San Fran Goes Dark, Cripples IT

Probably know that San Fran went dark a few days ago for two hours, affecting 30 to 50 thousand customers. Granted, lack of a live wire is bad for people, but it's also bad for data; the blackout took many big internet sites offline, including 365 Main, Craigslist, Technorati, Yelp, AdBrite, TypePad, and LiveJournal. Imagine the outrage; not only was I prevented from blogging, but my non-stop feed to the free section of Craigslist wasn't working!

Power outrages are increasingly common; Pakistan and India have daily cuts, and the whole island of Jamaica regularly loses power. What is most unusual is that strom shortages are appearing in the developed world as well. For example, Barcelona went dark (350,000 without power), and the St. Louis Arch went dead on Sunday, trapping dozens of tourists.

Power outages are caused by various factors including load, aging infrastructure, and chaotic mishap, and cities are fraught with all of these items. Bottom line for IT is that urban areas are no place for your data to grow up in; get it out. The Land of Fire and Ice might be a good try; barring that, at least run your operation efficiently, ala Google.::SFGate

Facts and Fallacies on Black Google

I can see from my hit counter that Black Google is making the rounds again. It's interesting; this is the third time the Black Google wave has crashed over the world. Since some of the facts get tangled every time, I thought I would do a little Q&A on the topic.

Q: Are the calculations in the original post correct?
A: Yes, the calculations are correct, Black Google would save 750 MWh a year. Thousands of people have reviewed the calculations - they are right.

Q: But some sites are reporting a 3000 MWh savings...
A: The original calculations were not correct because I assumed that the power savings was for every monitor, and in fact this is not true. This is a viral mistruth, probably caused by the fact that the original link still has '3000' in it. 750 is the number.

Q: You are talking about the LCD monitors right? They have a backlight that is always on, and use the same amount of energy or even a little more to show black. You have to exclude them from the calculations.
A: That is correct, using Black Google makes little or no difference when you have a LCD monitor. This was set straight almost immediately, but there are still tons of postings and comments on this issue. It's has been common knowledge for months. The 750MWh number reflects this fact; Black Google still saves energy.

Q: So, in a year or two the whole thing will be pointless because CRTs are going away.
A: They are being replaced, but as of 2006 25% of all the monitors in the world are still CRTs, and that number goes up for China (50 percent) and South America (75 percent). Also, there are new technologies such as plasma and OLED where white costs money - these technologies are on the rise so we will be right back in the same boat. And there are handheld devices as well, battery operated where power is a bigger deal.

Q: So, 750MWh is the right number?
A: No, it's higher now! Pablo Paster did some recent calculations and the savings is up to a conservative 1500 MWh. The reason is that Google is getting more traffic, and that he counted page hits while I just counted queries.

Q: So Google took your advice and created Blackle? Good for them!
A: No, Blackle is an independent site runs by HeapMedia. There are quite a few out there now, including Earthle, Greygle, GreenerGle, one at blogspot, Ninja, Trek Black, Spanish Black Google, and German Black Google. But my all time favorite is the guy who made the mega site of bible studies based on a misspelling of one of these engines.

Q: It hurts my eyes to use Black Google - white on black is the most natural.
A: The white on black palette was probably just adopted from the paper printing world, and there have been several studies (many from the 80s) on what the best color scheme is. I've heard white on grey, green on yellow, white on green, green on black, amber on black, and white on black. I think the jury is still out.

Q: Why doesn't every big site adopt a black blackground - MSN, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.?
A: Why doesn't every big site do this?

On Fox Tonight

Catch me on Fox 25 News (Boston) tonight at 10pm talking about carbon offsets. Here's a primer to get you going:

Want Some Carbon With That?

You Want Carbon?

Built on Guilt - Carbon Offsets

(Update - Link Here.)

Thanks

Ecoiron dropped under 3,000 on Technorati today, two months after dropping under 5,000. Thanks guys, you're the best, I'll keep cranking it out. And if you are interested in writing for ecoIron, drop me a line.

Economics of Virtualization May Be "Off Planet"

With the promise of reduced costs and increased efficiency, the virtualization rage continues in the techno-sphere. The basic premise of virtualization is to make one server do the work of many; this increases utilization, and hence requires less servers. Fewer servers mean less power, which in turn means less CO2, thus saving the planet. Simple.

But now there's a counterpoint; "yes, you have fewer servers in a virtualized environment, but each one of those servers is more heavily utilized, and because they are doing more work their power consumption goes up. The net gain is zero." Can that be? When I interviewed Foedus, they claimed one could get up to a 20 to 1 reduction in hardware using virtualization; it's hard to believe that doesn't more than make up for the extra power. Quocirca did their own analysis and came to the same conclusion. On the other hand, when I interviewed John Engates of Rackspace, he agreed that the power to run the heavier-laden box beats the costs of buying it - the juice beats the iron.

There's got to be missing pieces of the puzzle here - perhaps not all servers virtualize well, or we need to take into account the specific kinds of applications being served. And other items, such as ambient temperature and facility design, clearly make a big difference as well. The takeaway is that, like most things, establishing what power savings you are going to get from an infrastructure virtualisation project is not straightforward, but there is a potential for a win-win here - you will not only be saving the planet, but also money. And with the total power costs over the lifetime of a server currently estimated as being in the region of 50 per cent of the hardware costs, self-interest may play as big a part here as enlightened altruism; I'm still for jumping on the calliope.::Quorica :: The Register

A Horde of Hosts : Interview with John Engates, Rackspace

With over 30,000 servers and 12,000 customers, Rackspace is one of the biggest hosting providers in the world. Big companies can be slower to take environmental initiatives - they are aren't running all these boxes off of solar, for example - yet when they do make a move it usually has a bigger, longer lasting impact. TH recently had the 'tunity to interview John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, to see what they were up to.

Hi John, can you explain what Rackspace does?

In its simplest form, we offer managed hosting; this is an offering whereby companies look to outsource their hosting solutions.

Rackspace Managed Hosting delivers enterprise-level managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 12,000 customers in eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support™. Through trusted relationships, Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments, enabling them to focus on their core business.

The average replacement cycle for hardware is two to four years - what is your timespan? Do you have any plans to extend it?

Rackspace replaces hardware as customers order new hardware or as their contract ends and they leave the company. Rackspace does attempt to recycle that gear as long as is reasonably possible. They don’t have a mandatory replacement timeline, so they use it as long as possible.

The average CPU utilization for hosting is absurdly low, often as low as 10 percent... do you have a number the CPU utilization of your equipment? How does this compare to the industry standard?

Don’t have specific numbers, but the nature of Rackspace’s business (production managed hosting services) lends itself to generally higher utilization than typical corporate datacenters.

Do you use virtualization? What if any advantages for the environment do you see in using this technology?

Rackspace does not currently have a virtualization offering, but plans are underway to announce one in Q4 2007.

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.)

From an environmental perspective, what are the advantages of going with a managed hosting provider? Any disadvantages?

Service providers like Rackspace have the scale and resources to develop their own management tools, and Rackspace creates multiple efficiencies and reduces costs for its customers.

On a related note, Rackspace recently announced a “green” data center. The new facility will provide capacity to add more than 40,000 servers to support Rackspace’s growing customer base; it will help to reduce Rackspace’s dependency on fossil fuel. Slough Heat and Power, which will supply the Rackspace data center with the required power, does not burn coal and instead uses clean wood chips and fiber fuel, both renewable, biomass energy sources. In the process, material is shredded and converted into small, odourless cubes, which are then combusted to generate electricity, hot water and steam for local businesses and residents.

What is your take on free software - do you use it? Overall, do you think the total cost of ownership (TCO) of free software is less or more than commercial packages?

Rackspace uses open source software, but it’s not all free. They do pay maintenance fees for the Linux software they deploy. Even open source software that doesn’t require a maintenance fee is not really “free.” The costs of maintaining a free software environment may be slightly less expensive than the commercial alternative, but there are pluses and minuses to either, so Rackspace always recommends looking at your pool of talent and choosing the software based on who is going to be operating and maintaining it.

Gartner predicts that energy will account for 50 percent of the typical IT budget in the next few years. Do you agree with this number? How does managed hosting/green grid initiatives help to reduce this number?

Rackspace is seeing projections in their datacenter models that tell them that those numbers are not at all unrealistic. Managed Hosting will help reduce the cost when compared to a typical corporate datacenter. Rackspace can negotiate better power arrangements and they have the scale to implement more efficient technologies than most typical IT datacenters would be able to accomplish. Rackspace also has the scale to have people on staff thinking about efficiency on a full time basis. Their participation in Green Grid is an example of their commitment to driving efficiency in the datacenter. Rackspace believes it will improve efficiency and potentially help offsite rising energy costs.

What is the future of managed hosting? Will we see more or less hardware consolidation in the IT industry, and what are the biggest drivers for these changes?

Rackspace sees the future of managed hosting as ‘All IT is hosted,’ meaning more and more companies will need more than just there website hosted. They’ll need solutions like email and internal infrastructure hosted with a provider like Rackspace. Rackspace feels if it is not your core business, if it’s not revenue-generating, then you are wasting time, money and manpower supporting it internally when you can let companies like Rackspace host it better and faster.The biggest drivers for changes like hardware consolidation lie in better technology. Virtualization obviously has its pros with more applications running on fewer servers, but as the servers in general improve, they will be able to run more applications before using virtualization.

Verizon Gets Out of The Copper Business

Copper hit $3.66 a pound today on the COMEX exchange - that's a lot. Copper is heavier than iron, and the weight really adds up quickly. For example, it only takes 146 pre-1982 pennies to make a pound. Yes, that means you can make $2.20/lb. by melting down your pennies. Except, of course, it is explicitly illegal to do so. At current rates, A cubic inch of copper is worth a little over a dollar; a cubic foot is (get this) worth over $2000.

It's not just copper; aluminum, zinc, bronze and stainless steel are all commanding high prices these days. These may seem like novel facts until one more novel fact is added; that is, a lot of public infrastructure is made out of these metals. Enterprising folks are literally ripping off anything that isn't nailed down - bleachers for example. Beer kegs aren't being returned, and some police departments can't get ammunition. Fortune, for all its glory, printed a veritable how-to guide on how to pick and choose the Choice items in publo-sphere. And some big companies, like Verizon, are taking big hits.

Verizon, the telcom provider, is bleeding from every pore; vandals stole over $300,000 in copper from their cell phone towers last year, and that was just in California! In addition, their copper cable network is collapsing, because subscribers are abandoning it in favor of their faster FIOS (fiber optic) network. Maybe that's why Verizon made the decison to kill off their copper infrastructure.

Some malcontents are complaining that they are screwing the customer, because if they don't like the new FIOS service then 'they can't go back to copper lines'. Who? Wha? Guys, when a rogue cuts at 20 foot section out of a trunk cable and sells it for the copper, there's no phone service, and one can hardly expect Verizon to maintain two infrastructures. Scarce resources will require some adaptation; Verizon's new silicon-based FIOS is faster and more resource efficient. And it won't get ripped off either. (follow up - oops, I guess it does get ripped off!) :: CNN

Mike Dell Drives a Hummer - Boo Hoo or Yee Haw?

Last month AutoMotoPortal filled us in on the cars that famous geeks drive. It's interesting, if not surprising, reading. Turns out that Mike Dell drives a Hummer a good deal of the time; let's look at the environmental repercussions of that bit of information, and figure out what to do with it.

Dell has received high eco marks, and much of this credit could easily be attributed to Michael Dell himself; does he get Bonus for his hard work? Thoughts were muddied and confused on the issue, and some kind of comparison was needed. Let's take Mr. Dell, myself, and the "World Citizen" who survives on $2 a day (they are half the world's population by the way). Now, let's overlap these three guys with driving a Hummer, a Prius, and a Bicycle. Here are the results.

Michael Dell
Hummer
First Thought: couldn't he do with less car?
Second Thought: might be justified (don't billionaires need security personnel?)

Michael Dell
Prius
First Thought: that would be a statement!
Second Thought: probably doesn't meet his needs as a global executive.

Michael Dell
Bicycle
First Thought: wow!
Second Thought: is an idiotic waste of Michael Dell's time.

Myself
Hummer
First Thought: what am I doing in this thing?
Second Thought: is one of most absurd decisions I made in my life!

Myself
Prius
First Thought: I'm sacrificing some leg room, but it gets good mileage.
Second Thought: might be the next car for me.

Myself
Bicycle
First Thought: if I don't get killed on the streets of Boston, I'll feel good.
Second Thought: is fairly unrealistic for a busy guy with a family.

World Citizen
Hummer
First Thought: I hope it makes carrying water from the well ten miles away easier.
Second Thought: is none of my business - who am I to say what a guy living on $2 a day can and cannot do?

World Citizen
Prius
First Thought: I hope it makes carrying water from the well ten miles away easier.
Second Thought: is none of my business - who am I to say what a guy living on $2 a day can and cannot do?

World Citizen
Bicycle
First Thought: I hope it makes carrying water from the well ten miles away easier.
Second Thought: is none of my business - who am I to say what a guy living on $2 a day can and cannot do?

Let's tally the results; Dell's vehicle of choice seems bad, but in fact it might be the most practical one of the three for him. The Hummer and bicycle were bad choices for me, but the Prius seemed good. Finally, I felt so bad for the $2 a day guy that I didn't really care what form of transportation they had.

Overall, it seems like practicality, tailored to personal needs and situation wins the day. I challenge the readers; is there a better environmental argument?

Oh The iPhone, Oh The Abuse

Leaders do things that are new - they explore the unknown, turn the world on its head, break up old patterns and ways of doing things. For these reasons, leaders are going to catch shrapnel from all angles. In fact, if you want to locate the leader, it's pretty simple; just find the guy taking the most abuse.

Like Apple and their poor iPhone. Oh the abuse! For starters, they are gouging the customer, selling a $220 item for hundreds more. It's been hacked to run on non-ATT networks, and the eWaste reports are already pouring out of the news-o-sphere. And the tiltable screen, where the picture automatically rotates when you turn it sideways, may already be copyrighted by Sony. We can assume they didn't use a mercury switch to implement that little feature, can't we?

Boo hoo, poor little pome. But let's get down to the the green tacks - fact is, the iPhone will be the last phone you will ever buy. You will not trade it in 18 months. It is unlikely you will drop a $600 phone in the toilet. The iPhone and its kind are going to end the planned obsolescence cell phone cycle. That's why Apple is the leader, and that's why the iPhone is great. :: Gizmodo

Secret, Efficient Power Supplies From Google

Google, google, google, google - what don't they have a green pinky in these days? The coolio-video above 'strates how they design the custom, super efficient power supplies for their server farms. Google builds its own machines (and has for some time) using a team of hardware engineers expressly dedicated to the task. With the goal of efficiency foremost in mind, it's no surprise they are leading the pack in this area as well; can you leave some for the rest of us please? ::Ubergizmo

Cell Phones Outpace Humans in 'Births' by 5 to 1

I recently suggested that flesh and blood planet dwellers (humans) may soon be competing for resources with electronic machines (computers). A recent report from CNN just drives it home; global mobile phone use will top 3.25 billion users in 2007, mostly due to demand from China, India, and Africa. That's about half the world's population with a cell phone.

The similarities between cell phones and babies are many. They both require you to keep them powered continuously. They both get born - cell phones at about 1000 phones a minute, based on subscriptions and babies at about 180 per minute, over five times slower. Strangely, cell phones are also like babies in that you can have more than one. In fact, over 30 countries already have a saturation rate of over 100 percent, meaning there are more cell phones than people in these countries. Finally, they both seem pretty indispensable; a recent British survey suggested that one third of those polled wouldn't give up their phone for a million pounds. Let's hope they say that about their kids.

Is it a crisis? Well, the average cell phone uses about 3 watts, and there is the power and associated with charging it, the cost of running the towers, and the costs to actually make the phone. The cost of the baby is a few hundred calories a day, plus the caloric manufacturing costs. These facts and figures constitute the typical environmental scenario - small increments that add up big - but unless you are a believer in unlimited energy, the smart bet is the one where we ultimately have to stop making electronics, or babies. : CNN

The Cheaper PC, the Smaller PC, and the Greener PC

The computer industry is constantly producing smaller and cheaper machines. On the face of it that seems great, but is it really? What are the benefits or smaller/cheaper PCs? Furthermore, are they eco?

Let's see what we got; for starters, cheaper computers will invariably mean more computers, maybe a billion more by 2015; some think that demand will explode when an $80 dollar price point is hit, which is rapidly approaching. In energy terms, an efficient laptop uses about 25 watts of power; a desktop uses much more (call it 100 watts), which is roughly the power a human being on a 2200 calorie diet requires. So, in energy terms, adding a billion desktop PC is like adding a billion humans to the planet; adding a billion laptops is like adding 200 million. Can the planet afford those kind of resources? Probably not, without getting into the sticky situation of machines competing with humans for resources. So, cheaper computing will place more burdens on our ecosystems, and us.

How about smaller computers? It is doubtful that these would drive demand, but they might use fewer resources to create. Take for example the Space Cube, which claims to be the world's smallest PC. It measures just 2 x 2 x 2.2 inches, which is enough volume for 64 MB of SDRAM and a CPU that can go as fast as 300 MHz. Eco-wise, there are a few benefits but not many; the processor uses generally the same amount of resources to create, although you would save a bit on power consumption. And the SDRAM may be a little more eco-friendly to produce than a hard drive. The other items - keyboard, mouse, monitor - fall out of the equation, so a nix must be given to the 'smaller=more eco' hypothesis.:: KrisTV :: SciFi Tech

Scoring the Green Electronics Scorecarders

Rating electronic vendors on how well they are doing environmentally, their green-wise-ness as it were, is a popular phenom these days. Currently there have been three attempts of note; the EPA took a crack at it with the EPEAT standard, Greenpeace gave a go with their Green Electronics Guide, and now we have yet another, the Climate Counts scorecard which rates vendors (not just electronic vendors, but they are included) on their climate change efforts.

A quick site perusal reveals that the scales are not comparable; Samsung rates poorly on the Climate Counts page, yet does well on the EPEAT page, and is somewhere in the middle on the Greenpeace page. One (not just me) might wonder how to interpret the results; here is a short guide on inspecting the inspectors.First, is the rating system inclusive or exclusive? An inclusive system allows every potential vendor to be rated, an exclusive system concentrates on a select set of vendors. Inclusive systems (such as EPEAT) are better because every manufacturer can get rated; if someone starts making LCD monitors in their garage tomorrow they can run through the scorecard and see how they stack up. Exclusive systems (Greenpeace, Climate Counts) focus on just a few companies, usually from a list they create themselves. This brings into question why that particular subset of the industry was chosen, and it is also difficult to change the group as time goes on - what would be the rationale?

Second, is the system participatory, meaning did the reviewees get a chance to comment on, and help create the rating system? For example, the EPA spent three years working with all the major computer vendors to create the EPEAT point-based rating system; Climate Counts did some of this it seems, and Greenpeace might have had a few meetings as well. However, I'm pretty sure the latter two didn't spend three years, and countless meetings with dozens of stakeholders developing their scorecards. Participatory standards have greater incentives for the manufacturers to participate, are generally more realistic, and have greater accountability as well.

Third, what is being measured and as a corollary, should you care? Treehugger's take on it is that Greenpeace rates environmental policy, Climate Counts rates greenhouse gas emissions, and EPEAT rates physical factors of particular products; choose the element(s) that are most important to you. Of course, some items such as revolutionary changes in design are missing from all the rating systems; Apple, for example, gets no credit for single-handedly creating the desktop publishing industry, saving billions of trees, or converting the entire music industry into digital format, saving billions of CD-ROMs. Again, if this is what you value you don't need a scorecard, you just follow the leader. :: Worldchanging :: Valleywag

Printers Guzzle Ink, Tell Lies

It's no secret that ink printer manufacturers try and make most of their money off the consumables associated with printing. Unlike laser printers, they essentially give away the printer, but then charge a lot of money for the the inkjet cartridges and, to a lesser extent, the paper. Fine, but apparently there is a bit more to the story, as a new study found that more than half of the ink from inkjet cartridges is wasted when users toss them in the garbage. This is because most users huck them when their printers tells them they're out of ink. Turns out the infernal gadget is lying - they may still be over half full!

The findings come from a study, conducted by TÜV Rheinland and commissioned by Epson, that studied the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges from various vendors. Surprise, surprise - Epson's own R360 posted the best numbers, with only 9 percent of the ink wasted. Kodak's, with its EasyShare 5300 came in as the straggler, wasting over 64 percent of its ink in tests. According to the study, some printers have hundreds of pages worth of ink left when they beep that they are 'dry'. And there's another wrinkle as well.

Readers that have followed the printing world for a while know that some printers use multi-ink cartridges (3 to 5 colors all in the same cartridge) and some use separate cartridges (one cartridge, one color.) Obviously, the multi-ink cartridge fare worse in these types of tests because they can be 'emptied' as soon as a single color runs low (like when printing out a Powerpoint presentation.) This unravels the story a little bit more, as Epson (who backed the study) uses primarily single-ink cartridges in their printers; this is almost guaranteed to be more efficient because there's only one color per cartridge, and thus only one cartridge to replace when that color runs out. These still waste ink - up to 20 percent - but generally were better than the multi-ink cartridge models.

The final wrinkle is that the study also did not calculate the total cost per page, which arguably is more important than efficiency. Epson refused to comment on this which suggests, well, you know. Lots of solutions to the problem; First, don't listen to your printer and use your cartridges until they run dry. Second, try an online service like Photobox, or use a continuous flow system. And third, if you are buying a printer, check out cost per page as well. :: arsTechnica

Add Thomas & Friends to the List of Toxic Chinese Products

RC2 Corp., which sells Thomas the Tank Engine toys, is recalling over 1.5 million Thomas & Friends wooden railway vehicles and accessories because their surface paint contains lead. This is a massive recall; it's about 4 percent of all the trains RC2 has sold in the United States. I can personally confirm this, my son had fourteen of the items on the list. Get the return form here.

The U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) report states that the toys were manufactured in China. Now, I don't want to nip and prod but my kid, your kid, played with those trains. And, barring readers who just woke from a coma (congrats, by the way), it's not news that lead paint has been banned in the US for almost 30 years. Did that message not percolate across the Pacific? Guess not, because China was held accountable for 65 percent of all the recalled products in this US this year, with lead being named as a recurring cause among the recalls.

Some say that when a country has 800 million people employed in a manufacturing economy, it will just take some time to correct these issues. Cough, cough; in the case of lead, you have had 30 years. Truth is, these are simply bad faith manufacturing practices and the list is endless - the one million recalled Easy-Bake Ovens, the deadly vinyl lunch boxes, the melamine pet food, the Chinese cold medicine that killed 51 Panamanians, the toothpaste that contains anti-freeze, the soy sauce made out of hair. Here's one word for you - 近义词. :: ABC

Clamping Down on Website Traffic

Unless you work in information technology, you probably don't think about how much money a web site costs to operate, but it can be expensive. First, you have to hire developers to set up and design the site. Then you need a few servers to host your web pages and extra files (movie clips, pdf files, articles, etc). Finally, you will need to front some cash just to send the content out to your audience; this last item is called bandwidth, and that is what we are interested in today.

There are lots of ways to save on bandwidth. For starters, you can cut down on the number of images your site displays, and keep the text down to a minimum. Berkshire Hathaway, owned by the billionnaire Warren Buffet, is a great example of this minimalist concept in action. But the really big money can be saved by using a technique known as web compression.

Compression just means the the web host crunches the files down before they are sent, using an mathematical algorithm. Next, the web surfer receives the content; it gets re-inflated, then it pops up in your browser. It may sound complicated but in fact you are probably doing it right now; Treehugger crunches every page about 80 percent before sending it, and almost every browser these days supports compression.

You can save a bundle using this technique - up to 50 percent off your bandwidth bill, according to Serverwatch. And your pages will load faster to boot, which makes for happy viewers. Surprisingly, according to a recent study by Port80 Software, only about 17% of the Fortune 500 use web compression on their corporate sites. This wastes millions of dollars a year (good guys include eBay, Yahoo!, and Amazon, to name a few) Check your favorite sites here, and start firing off the emails. :: Serverwatch :: Port 80

It Has Come: Greenware

I have been waiting for this one for a while, but now it has finally taken fruit - the deluge of software to support all ths environmental business. Kick it off with Green Wombat (CNN's blog?) and Fat Spaniel's cool app to monitor solar power use for builidngs and the like. Way to go, bring your friends.

HP First to Hit Gold Computing Standard

HP just released the first PC on the market to achieve EPEAT (Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool) gold status. EPEAT-registered products are designated as "bronze," "silver," or "gold," depending on the number of environmental features they possess, such as reduced levels of hazardous materials, improved energy efficiency, and ease of upgrade and recycle. The EPEAT standard was developed over the course of 2 years with full involvement from all major computing equipment vendors, and was funded from the US EPA; it is the gold standard of all the environmental computing standards.

The HP's rp5700 Business Desktop PC comes with a standard 80 percent efficient power supply; many PCs settle on 65 percent. That extra efficiency means lower electrical usage as well as less heat, all of which contributes to cost savings. Also, the systems have an (unheard of) five-year lifecycle. According to HP, the systems are built with 95 percent recyclable components, and the plastic components are made, on average, of at least 10 percent post-consumer recycled plastics. Additionally, the outer packaging contains at least 25 percent post-consumer recycled cardboard. But there's still more.

HP also has developed a solar renewable energy source as an alternative power choice for the computer. Called the Solar PowerPac II, when charged it can provide up to 600 watt-hours of power for small loads. The PowerPac is big and costly - it weighs 60 pounds and has a price tag of $1,325 - but is a innovative option. Like other PCs that have recently made it to the market, both from HP and Dell, only certain configurations of the rp5700 meet the Energy Star 4.0 standard, and it is questionable whether Microsoft Vista will run on such a system. But the rp5700 supports both Windows 2000 and XP as well. Great job HP on your victory! :: Infoworld :: HP

A Phone In The Hand Beats Two In The Head

This just in from SimplySwitch; a recent study found that a little over a quarter of the 18 million cell phones purchased in the UK end up being lost or damaged every year. Topping the list is dropping the chatter into the crapper; that's right, a staggering 855,000 handsets are flushed down toilets every year. That translates into about £342 million in additional revenue for the cell phone sellers.

Phones in the throne aren't the only problem; other common catastrophes include leaving mobiles in the pub (810,000 handsets) in a taxi (315,000) or on a bus (225,000). Dogs ate another 58,500, and 116,000 went through a spin cycle with the dirty laundry. The finger of blame points at the young - a full 40 per cent of those under 34 admitted to losing or damaging their phone. Don't they know the value of a pound? Or maybe respect for material goods is the issue; try giving your phone a name. Remember, you can't green your electronics when they are in the sewer. :: SimplySwitch

The Fix Is In

When does your electronic gear die? Usually when it's too expensive to fix, or is superseded by better, more efficient technology. Fact is, we probably throw electronics out too soon, especially when you have dudes like Lance Ulanoff giving tips on how to fix them. Read the article and laugh, because most of the time Lance is fixing these broken items in under 5 minutes.

Add to this a wonderful expose of the repair cultures that exist in various parts of the world to fix electronic goods (powerpoint slides here). There can be something very beautiful about repairing objects when it becomes a national phenom; witness the American cars from the 1950's that are in Cuba, all lovingly restored and still on the road, and the Indian locomotives still tooting away. Most peoples of the world fix at least some things when they break; it's only in America where you get a virus and the computer gets thrown out. Reminds me of the classic image of the King taking a bite out of a chicken leg and throwing it over his shoulder - is there really no market for fixed things? And are we paid so much that repairing items is just not worth our time? :: PCMag :: Future Perfect