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green posts

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, Search

Be Careful Where You Go Green: Znout vs. Greenseng Search


"Going green" is hot right now, and so are Google-based search sites. Znout and Greenseng have combined the two, offering ways to reduce environmental impact while scouring the web.

Znout (Zero Negative Output) has opted for a low-power black background, but unlike Blackle you can change the color if it's really bugging you. Advertising is a bit bothersome, with a large AdSense block atop the page and two sponsored links below, both before your search results.

You'll also notice the Znout favicon replaced by the little blue G, which leads me to believe that Znout has been hastily knocked together to grab some advertising dollars.

Greenseng, on the other hand, displays only the two sponsored links above your results. They've also left all Google's links - images, maps, shopping, news, etc. - intact.

Both Greenseng and Znout display the CO2 Stats "Green" badge, but only Greenseng's actually opened a certificate page. I'm much more convinced that the Greenseng team is doing what they do for the right reasons.

Since there's such a buzz about being environmental, make sure you take claims of being green with a grain of salt. Do a little investigating, and be sure you're supporting the right people!

For now, I'm sticking with Greenseng.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Edison Helps You Green Your PC

Rising energy costs and environmental concerns have caused just about all of use to take a good hard look at our usage habits. Verdiem's Edison helps your conservation efforts by picking up where your Windows power saving features leave off.

You may already be familiar with Local Cooling, another similar application. Edison won't hibernate or shut your PC off like Local Cooling will, but it will turn off your screen and hard drive, and suspend your PC to achieve savings.

Set up your work schedule and choose your power savings plan. Edison lets you create different plans for work and non-work times, and you can either use one of nine preset savings plans or customize your own.

While scheduling is a great feature, I'm not convinced it makes Edison a better option than Local Cooling. Edison is a much bigger download, consumes almost four times as much memory, and requires activation.

Either way, grab one of these apps and make your PC a little more environmentally friendly. Every little bit helps!

[via GreenBlog ]

Filed under: Web services

Fuelfrog: track gas mileage and cost

FuelfrogFuelfrog is a web service for tracking your gas mileage and cost-per-gallon trends which can provide insight into your empty wallet. By adding simple information each time you fill up your car, Fuelfrog will chart that data to provide a gas history.

Fuelfrog accepts updates via its website, but it also can accept data via Twitter direct message. Simply add your Twitter account to your Fuelfrog profile and Twitter the miles since your last fill up, price per gallon, and number of gallons purchased to @fuelfrog.

Someday you'll be able to log in to Fuelfrog and tell your children, "See, back in my day I only paid $4.00 for a gallon of gas!"

[Via del.icio.us]

Filed under: Video, Web services, Social Software

How sustainable are you?


Make Me Sustainable from Download Squad on Vimeo.

You know you should go green, you want to make a difference but, how? It's not easy, few things worth doing are. Make Me Sustainable takes an interesting approach to the green problem by giving you a way to track your own impact, and the impact of your influence.

Christina caught up with the guys from Make Me Sustainable during South By Southwest, and they gave us a lot to think about, and a great preview of what you'll find at MakeMeSustainable.com

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Blogging, Web services, Social Software

Hugg: diggs get green

Hugg, diggs get greenWe rarely get through a day without hearing about global warming, and how to make our lives a bit greener. Now Hugg brings it all online.

Hugg, similar to the social news website digg, allows users to vote up and down top news stories. But this site was built by the folks behind the popular eco-blog Treehugger, and it concentrates on green news. With an array of user submitted green news from green gift giving, practical ways to washing clothes and eco-friendly flooring, Hugg is on its way to being your one stop shop for the latest green news and trends in the marketplace.

Categories include architecture, beauty, celebrity, fashion and food. It is a relatively new site that is a bit low on the user submitted news at the moment, but it is growing with at least a few stories hitting the website each day.

So if you're feeling a little green, check in to Hugg to see what the hottest and freshest eco news is of the day.

Filed under: Business, Google

Google investing in green transportation solutions

Google investing in sustainable transport solutionsGoogle has said it will invest up to $10 million for green transportation solutions through their philanthropic arm.

Google has put out a request for proposals inviting entrepreneurs and companies to make travel greener in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Google.org initiative has grant investment amounts ranging from $500k to $2 million for select companies that can enable a widespread commercialization of hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles of vehicle to grid solutions.

The full Google.org RFP can be found here, with a deadline of October 22nd 2007 for final submissions.

Filed under: Business

Making the datacenter "Green" is harder than you think

green data centersGoogle and some of the other leading technology companies that depend on large amounts of power are working hard to ensure they are minimizing their power consumptions.

In order to cut down costs of electricity and ensure that systems are running in optimal conditions, many data center's are turning to alternative energy to power their high end systems. Google has fitted the Googleplex to be carbon neutral by investing in renewable energy sources, maximizing efficiency, and by purchasing carbon offsets for the emissions they cannot directly reduce.

ComputerWorld has put together a list targeted at IT professionals that list the top seven tips that will help minimize power consumption, heat, waste and chaos in this time of surging power demands, and extreme environmental awareness.

  1. Typically between 10%-30% of servers can potentially be turned off.
  2. Power management tools are available, but not many administrators don't use them.
  3. Invest in energy efficient servers.
  4. Inefficient power supplies can potentially waste half of the power before it actually gets to the equipment.
  5. Most IT companies are not accountable for efficiency because it gets tucked into the facilities tab, tracking energy directly from the source can help in determining what should change.
  6. Adopt energy efficient standards. Think EnergyStar specifications.
  7. Demand energy efficient IT products. Manufacturers won't design it, if customers don't ask for it.

Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services

It's easy being Green with BeGreenNow.com

begreennow

I have yet to come across a Web 2.0 application that has to do with environmental awareness like BeGreenNow.com does. This unique online application lets you calculate your current carbon footprint and teaches you how to offset it to help make the world a little greener. BeGreenNow is also a portal that educates and inspires people to influence and help out when it comes to the global climate issues surrounding our world.

To get started, sign up and enter your carbon calculator columns for your emissions in Electricity, Vehicles, Air Travel, and Natural Gas. As you change your routines to help the environment out, you can keep logging back in and updating records to see if your CO2 emissions have improved. A simple graph makes it easier to see what areas you could improve at. In all, it's a nice Green Web 2.0 app.

Filed under: Web services, Google

Google Maps go green

Google's Summer of Green

Google is showing its ecological side with Summer of Green, an attractive Google Maps mashup that, in a partnership with the Earth Day Network, "highlights some planet-friendly travel tips for top U.S. travel destinations as well as how to use Google Maps in your daily routine to find and support green activities." Though the site is a bit overloaded just now (when will Google learn that any site it launches is going to get pummeled?), it's very slick, clean, and easy to use.

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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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