Microsoft Research and the company’s IE team joined Pixel Lab, filmmaker David Breashears and his GlacierWorks foundation on the HTML5-powered, touch-enabled site Everest: Rivers of Ice. While obviously optimized for Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8/RT tablets like Microsoft’s Surface, the site appears to work well enough on other browsers (I tried it with Chrome). And it’s worth […]
Earth Day 2013 Highlights
Happy Earth Day! Things have been kinda slow around here, mostly due to my commitments over at sites like eWEEK and Datamation and an ongoing (if glacially paced) upgrade to this blog. But it’s Earth Day, and it would be criminal for this Green IT blogger to not chime in. This year, as we face […]
Despite green advances, cloud data centers dogged by dirty diesel
Cloud services providers are making enormous strides in data center efficiency. Take, for instance, Microsoft. “Today, Microsoft delivers more than 200 online services to 1+ billion customers and 20 million businesses in over 76 markets worldwide,” posts Brian Janous, Utility Architect, Data Center Advanced Development, at the Microsoft Global Foundations Services Blog. And that takes a lot of […]
Intel, Microsoft among top green energy buyers
A couple of IT companies made a strong showing on the EPA’s National Top 50 list of renewable energy buyers. According to the EPA, companies qualify for inclusion by meeting the following conditions: Organizations can meet EPA Partnership requirements using any combination of three different product options: (1) Renewable Energy Certificates, (2) On-site generation, and (3) […]
ARM’s a good influence on Windows 8 power management
With Windows 8, Microsoft is looking to make the operating system and the software that runs on it more efficient. This is important for this version of Windows because there will be a variant, called Windows on ARM (ARM), that runs on tablet-friendly ARM processors. In an MSDN blog post, Steven Sinofsky, president of Windows and Windows […]
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 […]
Infographic of the day: Cloud’s formation in 2011
What does the cloud look like in 2011? What’s it made of? Thanks to a survey conducted by BitNami, Cloud.com and cloud management firm Zenoss, we have a fascinating new snapshot of the cloud market. With the help of 500 IT professionals, the companies were able to get a bead on some of the factors […]
Can Microsoft Kinect with the smart home?
Besides leading to explosive sales for Microsoft, its Kinect add-on for the Xbox 360 has also turned into an impressive “innovation platform,” to quote Tim O’Reilly. One of those innovations comes from Nitrogen (aka Mike) who hacked a Kinect sensor bar to interface with a home automation control system. As you can see in the […]
Telepresence today: SAP’s sustainability council is allergic to air travel
Or at least it’s growing highly averse to it. And considering the state of teleconferencing tech today and its potential to cut carbon emissions, good for them. SAP, which is making a serious push to reduce its environmental impact and help other organizations measure and reduce theirs, relies primarily on teleconferencing technologies to conduct its […]
Analysis: Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP cloud strategy
An Industry Voices Post: Cloud computing is emerging as a way to trim IT costs and achieve both energy savings and carbon reductions. A win-win-win, right? Essentially, yes, but as any techie can tell you, any change in IT strategy merits a good, nuanced examination about how it affects your business. I’m thrilled to have […]
