Green Home Guides

Green Home Guides (GreenHomeGuides.com) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:58:07 -0400

The practice and general philosophy of ecological living is highly interrelated with the overall principles of sustainability. By minimizing their "ecological footprints" - the extent to which they create an environmental impact - proponents of ecological living hope to preserve the earth for future generations of human beings and other life.

This term is definitionally very similar to, and often used interchangeably with the term sustainable living.

Green Home Guides is an eco-friendly tip filled guide featuring green friendly product reviews, videos and resources for a natural, sustainable, environmental living.

Google Going Green?

Green Home Guides (GreenHomeGuides.com) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:48:03 -0400

Some companies have very high energy use. The reasons for this are pretty obvious: manufacturing requires a lot of energy. Computing requires a lot of energy. Air conditioning requires a lot of energy. If you combines groups of these: you need a lot of energy. Not many companies will go to real efforts to solve their specific problems.

Lately, Google has been splashed about the news on a number of green issues: apparently, they're involved in two major projects which will make a huge difference...

GOOGLE PHONE UPDATE: Google's new g1 phone is said to be based on the open-source code platform!

Open source software (OSS) began as a marketing campaign for free software. OSS can be defined as computer software for which the human-readable source code is made available under an arrangement such as the public domain, that meets the Open Source Definition. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open source software is the most prominent example of open source development and often compared to user generated content.

Energy Efficient Computing

On September 26, Google wrote about their progress towards a more efficient infrastructure. The fundamental idea is twofold: first, to build network infrastructures which optimize use of multiple computers to process large quantities of data, a crucial element of Google's search success. The second aspect is incorporating "chip multiprocessing" to make individual computers more efficient by using multiple simple processors rather than very large, fast processors.

Solar Panel Installation

The second major project is too install 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels at the main Google campus in Mountain View, California.

This project is estimated to provide approximately 30% of their peak power usage: equivalent to approximately 1,000 average California homes. (Yes, that means that the Google complex uses approximately the power of 3,333 homes.)

Google expects these projects to help them save money: and they're quite likely right. There are undoubtedly many other companies that could benefit from the same kind of efforts.