Tag: google

  • Just how green is cloud computing?

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    Tom Raftery
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    Cloud computing may not be as Green as you think. I mentioned previously that I gave a keynote presentation at the Green IT Summit in Dublin last week. In the question and answers session after the talk, Sean Baker asked about cloud computing and whether I thought companies using cloud computing weren’t simply outsourcing their…

  • Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 04/09/2010

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    Tom Raftery
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    Iowa, Texas tops [US] in wind power efforts Iowa and Texas lead the nation in wind energy efforts, according to the annual report released Thursday from the American Wind Energy Association. Iowa claims the title for the state with the largest percentage of electricity from wind energy. As of the end of 2009, over 14…

  • Grid Watch: smartgrids meet smartcomms

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    Tom Raftery
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    We have pointed to the ongoing convergence of wireless communications and smart grids before, for example in this video about Tropos Networks and in Tom’s stump pitch on sustainability and mobility, but some news from this week throws the trend into stark relief. Carbon Trust investments, the VC arm of a non-profit organisation working to…

  • Can Apple make Home Energy Management sexy?

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    Tom Raftery
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    Will Apple move into home energy management, and if they do, can they make it sexy and front-of-mind for everyone? I made this point in a reply to a post earlier on the IBM Global Eco Jam and I thought it could well do with being fleshed out to a full post here to see…

  • How long until all devices which consume water have networked flow meters?

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    Tom Raftery
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    Photo credit bmitchellw Oracle published the results of a very interesting study recently called Testing the Water: Smart Metering for Water Utilities. Now, we have all heard about the compelling case for Smart Meters for electrical consumption (I have written and spoken about it extensively) but in this study Oracle asked utilities and their customers…

  • Google Energy to start disrupting the utility industry?

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    Tom Raftery
    in

    Photo credit filippo minelli There is no doubt about it but Google is a disruptive company. First Google disrupted search, then advertising, then video (with their acquisition of YouTube), and then Office applications with the launch and continued development of Google Apps for Domains. Most recently Google has disrupted the mobile phone industry, first with…

  • There’s gold in them thar bills!

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    Tom Raftery
    in

    Photo credit Urban Jacksonville The output from smart meters is incredibly granular. Far more so than is obvious from the smart meter output graph above. In conversations with Dr Monica Sturm (Director of Siemen’s Center of Competence, Metering Services) last November (2008) she confirmed to me that it is possible to identify individual devices in…

  • OpenOffice 3.0 Beta launched

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    Tom Raftery
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    OpenOffice, the free opensource office suite, released OpenOffice 3.0 Beta yesterday. This latest release now runs on Mac OS X without requiring X11 to be running as well. And there are versions for Windows and Linux obviously. There are a host of new features like ODF Support, Office 2007/8 import/export and support for up to…