If you like following news from your favorite sites, but you don't currently have a smartphone or other mobile computing option, it can be difficult to stay on top of things. I know I tend to get more reading time away from the computer than when I'm actually sitting at it. There's an odd service from Hewlett Packard that might be able to help you, as long as you don't mind killing a few trees.

HP has a site called Tabbloid that will allow you to enter RSS feeds for sites you'd like to follow, and it will automatically format and send you PDF files on a schedule populated with the contents of the feeds you entered. The formatting is very readable, but I'm not sure they're making the best use of space; I'd rather see the pages formatted into more columns, and maybe using a landscape format to better replicate the feeling of reading a newspaper or magazine.

It seems pretty transparent that what HP is hoping for here is to encourage users to get into the habit of regularly printing off reading material. Of course, if they do that, they will quickly be finding themselves at their local computer store buying ink for their printer. Evil genius!

OK, this isn't exactly a download. But all that software has to run on something, right?

Greenpeace has released their first ever global "e-waste" scorecard that ranks computer and electronics manufacturers in terms of how much effort they are putting into shrinking their environmental toxin profiles, and how successful they're being. Many people probably don't realize it, but most consumer electronics are potential mini environmental disasters: Lithium, Mercury, Bromine and Nickel--among other things--in batteries, switches, and relays; more lead than you can shake a stick at; petroleum-based plastic and polymer shells. And we haven't even gotten to the chemicals used in production or how the raw materials are mined and harvested. So how did the companies do? As you can see from the graphic above, not well. On a scale of one to ten, Dell and Nokia scored respectable sevens for their strong recycling programs and efforts to phase out some dangerous chemicals. In fact, their continued use of dangerous chemicals seems to be the only thing holding Dell back is its reliance on BFR-coated materials and PVC, for which companies lose double points in the rankings. The rest of their scores look surprisingly green.

On the other end of the spectrum are Motorloa and Lenovo, with scores of 1.7 and 1.3, respectively. Not much to say there, other than "shame on you." Apple, at 2.7, also loses out big, largely for playing nice with companies like Motorola. Apple itself has fairly high standards, but imposes few or no environmental requirements on its suppliers and contractors. They also don't match up to higher-scoring companies in the takeback/recycling department, offering take back policies in only five markets, and then only of their own products and only with a new purchase, although the policy is a little more liberal for corporate and educational customers. They get a "shame on you," too.

Of course, Greenpeace is hardly an unbiased source, so caveat lector, but it's an interesting start to what will almost certainly be a long and important discussion. Hopefully the next version will be a little more comprehensive. Where are the the chip makers, the big iron vendors? An electronics reprt card that doesn't even mention Sun, IMB, Cisco, Intel, or AMD seems incomplete to me.

[via J.Y.]