Environment

From the outside, Hewlett-Packard's newest data center looks like a massive, well-secured loading dock, devoid of logos and surrounded by a robust barbed-wired fence in a nondescript industrial park.  read more »

There are two really good reasons to practice green computing: It saves you money, and--bit by bit--it helps save the planet. It's a major win-win. Here are just a few of the little things you can do to make a big difference.  read more »

Firms are diverting their attention away from green IT projects in order to save money during the recession, according to a Gartner report.  read more »

It sounds crazy to use processors designed for tiny netbooks in data centers, with their potentially massive computing requirements, but Microsoft is experimenting with doing just that and finding that it may lead to cost savings.  read more »

African countries lack legislative mechanisms to tackle the problem of electronic waste, according to a study by Hewlett-Packard, the Global Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF) and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa).  read more »

An initiative backed by both mobile phone manufacturers and operators will result in a universal charger based on the Micro-USB interface for new mobile phones.  read more »

Google is testing software that will let consumers get detailed information on how much electricity they're using, which could help households reduce consumption by as much as 15 percent, the company said Monday.  read more »

Macworld Expo (sans Steve Jobs) and the International Consumer Electronics Show (sans Bill Gates) got the new year off to a start, providing plenty of IT news this week. Jobs' decision to forgo giving the Macworld keynote was in the news again, as he released a public letter saying his obvious weight loss owes to a hormonal imbalance. In another continuation of news that started last year, economic woes continued to hit IT (along with pretty much everything else). But happy new year anyway.  read more »

Our annual list of hot technologies includes a few that exploded on the scene recently plus some that have been simmering for years and just now are coming into their own.  read more »

"An article recently published in the popular press has suggested that there may be a link between the increase in numbers of mobile phone masts and the reduction in local sparrow populations. The number of sparrows in Britain has effectively halved from 24 million approximately thirty years ago to a present day figure of 14 million, a decrease of almost 50%."  read more »