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Filed under: Text, Office, Freeware

Does SPRANQ's Ecofont really use 20% less ink?


There are plenty of ways to green up your computing environment, from power saving apps like Edison to waste reducers like HP's Smart Web Printing.

What about your typeface of choice? Can an intelligently crafted font really reduce your ink usage by 20%? SPRANQ - a Utrecht-based communications firm - thinks it's possible. To that end, they've put a lot of time and effort into designing Ecofont.

The theory is simple: remove as much black area from a font without adversely impacting its readability.

Ecofont appears a little heavier than the fonts I typically print with, but zoomed to 600% in Photoshop the difference is quite obvious. Ecofont's holes should lighten your ink or toner consumption. Time will tell, and I'm certainly willing to give it a try.

Apart from the font itself, SPRANQ offers a few tips we can all put to good use: remember the environment when selecting your paper, and always try to use efficient printing equipment. I'll add one of my own: for everyday printing, use both sides of the paper if you can (just make sure your printer can handle duplexing first).

[ via Freeware World Team ]

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Reduce your computer's electric use with LocalCooling

LocalCooling
LocalCooling is a free Windows utility that can help you configure power saving settings on Vista and XP machines. Honestly, it doesn't add any configuration options that you wouldn't find in the Control Panel, but LocalCooling does have one nifty feature that Microsoft doesn't include. It provides an educated guess of just how many watts your PC uses.

Basically, LocalCooling scans your hardware and figures out how many watts your monitor, hard drives, CPU, graphics card, and other peripherals are probably using. Once the program has this estimate, it can also track how much energy you're saving by adjusting your power saving settings to do things like shut off yourmonitor, hard drives, or PC when you're not using them.

You can also create an account to track your energy savings against other users, or create teams to compete against other groups of LocalCooling users if you want to get all competitive about it.

[via gHacks]

Filed under: Internet, Google, Search

Google turns off the lights for Earth Hour today

Google Blackout
Google users in the US, UK, Canada, and a handful of other countries will notice that the page has gone black today. Do not adjust your monitors, this is intentional. Google is trying to draw attention to Earth Hour, an initiative to convince people to use less energy.

Now here's the thing, last year there a minor controversy over whether Google should permanently change its background to black in order to save energy. The theory is that it takes less energy to display a black background than a white one. But while that might have been somewhat true a few years ago when most computer users had cathode ray tube monitors, it actually takes more energy to display a black background on some modern LCD displays. So umm, essentially Google's black web page today could be contributing to an increase in energy use.

Hopefully if the move prompts a few folks to think about energy conservation, there'll be a net gain. But umm, seriously, Google, why go out of your way to debunk the myth of a energy-saving black Google last year just to promote it yourself today?

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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