When your screen is white - an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when it is 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: Blackle. Use this site as your search engine and do your bit for the planet.
I just paid that new (to me) search engine a visit and I saw "109,496.714 Watt hours saved" below the search box. I don't know if that is displayed real time or updated. I will visit the new search engine again and check.
OK, noticed a link About Blackle at the bottom which tells what Blacle is all about and found the article that gave Google? the inspiration to set up the new search engine (I put a ? because other than other than that Google trademarked icon,
, I couldn't' see any connection to Google because the word "google" is not in the URL. I will try to contact Google and see if I can get confirmation that Blackle is really the new official environmentally friendly Google search engine.The article referred to above is Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year
Update 24 July 2007: It's not a Google product, (note the copyright to Heap Media). Someone suggested that it is a Google Custom Search Engine. There are a lot of comments in the post that inspired Blackle. If I have time, I will highlight the pertinent ones. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about the impact of Blackle to the environment, do surf over to that article and read the comments. There is a long list of them.
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8 comments:
Ooh, I'd no idea about Blackle. How fun!
Almost as much fun as how much I want to get in touch with you.
Hit me at kristopher (at) thisnext.com. I want to you to be a part of a green project we're putting together.
Hi Kristopher,
Glad you found this post/blog fun. Regarding your green project, I will like to know more about it. Maybe even try to help you publicise it by makiing a post on it.
Peter (Blog*Star 2006 and 2007)
Blogger Tips and Tricks
very informative. i never knew that the screen's color actually affects the watts consumed. i've learned something new today and look forward to learning new things about our environment. i've linked your blog on mine for easy access.
keep it up!
i'm trying to get myself used to Blackle as my new search engine. thanks for sharing this information with us. check out http://isleng.blogspot.com, the post enitled A Really Cool Blog is about yours, including Enviroman. thanks again.
Hi =isleng=
Thanks for the links in your sidebar. Sorry for approving this comment late (August?). Problem is I use different Blogger account for different types of blogs, including one created when I first started testing Blogger Beta. This site, unfortunately, is a low traffic blog, and because the interaction between readers and me of Blogger Tips and Tricks is so high, I direct comments for this blog to the email address I use to moderate Blogger Tips and Tricks and other blogger related blogs. I thus cannot moderate directly from that email address because I am logged into a different browser. I have to confess I was a bit lazy to sign out and sign in again to moderate.
Further, I am now a bit caught up with some problems with my country (though nothing compared with the problems the poor Burmese people are going through. There is a danger if we don't do some thing my grandson, I am a grandfather now, and the future generation may face similar problems as the ruling class continue to squander public funds and enrich themself and their cronies. Our oil money is running out. If we are not careful, we may end up as poor as Myamar (Burma).
See
Long March for Justice
Yang di-Pertuan Agong: Hope for Malaysia
Should non-Muslim have a say about Malaysia becoming an Islamic state?
Regarding "A Really Cool Blog", I did a search and found 4 posts:
N-Age
Home Equity Line of Credit?
Refinance Your House?
Newest Video.
Cannot find the one that mentioned my blogs. Would really like to read it. Hope you will respond and give me the link to the post.
Peter (Blog*Star)
Natural Remedies
Hi Peter!
Thanks for leaving a comment in my blog. It's ok that you just approved my comment, I wasn't in a hurry anyway. Just glad you got to read it. The link to the post is http://isleng.blogspot.com/2007/08/really-cool-blog.html
I don't know how you include urls in comments, so here's the link as it is. Hopefully you'll teach me that trick in your other blog? Thanks.
Changing to a black background only saves energy on a CRT screen not an LCD screen.
For those people using CRT screens you would save between 50% - 80% energy by switching to an LCD screen. This certainly makes more sense that changing the background color of a website.
Cheers
zeroanarchy
http://envirotalk.com.au
Yeah I had no idea about Blackle.com either. That is very interesting to know. I will be using it from now on.
Thanks for sharing!
Sincerely,
Jamie Boyle
Get Clean! Go Green!
www.GoGreenChum.com
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