25 Jul 2007, 18:01
I'm not usually a big fan of round robin emails, clogging up your in-box with inane trivia, dirty jokes, photos of cute animals, video clips of people falling over, or, worst of all, some guerrilla marketing message from a media company attempting to get down with the kids.
But that said, this dropped into my inbox today and it really is quite clever:
When your screen is white - an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when its black it consumes only 59 watts. Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved. In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with a lower energy consumption, check it out.
Use this site as your search engine and do your bit for the planet
Plus… no adverts…
It will of course be a miracle if many people go to the hassle of making the screen their home page, the energy savings achieved for LCD screens are miniscule, and with the site actually being operated by an Australian media company, Heap Media, rather than Google itself it lacks the search parameter tabs of the real Google.
But when it comes to energy conservation every little helps and you can't help but admire the lateral thinking.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
ABOUT JAMES' BLOG
Previously known as the BusinessGreen Blog, James' Blog features musings, observations and occasional rants from BusinessGreen editor James Murray
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