A year or two ago, if you mentioned the environment to the average corporate type of crowd, their eyes would glaze over and they would stare vaguely past you as you spoke, thinking of all the money they would lose if they actually had to care.
The problem wasn’t necessarily that they didn’t care, because I know many who do. The problem was that they were competing in an environment where those who care LEAST would make the MOST profit – and profit is unfortunately the ONLY consideration when you are playing the corporate game. And we all play this game, to a greater or lesser extent.
For all you aspiring designers out there, this past weekend Dell announced a competition to design the world's greenest computer, and to lay the groundwork for environmentally responsible computing around the world. Dubbed ReGeneration, the competition invites participants to rethink what defines a truly environmentally responsible computing technology product. Dell hopes to refresh awareness (I didn’t realize it was stale; in fact green computing is just about as ‘fresh’ as an issue can be. Anyway…), and explore new directions in sustainable, environmentally responsible product designs for computing.
Here’s a look at a video produced by Greenpeace, which questions whether Steve Jobs is really delivering the ‘greener Apple’ he promised earlier in the year. Scientific tests, arranged by Greenpeace, reveal that Apple's iPhone contains hazardous chemicals. The tests uncovered several hazardous substances like Bromine and Phthalates, some of which have already been eliminated by other mobile phone makers like Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.
Greenpeace seems to be really cracking down on Apple, with this latest publicity coming on the back of a recent survey of electronics companies where Apple got low marks for eco-friendly policies and ranked fourth from the bottom, ahead of only Acer, Motorola, and Lenovo.
BostonCHI is an organization of professionals from the New England, US area interested in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Their members represent the diverse interests in the field: graphic arts, documentation, usability, psychology, user interface design, human factors, industrial design, ergonomics, computer science, training, education, and many others.
Monthly gatherings are held in the metro Boston area, and are open to both members and non-members at no charge. In addition, members receive a monthly e-mail newsletter. At the June 2007 gathering Dave Douglas, VP of Eco Responsibility at Sun Microsystems, talked about green computing in a presentation entitled "Green Computing: Computing and the Environment".
Here’s Part 1 of his five-part video presentation. The rest of the speech can be found by clicking on 'get link' at the bottom of the video and then following the URL.
Here's a look at a video made by Charles from VIA. In it he talks about power efficiency and the benefits of using a VIA pc-1 system. It's the first in a series which will look at various aspects of the pc-1 initiative. Apparently, VIA are trying to get Charles to spice things up a little and assume some sort of exciting, zany persona, but until he agrees you'll just have to put up with him presenting in his normal character.
Only four days to go. If you’ve got a blog and haven’t already, make sure you sign up and post an environment-related article on October 15th. After almost two months of being online, more than 7,500 bloggers have signed up with many, many, more signing up daily! Since the launch of Blog Action Day not only have thousands of bloggers pledged to post, but the initiative has also been featured in the press, has been translated into 20 languages, and has some very large organisations like the United Nations Environmental Program, the Opera Community and social portal Redditpledging to promote the activity.
VIA’s just announced an innovative new product, which, though not geared for the green PC space, has some very green qualities. The VESA Mounted PC was designed originally to offer a more cost effective alternative to panel PCs, with the combined cost of a vmpc and a standard monitor being less than that of a regular panel PC. But with its size, space saving features, fanless configuration, and ultra low voltage processor, it’s certainly an asset to the green computing drive.
Check out the video Stew from Technovoyance has made explaining just how this new PC works:
For all you aspiring designers out there, this past weekend 
