Lately: A look at how Amazon’s Kindle Fire browser, Silk, could further blur the lines between the cloud and mobile devices. Google boosts its support for residential solar – with its checkbook, of course. Iceland hopes to lure data center operators with its chill, renewables-friendly ways. Also, Intel readies new Atoms as it works to unseat […]
Archives for September 2011
Stat of the day: Feds dispose 10K computers… a week
How much e-waste does the U.S. government generate? According to General Services Administration (GSA) head Martha Johnson, “By some estimates, the federal government goes through 10,000 computers a week.” And that’s not the only staggering statistic in this Washington Post/Bloomberg article that examines the steps the GSA and EPA are taking to combat e-waste and […]
Banned! Apple nixes conflict mineral-y, e-waste-y Phone Story app
Game maker with a message, Molleindustria (NSFW), may have stumbled on a sure-fire way to shine a light on the dark side of the electronics industry: create an iOS app about it and get it banned by Apple. Long story short, the company created a game called Phone Story based on the unsavory practices surrounding the […]
Tech heavies team for SATA DEVSLP, a low-power SSD standard
Solid-state drives (SSDs) are pretty energy efficient, but there are those in the industry that feel that they can do a lot better and are partnering on developing a new standard called SATA DEVSLP. Who are they? They’re SanDisk, Samsung, Intel and Microsoft SanDisk. It’s important to note that three out of four of those […]
Intel’s mobile strategy hinges on Android
Poor Intel. (Insert sad emoticon.) Its energy-saving Atom chips helped fuel the rise of netbooks. But now, smartphones and tablets are all the rage and it’s ARM that’s reaping the rewards. So dominating is ARM in mobility that Microsoft’s touch-tastic Windows 8 OS will also run on the company’s processor tech. Now, after a seeming […]
Solar@Home? Harvard Clean Energy Project wants your PC
Distributed computing projects are a great way to harness the power of PCs out in the wild to solve scientific mysteries, help find cures for tough diseases and even search for extra terrestrial life. Now you can add solar panel research to the list. According to this article in Wired, researchers behind the Harvard Clean Energy […]
Stat of the day: 260 million watts
That’s approximately the amount of power required to keep Google’s data centers running. As this NYT piece mentions, all those searches, Gmail accounts, YouTube videos and tons of other services continually absorb 260 million watts, or about a quarter of the output of one nuclear power plant. There are two important things to note from this […]
SSDs: Beyond the price premium
Let’s get it out of the way, solid-state drives (SSDs) like Toshiba’s enterprise-class unit pictured above are expensive when you compare them to regular, magnetic hard drives. Old news, but it’s still a huge roadblock toward massive, widespread adoption. But those that are in the platter-free data storage camp are finding benefits that far outweigh […]
Interxion, SmartestEnergy team for 100% renewables-powered data center
Proving that renewables and big-city data centers can coexist, Interxion is powering its London facility completely with power purchased from SmartestEnergy. Why doesn’t the colo operator just stick to energy efficient IT equipment and infrastructure? Interxion’s Managing Director for the UK, Greg McCulloch, hints at looming CO2 regulations. He states, in a company release, “We […]
Think green for efficient data storage
In recent years, the data storage part of the IT energy efficiency equation has been getting a ton of attention. From deduplication drama to a white-hot flash startup scene, where our data’s stored and how it’s managed have become big priorities. The good news is that when it comes to architecting an efficient storage infrastructure […]
