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May 23, 2007
This blog has now been moved to the home website: http://www.genexe.com
Please continue to read the latest updates there!
May 22, 2007
Star Wars Theme Program
The South Carolina Office of Solid Waste Reduction and Recycling has its latest poster to encourage recycling using a Star Wars theme. It is one of many posters in a collection of supplemental material for education programs. They also have other posters with themes such as Batman, Elvis, and Flintstones that you can find on their website here. The posters look pretty cool and I assume they work in promoting recycling to kids.
http://www.gogreencharleston.org/2007/05/05/the-recycling-force-is-strong-in-south-carolina/
New York Taxis Going Green
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced that New York’s yellow taxi fleet will go entirely hybrid in the next five years. There are currently 400 fuel-efficient hybrids currently being tested and will increase to 1000 by October 2008 and eventually all 13,000 yellow cab will be a hybrid. The original yellow cab vehicle, the Ford Crown Victoria gets about 14 mpg while a Ford Escape gets 36 mpg. Although Hybrid vehicles cost more than regular cars, the fuel efficiency will save the taxi operators more than $10,000 a year. Yahoo also donated 10 hybrid Ford Escapes to the city. Bloomberg has a plan of reducing 30 percent of the city’s carbon emissions by 2030. The interesting part is that the government actually doesn’t own any of the yellow cabs and just sells licenses to drivers. Those individuals have to purchase their own vehicles that meet the specifications of the Taxi and Limousine Commission. It would be interesting to hear about the reactions of the current taxi drivers because I am not sure how they would react to this news. Although there is a slightly higher up-front cost in purchasing the cars, because of the extensive amount of driving on a daily basis, the cost savings from the fuel efficiency will be seen a lot faster than a regular commuter car. I think that the cost benefits will surely be appreciated by the drivers once they see how much money they save on gas especially since gas prices don’t seem to go down. Other cities will surely follow in this footstep.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ak8sz_C1lGiY&refer=us
Vectrix Electric Scooter
The Vectrix is an all electric scooter that can go up to 62 mph, and has a range of 68 miles. It runs completely on electric power and takes 2.5 hours for a full charge. It can go 0-50 in 6.8 seconds. There are no clutches or gears and runs on a single regenerative throttle with a regenerative braking system. It is completely silent and has zero emissions but it also costs $11,000. With that price tag, it wont exactly be the most popular item of the year but if you are rich, it would be a great toy to have. It has been released in the UK and will be available here in the US around the second quarter of 2007.
http://myvectrix.com
May 21, 2007
Gartner encourages IT Organizations to go green
Gartner suggests that customer service and field service organizations can help reduce carbon emissions, through field service and call center agent optimization, parts optimization, intelligent device management and collaboration. By using technology such as Web collaboration tools, e-learning and problem resolution systems. A problem resolution system involves having remote agents walk through problems as opposed to going onsite to troubleshoot the problem. Here are some tips that Gartner has for IT organizations that can help conserve energy and reduce waste.
· Start measuring power consumption
· Consume fewer servers and printers by increasing utilization – virtualize servers
· Stop over-provisioning; improve capacity planning
· Improve the efficiency of cooling
· Turn power management on, use a low power state or turn equipment off
· Extend the life of assets by reusing within the enterprise and externally
· Ensure and validate the correct disposition of all electronic equipment
· Analyze all waste
Organizations were never really concerned about power costs and CO2 emissions until recently and with the increased awareness in the media, IT organizations will be making significant changes in becoming more “Green”.
http://www.itmanagement.com/blog/20070501/gartner-encourages-ict-organizations-to-go-green/
May 17, 2007
Receipts by Email
In another effort to becoming more green, Apple Stores now offers the option of emailing your receipt to you instead of printing it out. This will save the company a ton of money by reducing paper costs. The only concern I would have is that when I give them my email, they will only use it for the receipt purposes only. It could also be another great strategy to collect email addresses and send you a bunch of spam but hopefully that is not the case.
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