aug. 15, according to Damon Withrow, director of government relations at the Public Utility Commission, which voted 2 to 1 to go ahead with the transmission plan. The lines will not be fully constructed until 2013.

And what's billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens been up to? Pickens still plans to build out his wind farms, and because of the timetable, he'll be tackling transmission independently of the state. Also, you may have caught him on some TV ads recently, especially if you're a fan of the National Geographic Channel.

He makes an awfully patriotic pitch to viewers and points them to his website, PickensPlan.com. Notably, his plan places an emphasis on economics and national security, but the environmental benefits are hard to ignore.

No matter how well homes and businesses recycle, some stuff like food, feedstock and farm waste is inevitably going to end up in a landfill. Though they are thought to harmlessly decompose, this waste organic material still emits methane, which traps a lot more heat in the atmosphere than CO2.

Already some landfills trap methane, but scientists in the UK think they can use two forms of bacteria in a complementary way to produce "biohydrogen" or a biologically-derived form of the energy-dense element. Science Daily brings us an intriguing report from the Microbiology Today.

When there is no oxygen, fermentative bacteria use carbohydrates like sugar to produce hydrogen and acids. Others, like purple bacteria, use light to produce energy (photosynthesis) and make hydrogen to help them break down molecules such as acids. These two reactions fit together as the purple bacteria can use the acids produced by the fermentation bacteria. Professor Lynne Macaskie's Unit of Functional Bionanomaterials at the University of Birmingham has created two bioreactors that provide the ideal conditions for these two types of bacteria to produce hydrogen.

"By working together the two types of bacteria can produce much more hydrogen than either could alone," said Dr Mark Redwood. "A significant challenge for the development of this process to a productive scale is to design a kind of photobioreactor that is cheap to construct and able to harvest light from a large area. A second issue is connecting the process with a reliable supply of sugary feedstock."

Already, work is being done to commercialize the technology. A side benefit is that enzymes created by the process can be used to "scavenge precious metals from spent automotive catalysts." If they can produce hydrogen in quantity cost-effectively, then it looks like good news all around.

100 percent clean, renewable energy in 10 years? Maybe not the most realistic goal, but you can't deny that it would create a cleantech boom of massive proportions...

Gore Calls for 100% Green Power in 10 Years - Earth2Tech

Al Gore has just called for an aggressive, if not unattainable, solution to America’s economic, environmental and national security woes: Generate 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years. The Nobel laureate laid out the challenge to America in a speech today at Washington’s Constitution Hall.

Time to green-light sustainable IT - Silicon.com

The current penchant for invoking green IT whenever data centre power consumption is mentioned may suit the goals of IT vendors with new power efficient kit to sell; but it does little to help address the bigger picture.

In fact, it only serves to perpetuate the misguided notion that IT is to be treated at arm's length as an isolated part of the business.

Sun Exec: Your ‘Eco Data Center’ doesn’t have to cost millions. - GreenTech Pastures, ZDNet

For the long term, match your infrastructure to the application SLA or SLO needs, whatever your service level model or service level objectives are. Don’t implement big Tier 3, Tier 3 Plus or Tier 4 data centers for all application workloads. Target it appropriately. A number of customers are starting to take a look at a single data center that is broken up into multiple rooms. Some of the rooms being Tier 1 Plus, some being Tier 2 and finally the other rooms being Tier 3 Plus. And [they’re] putting only the mission-critical equipment in the Tier 3 Plus areas and all testing, development, quality assurance, SAN box systems, staging and lifecycle management systems into the Tier 2. And then the Tier 1 can be kind of the playground for systems administrators to learn things or people to try out new virtualization technologies, etc.

Power Rationing--Green Gets Serious - InformationWeek's Storage Blog

Instant power savings can be achieved quickly in a few areas. First is data archiving, getting old data off of your arrays. Disk archiving is ideal for data that still needs to be accessed occasionally, meaning that disk is still needed, but can be moved from these active disk areas to systems like Copan's File Archiver and NexSAN's ATABeast, that can turn off the drives attached to it. The remaining active data set should be managed as well with data compression. Companies like Storwize can deploy an in-line compression technology to compress all of your active file system data, even network-mounted databases with no performance impact. With old data off the arrays and active data being compressed, file systems can be consolidated to fewer storage systems, and those arrays can be turned off.

Solar Power Array Installed at Fresno Yosemite International Airport - Treehugger

The fuel powering the planes flying into the Fresno Yosemite International (FYI) airport may not yet come from renewable energy, but a good portion of the operations of the airport will soon be, thanks to a new 2 MW solar array dedicated yesterday.

The array will provide electricity to power 40% of the everyday lighting, air conditioning, controls and tower communications of the airport. The array will by 9.5 acres in size and is expected to save the airport $13 million over the next 20 years.

With the combination of green computing awareness, and the price of gas having long-since passed "ridiculous" levels, it's no wonder that remote access tools--you know, those products that let you login to and access your office PC from the couch in your living room-- are all the rage. But while you're sitting in your jammies and patting yourself on the back for all the green you're saving, consider this: You may be blowing a substantial chunk of that cash in the cost it takes you to keep your office computer powered up all night (or weekend, or vacation, or whatever).

According to PR from 01 Communique Laboratory Inc., "Studies have shown that the cost of leaving a single computer on all the time can be upwards of $15.00 a month per PC," and, not surprisingly, they offer a potential remedy. Their newly announced I'm InTouch Premium version provides the ability to automatically wake up your computer when you need it from a remote location--allowing you to shut down unneeded computers when you leave the building without fear of not being able to access them from a beach in the Virgin Islands when the need arises. 01 Communique explains:

Instead of leaving all your computers on, a single PC can be used to "wake-up" any computer in your office when needed, dramatically reducing your electricity bill.

And exactly how much can you expect that electric bill to drop? If you believe the vendor's own data, you could save as much as 150 bucks a month if your shop has 20 PCs.

Of course, that assumes you're currently leaving all those PCs on every night, and that whatever remote access solution you're using doesn't absorb whatever costs you may be saving. But either way, your overall gasoline and electricity usage should be lowered--and our carbon-heavy environment will thank you for it.

Sure, lowering your environmental impact is a warm and fuzzy reason for adopting virtualization. But CIO's have another kind of green in mind: money.

Virtually Speaking: All About Green - ServerWatch

It's always good to have data to back up a hunch: A recent IDC survey of 650 European companies taken between January and March of this year reported that 90 percent of companies that have adopted virtualization technologies did so to reduce data center costs.

So saving money is the key driver, not saving the environment or saving on real-estate or any of the soft benefits vendors like to tout.

Climate Change = More Heat Waves = More Blackouts - Earth2Tech

Coming soon to a city near you — more power outages! As temperatures soar across the nation, a report published today in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology details research from scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which estimates that electricity demand could outstrip supply by as much as 17 percent on the hottest days in the coming decades.

Toshiba's New Unit Keeps Homes' Power in Check - EcoGeek

Toshiba’s focus on Green is extending beyond planting trees, building eco-friendly laptops, and getting more bang for the watt on its products. Now it’s moving into IT solutions to help home owners do their own power monitoring. The company is showcasing its new IT Power Measurement Unit at the Hokkaido Toyako Summit in Japan.

Ontario adds fee for electronics recycling - National Post

The levies, $10 for televisions and about $13 for computers, will be billed to Ontario producers and importers beginning on April 1, 2009. Mr. Gerretsen said it was up to the manufacturers to decide if the cost would be absorbed or passed on to consumers.

The program's income, expected to be about $62-million in the first year, will go to Waste Diversion Ontario, a non-Crown corporation that operates waste-diversion programs for the government, in order to fund the collection and recycling of outdated and unwanted electronics.

Lotus goes for the green with Eco Elise - Wide Open Throttle Blog - Motor Trend

Where other manufacturers have turned to exotic composites and advanced batteries and electronics to boost fuel mileage and cut emissions, Lotus has gone back to its roots, so to speak, in "performance through light weight." Thanks to lighter wheels, body panels and sound system, Lotus has shaved 70.5 pounds off the already petite Elise S. While there are no reported changes to the engine itself, Lotus believes the lighter weight, coupled with solar cells on the removable roof that will take load off of the alternator, will lead to a noticeable increase in gas mileage and a subsequent reduction in emissions.

Its design was a dead giveaway that you wouldn't be swapping batteries willy-nilly. But now comes confirmation via iFixit that the iPhone 3G battery, while not exactly user-replaceable, isn't soldered on!

This means that if you're good with tiny tools, and there's a third party out there providing replacement batteries like they did for older generation iPods, then you might, just might, be able to change out the power pack when your iPhone 3G croaks after a few minutes of talk time.

Take a look at some more interesting discoveries from the first known iPhone 3G teardown here. Ghastly!

And if you need something else to obsess over then it might please you to know that the iTunes App Store is semi-officially open for business.

[via Engadget]

Update: MacRumors has a direct link to the iPhone 2.0 firmware (to make use of those lovely apps; iPhone ONLY). Upgrade at your own risk.

Some exciting news in the storage realm this week.

First up is Hitachi. As you know, hard drive capacity is hurtling past the 1 terabyte mark, which is great if you need more storage space but not so great if you need to secure it, greenly. No worries, says Hitachi. The company's new 1TB drive offers built-in hardware encryption and is Energy Star compliant.

InternetNews reports:

Responding to customer demand for big storage that's more energy efficient and secure, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced its next generation of 1 terabyte hard drives, which offer data encryption in a more compact form factor.

Hitachi GST's Deskstar 7K1000.B product line features a three-disk design that requires less power and cooling. In addition, it has an optional security feature, Bulk Data Encryption, based on the Advanced Encryption Standard certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

In the SSD realm, it looks like Samsung isn't about to let OCZ hog the 128GB spotlight unchallenged.

The company today said it has started mass producing competitive drives using MLC NAND technology. No word on price yet. They describe the cost as "attractive" but we'll just have to wait and see...

The roster just keeps getting bigger.

BLADE Network Technologies today announced that they have joined The Green Grid. Their pitch? "Rackonomics" for efficient data centers.

BLADE is a proponent of "Rackonomics," which recommends that an energy-efficient data center should be made up of replicated racks that have standard configurations of servers, storage and network. Rackonomics-based data centers can realize lower ongoing total cost of ownership through improved energy efficiency.

At least that's what the press release says. In CEO Vikram Mehta's blog, he explains the concept:

In modern data center architecture, Rackonomics refers to the concept of rack-level provisioning--designing, deploying and replicating server/computer systems, data networks and storage area networks (SANs) rack by rack to:

• decrease the total cost of ownership of data center infrastructures
• reduce IT complexity
• enable incremental scalability.

One of the primary tenets of Rackonomics is that putting switches into blade enclosures and server/storage racks is far more economical than using external core switches. Our customers have told us that a "put it in the rack" strategy can enable them to save tens of thousands of dollars in switch hardware, deployment and energy costs for every external switch that they can avoid deploying. And, the network switch has the ability to viritualize the network connections associated with the server/storage elements located in the rack, thus vastly simplifying the datacenter network.

He makes a pretty compelling argument with his rack-centric approach. You can see just how effective it is by perusing some whitepapers, which in a refreshing departure, don't require that you cough up your contact info.

GM is planning to show off the production version of the Chevy Volt in September to coincide with the company's centennial, according to a report in Reuters.

To call the Volt's development storied is an understatement. Amidst the backdrop of a high fuel costs, environmental concerns, a battered American auto industry, and an aggressive time line with unproven tech, the plug-in gas-assisted electric concept managed to make everyone sit up and take notice. And let's not forget, Toyota's third generation Prius is just around the corner.

Now, some more juicy details have emerged.

The car, much like the new Camaro before it, will appear in the new Transformers movie. It has also been discovered that a near-production version of the Volt--looking nothing like the concept on the right--has already been the subject of an LA focus group.

We'll see what September has in store.

The way the economy is going, it's hard to justify paying a premium for green technology. But a couple of changes now can yield some surprising near-immediate savings as well as longer term boosts to the bottom line.

Also, IBM and Dell tout their green cred; National Semiconductor makes moves into solar; and Japan may well become the model of a sustainable, economically-motivated society.

Color Your IT Strategy Green - Small Business Computing

There’s a common thread between technologies such as unified communications, Web conferencing, portal and collaboration software and mobile computing: all of these applications make it easier for people to work from anywhere. Thus, your company can potentially expand telecommuting and even cut back on business travel.

"A big selling point of collaborative technologies is going to be resource reduction - in terms of staff time, power, gas and travel dollars," said John Burke, an IT analyst with Nemertes Research. He gives the example of a 1,000-employee global beverage distributor that is saving $3,600 per day by using Web conferencing to reduce business travel. If you factor in the several hours of lost productivity that go along with most business trips, those time-and-money benefits can make a real difference to your small business.

Big Blue's Power Systems Painted Green at OCEAN Tech Conference - IT Jungle

Where should IT managers look for energy abuse? X64 servers took a lot of the heat that Howard was dishing out. Utilization rates for X64 servers are notoriously low, typically in the 10 percent to 20 percent range. Server consolidation means energy conservation and considerable savings can be realized in companies running dozens or--oh, mercy--hundreds of under utilized servers.

Dell strives to make it easier to be green with FlexAddress - ZDNet Blogs

Glenn Keels, director, global relationship marketing at Dell, describes FlexAddress as a simple way for managers to deploy and manage blades because it abstracts that Fibre Channel Worldwide Network Name and Ethernet/iSCSI Media Access Control address from the blade hardware and instead ties persistently to a slot in M1000e blade chassis.

National Semiconductor reinvents itself and goes solar - TG Daily

NSC apparently found some opportunities in solar paneling and is looking to expand its business into the green industry. In May, Halla hinted that a new technology would be introduced to make solar panels more efficient and since last week we know what the executive was talking about. NSC promises that its Solar Magic technology can recoup as much as 50% of lost output in solar systems due to issues such as debris and shade.

Japan's Green Gold Mine - Forbes

It's a feel-good campaign, but it's also an economic development plan. Fukuda is counting on Japanese manufacturers to export these technologies. Japan's marquee automakers have jumped into hybrids, electrics and hydrogen cars, following Toyota's success with the Prius and its other hybrid cars. Pledging environmental support is in vogue, especially when it makes money.

You wonder why automakers haven't done it sooner. Toyota is adding solar panels to some trim levels of the next Prius.

Reuters has the story:

Toyota Motor Corp plans to install solar panels on some Prius hybrids in its next remodeling, responding to growing demand for "green" cars amid record-high oil prices, a source briefed on the matter said on Monday.

The panels, supplied by Kyocera Corp would be able to power part of the air-conditioning on high-end versions of the gasoline-electric Prius, the source said.

It's a shame that they can't be used to trickle charge the car's battery packs, but it's a start. Meanwhile, Toyota dealers are currently suffering a Prius shortage due to a huge demand and precious few batteries to satisfy it.

How clever! Like a vacation, minus the travel part. It's quickly becoming the most overused word of the summer, with 185,000 hits on Google, and climbing.

A "staycation" is a way to avoid higher travel costs and reduce carbon emissions by staying put during your time off. Because you'll be paying $4+ per gallon of gas, the thinking goes, it's unlikely that you'll be filling up the RV, SUV or minivan and taking a long road trip. Unless you can afford it, of course.

On the surface, there's nothing terribly wrong with the concept. After all, staying local has its benefits. Nearby businesses and venues would love you to spend your vacation dollars with them and you automatically save by otherwise not enduring hours on end behind the wheel.

But marketers are starting to jump on the newly-coined term, and as oftentimes happens, things are taking a bizarre turn.

Take, for instance, an email I got couple of weeks ago. It was from an electronics retailer gushing about all the fun you can have during your staycation if only you bought more gadgets. Instead of watching your money evaporate out your tailpipe, you should instead spend it on TVs, game consoles, MP3 players and the electricity to power them. And let's not forget the massive A/C bill because you're mostly enjoying them indoors.

Yeah, that makes complete sense.

Look, I don't fault anyone for trying to make a buck. I like money too. But logic here is conspicuously absent. In this USA Today report, you can practically see them patting themselves on the back for their keen marketing skills.

Here's a wild, money-saving concept: spend less.

Bike or take a short drive to town. Go on a hike; take a walking tour; watch a film; pack a picnic and play fetch with the dog and ball with the kids... Those things are generally easy on the wallet, don't require an itinerary and won't fill your home with more stuff.

Work-wise, another good thing you can do before you embark on your staycation is turn those gadgets off! The folks at 1E, makers of Nightwatchman power management software, sent me this interesting statistic.

The aggregate power consumed by PCs left on over the 4th of July weekend (three day minimum for most office workers) will cost businesses up to $46 million. In addition to this hefty price tag, these PCs will cost the planet 474 million lbs of CO2 over three days, the same emissions as nearly 23 million gallons of gas!

Their advice, turn those PCs off when you walk out Thursday for your extended July 4th weekend. You can gather more stats in 1E's 2007 PC Energy Report. And if you find yourself with a few minutes to spare, give their Flash-based Turn It All Off game a spin. Do keep your distance from the cupboard of love, however.

And, of course, enjoy your staycation! Rant over.

It's green storage day!

Not officially, of course. It just occurred to me that today I wrote two green-themed storage items for the mothership.

The first one this morning, which shocked me to the "core", was on OCZ's line of "affordable" SSDs. A relative term, but they're the cheapest that I've seen so far. Hopefully other manufacturers will follow suit and start nudging their solid state drives into a blissful downward trajectory.

And up the capacity while you're at it, too. Thanks.

Also today, Pillar updated its NAS/SAN platform, the Axiom. Strictly for IT shops, their gear pools disk storage to bring utilization up using a variety of methods, including QoS (of sorts) like in networking. This means that less is "wasted" as there are fewer arrays to buy and keep powered. As novel as it sounds, your IT guys/gals will want to hear nothing of the sort for mission critical apps.

But Pillar has the tech down pat, they say, and offer some pretty convincing guarantees to back up it. I once spoke to a customer of theirs, a no-nonsense IT veteran, and he was singing its praises. Take it for what its worth.

Pillar's CEO, Mike Workman has an entertaining blog (if you're into storage). In this post, entitled "Smoking the Strong Stuff" he pours a cold bucket of reality on the notion that SSD will kick HDD to the curb by 2010. In short, while it makes sense for consumer applications (notebooks, mobiles) it will take more than 1.5 years before SSDs replace disks cost-effectively. Also fun is his missive on "Green Noise."

Good stuff!