Google’s Automated Toyota Prius October 13, 2010

Autodrive Prius

If you’re going to be testing unmarked automated cars in the field, inevitably people will get curious and – because it’s 2010 and all – whip out their video cameras or cellphones to record them in action. If you’re Robert Scoble, you’ll even do it while driving.

Hence the video of Google’s awesome automated Toyota Prius cars we posted earlier (as well as Scoble’s).

But here’s one that was captured last March at the Googleplex, stopping for a red light, giving the guy who recorded the video (hat tip to Van Tucker) the chance to get some close-ups of the car and the sensor that’s mounted on top.

I’m terribly excited about the prospects of automated cars becoming the trend in, say, a decade or so. And you’ll get to brag that you watched one of the first videos of Google testing the technology on the road back in 2010. Unless it flops, of course, in which case you’ll still get to say you watched a video of another thing Google cooked up but never got anywhere.

Still, kudos for the desire to innovate, you Mountain View idealists you.

 

Google Automated Prius at Google Campus – March 2010 from Van Tucker on Vimeo.

Level Green, The Autostadt, Wolfsburg December 11, 2009

Sustainability exhibition at Volkswagen’s Autostadt

November 24th, 2009

If the fabulous landscaping, architecture and the famous CarTowers weren’t enough to persuade you to take a visit to Volkswagen’s impressive ‘Autostadt‘, then this new permanent exhibition from Berlin architects J. Mayer H. might tip the balance for you. A collaboration with interactive media specialists, and fellow Berliners, Art+Com, this otherworldly, architectural space offers experiential learning on sustainability issues through a variety of touch-screen technical installations. The rather ginormous green shapey things are apparently based upon the internationally recognised PET symbol, which we’re sure was all very nice to say when presented to the client, but who are they kidding? This beautifully bizarre, luminous, melted wall madness was surely born from some crazy hallucinogenic toad-licking experience.

Source

Dutch Company’s ‘Ecofont’ Saves Printer Ink December 23, 2008

From the Maybe a Bit Over-the-Top Department:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — A Dutch company looking for ways to reduce the environmental costs of printing has developed a new font that it says cuts ink usage by about 15 percent.

In essence, the “Ecofont” has little holes in the letters.

Spranq, the Utrecht-based marketing and communications company that designed the font, struck on a Swiss-cheese design after failures with earlier experiments using thin letters and partial letters — like the stripes of a zebra.

“It turns out that it’s necessary to preserve the size and outline of letters to keep them readable,” company co-founder Gerjon Zomer says.

• Click here to download the Ecofont.

He concedes the font isn’t beautiful, but says it could be adequate for personal use or for internal use at a company.

Spranq offers the font free on its Web site. Zomer says his site saw a spike in traffic last week as word of the Ecofont began to spread. Much of the international traffic came from the United States.

He says that was kind of gratifying because “when you put something online you never know what to expect.”

The company is inviting developers to improve the Ecofont further under a free, open-source model, and Zomer says Arabic and Hebrew versions are already under development.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,471088,00.html

A “Green Computing” Coming of Age November 20, 2008

By Bob Ferrari

Normally when a normal person is having environmental concerns over their carbon-footprint that they may be emitting their usual thoughts encompass the usual suspects – cars, electric generation, heating and air conditioning (HVAC), trash generation, or maybe even the unbelievable electrical consumption of the brand new black-hole creating Large Hadron Collider.

Whatever those thoughts might be, these people probably don’t spend much time considering just how much energy their computer is using, or the printer, monitor, television, VCR, DVD, XBox, or the Wii is using. When these devices are all “off”, most of them are still using electricity when they are in “standby” mode. Various electric companies estimate that current electrical usage from devices in “standby” mode is about 2% of total electrical consumption!

In a world where computers are everywhere, and environmental concerns are growing by the day, we need to consider how we can build, use and dispose of computers in a manner that is contributory to the health of the environment. That includes reductions in the use of lead and other hazardous materials in manufacturing, cautious energy consumption, lowering of paper waste by computer users, and concern for salvage or recycling of old computers. Millions of computers are dumped into landfills each year, which equates to a lot of mercury, lead, and cadmium that will leech into both water and air.

Practically Slave labor - Chinese imported hitech waste dumps

Chinese imported computer graveyard

As to salvaging of old computers, there are many new companies formed simply around this idea. In the last few years there have been hundreds of small computer recyclers popping up all over the world that are actively engaging in the collecting of and recycling of old computer materials. A lot of this material is shipped overseas to China where people make 60 cents a a day rummaging through these imported waste heaps for precious metals and anything else of value. Currently it is unclear as to how much of this matieral actually is recycled. Yet at the same time, most computers end up in the regular waste stream directly from the homes and businesses they served for their few years of life. Current statistics in Britain show that only 10% of computers are actually sent directly to recyclers. 40% are given to friends and relatives with 10% of this number actually ending up being recycled. The other 50% end up being tossed directly into the normal waste stream… what a waste.

10% of British consumers actually recycled their old computers

How Green Is Your Computer?

Thursday, November 20, 2008

By Corinna Underwood

We’re so dependent on our computers these days that most of us would be lost without them. They make communication, work and entertainment much easier — yet their negative effects on the environment are often overlooked.

The energy used in producing and operating personal and workplace computers is huge. Corporate IT equipment alone uses more than 22 billion kilowatt-hours per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a branch of the Department of Energy.

But it’s not only computers’ energy consumption that’s noteworthy; the manufacturing process and the materials involved are also important factors.

About 4.6 million tons of computers and consumer-electronics waste are dumped in landfills each year in the U.S., according to Greenpeace, and fewer than 12 percent of discarded computers are recycled.

Aware of this problem, PC manufacturers are trying to go “green” by minimizing the use of toxic components such as lead and mercury and making the machines more energy-efficient.

But how can you know how green your computer really is?

Green Computers, or ‘Greenwashed’ Ones?

More of this story – “How Green is Your Computer” click here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,454928,00.html