Green Computing Initiatives

Educase Quarterly's most recent issue includes a large section on green computing. There are some articles of particular merit. UC Berkeley stands to make a lot of progress in its goal to reduce emissions to 1990 levels if there is an effort in IT to reduce energy usage and improve sustainability.

• "Three Approaches to Green Computing on Campus"1 provides a general view of sustainability efforts on various campuses around the US. The three approaches are: Reforming power management strategies to reduce power usage when computers are in use or idle; Migrating E-Mail and other data onto externally hosted large scale(and significantly more energy efficient) databases(for example moving campus email to Gmail); and using technology to reduce physical transport requirements. The approaches go from very straightforward to a little more abstract, but there are obvious reasons that IT should play a large role in increasing sustainability on campus. Which segways into the next article:
• "Bottom Up and Top Down: Making IT a Key Part of the Campus Sustainability Effort"2 Similar to the previous article, the article makes the case that IT is a place where major gains in sustainability can be achieved with minimal effort. Therefore, IT should play a key role in campus sustainability efforts. It also introduces the concept of server consolidation which in addition to the administrative benefits, the energy usage reduction is significant. The Article also includes a discussion and example of E-Recycling initiatives.
• "Green IT Best Practices at the University of Michigan"3 This is a case of campus wide IT services embracing sustainability, it includes many of the ideas mentioned in the previous articles, with more implementation specifics.

The rest of the issue can be found here.

-Robin
1. Thompson, John T. "Three Approaches to Green Computing on Campus." Educase Quarterley. Vol. 23 no. 3.

2.Dennis Cromwell, Kristin Hanks and Sarah Engel. "Bottom Up and Top Down: Making IT a Key Part of the Campus Sustainability Effort." Educase Quarterley. Vol. 23 no. 3.

3. Stuenkel, MaryBeth."Green IT Best PRactices at the University of Michigan." Educase Quarterley. Vol. 23 no. 3.

Universities turning their email and other services over to outside companies

The Chronicle of Higher Ed writes about universities turning their email and other services over to outside companies such as Google and Microsoft, in some cases saving $1 million. However, there are concerns about "whether outside companies will safeguard student grades and sensitive research, and keep colleges from violating federal privacy laws."

Many at Berkeley use Google apps and gmail. Is that direction we should go in? What are the concerns? Are the tradeoffs acceptable?

Read more!

CleanTech's report on the environmental impact of the Kindle

A new report on the lifecycle assessement of the environmental impact of the Kindle vs paper...

"Only time will tell if electronic book readers are to become a new standard in the future. But the Cleantech Group takes an in-depth look at the environmental impact of the devices in its recent lifecycle analysis.

"The new study finds that e-readers could have a major impact on improving the sustainability and environmental impact on the publishing industry, one of the world’s most polluting sectors. In 2008, the U.S. book and newspaper industries combined resulted in the harvesting of 125 million trees, not to mention wastewater that was produced or its massive carbon footprint."

Continue reading a synopsis of the study...

More on the Kindle at Arizona State

Will everyone get on the same page? Can they even find the same page? Some info that might be relevant to an LCA study here.

This Could be the Year of e-Textbooks (Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/9/09).

Dianne

UC Berkeley policies on use of copyrighted materials

Some of this is relevant for the study of the use of e-Readers and downloads of copyrighted materials...

http://technology.berkeley.edu/policy/online.html#copy

This site seems even more comprehensive: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/copyright/

Dianne

Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 11:05 AM

Posted by Brandon Badger, Product Manager

Over the years, we've heard a lot from people who've unearthed hidden treasures in Google Books: a crafter who uncovered a forgotten knitting technique, a family historian who discovered her ancestor once traveled the country with a dancing, roller-skating bear. The books they found were out of copyright and in the public domain, which meant they could read the full text and even download a PDF version of the book.
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Sony's Kindle rival

Sony's rival to the Kindle -- different models with varying prices, uses AT&T's wireless network...

Sony has committed to an open e-book standard, meaning its Readers can show copy-protected books from a variety of stores, and the books can be moved to and read on a variety of devices, including cell phones.

Sony also announced Tuesday that the Readers will be able to load e-books "loaned" from local libraries. A library card will provide access to free books that expire after 21 days.

The library connection "would seem to be something Amazon would never embrace, so that could be a key differentiator," said Richard Doherty, director of research firm The Envisioneering Group.

Read the full story here: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090825/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_sony_e_books