Archive for the 'Green IT' Category

Mar

7

You, me and Zigbee

March 7, 2009 | 6 Comments

We continue to look for ways to reduce the energy demands of our IT infrastructure at TRU. I’ve been working with Dr Tom Owen, our new Director of Environmental Sustainability, to find ways of reducing our CO2 footprint through the effective use of IT. This year we are focusing on reducing the storage and handling [...]

Jan

23

Want a fancy donut? Here let me print you one…

January 23, 2009 | 3 Comments

I must admit It took me a while to understand why there was so much buzz about “Additive Fabrication” or 3-D Printing. Machines that create 3D Models from CAD Files have been around for a while. For example, many dentist offices now have machines that can “print” you a new tooth crown, customized to your [...]

Jan

12

Is googling destroying the planet?

January 12, 2009 | 1 Comment

London’s Sunday Times reports that, according to a Harvard study, each Google search generates 7g of CO2. Two google searches, for example searching for  “vortex shedding” or “Faulkner on the past” uses 14g of CO2, the same amount of energy required to boil a tea-kettle. Now I was quite shocked by this number and no [...]

Jan

9

10 IT Predictions for 2009

January 9, 2009 | 38 Comments

Here’s some “blue-skying” for the year ahead in IT. Note that I reserve the right to be breathtakingly wrong. 1. Being Green Saves Green Everything will continue to be about reducing IT’s CO2 footprint and reducing costs. Virtualization technologies (VMWare etc.) now rule the server room and are a no-brainer approach; desktop virtualization technologies (VMWare, [...]

Dec

17

Internet Explorer 7.0 and other potpourri

December 17, 2008 | 29 Comments

Good Evening, If you are currently using Internet Explore 7.0, please don’t. A critical vulnerability exists that could infect your computer, launch malicious code remotely from your machine, steal your passwords and bring all sorts of other nasties upon you. At this time we aren’t sure if anti-virus software will catch the vulnerability. I suggest [...]

Nov

5

12 things we are doing to reduce energy consumption in IT

November 5, 2008 | 24 Comments

It’s about time that I started to do top 10 lists on my blog. For the record I originally posted this on our website in January 2007 but this is new and improved for 2008! Also, the items on my top ten lists are in no particular order… In all seriousness, the ICT industry is, [...]

Oct

20

Looks Like we Made It – to the paperless office

October 20, 2008 | Comments Off

Wow, it was bound to happen. After all these years of me spouting off about the benefits of technology and the paperless office, the Economist now reports that paper use is falling.  No longer are printers spewing endless reams of paper to provide information. Well, not really, they are just spewing a bit less… Take [...]

Aug

16

Electro-trash and what to do with it

August 16, 2007 | 3 Comments

  After spending the last 20 years as an IT manager, I shudder to think of the mountain of electronic debri my work has generated. It’s actually pretty darn scary. Thinking of all that lead and mercury leaching into the watertables of the world and the lungs of salvagers in Asia (where most of this stuff is shipped) [...]