Hewlett-Packard Backs African Recycling Research
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H-P is funding a project to investigate how electronic waste can be disposed of in a safer and more environmentally friendly way.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ has developed technology at its lab in Bangalore, India,Â that secures paper documents against fraud and integrates paper documents with electronic processes by allowing paper to be used as a medium for data transfer. Paper documents will never go away, and this is not unique to India, said S. Ramani, director for science and technology, at HP Labs India on Thursday. The requirement to authenticate paper documents can hamper the velocity of business, Ramani said. Very often a paper document, like a college transcript or a driving license, has to be sent back to the issuing authority for authentication or to ensure that there has been no change in status after the document was issued, he added. HP Labs India has instead developed technology it calls Trusted Hardcopy that embeds information contained in the paper document in a 2D (two-dimensional) barcode printed at the back of the paper document. Using software developed by the lab, the barcode can be read by a standard scanner, and the information verified online on a Web site set up by the authority issuing the paper document, or an independent verification agency. In a pilot program that HP Labs India is running with the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) students graduating from the institute were issued transcripts with the barcodes printed on them. âOur software is integrated with the database, so that whenever a mark sheet is printed from the database, the software issues a barcode which is inserted into it,â said K.S.R. Anjaneyulu, department director at the lab. The certificates issued by IIIT-B can be now scanned and verified for their authenticity on an institute Web site. If the document or the barcode has been tampered with, this will be revealed when it is compared with the document stored on the instituteâs database, Ramani said. Using the 2D barcode also removes the need to manually input the data from paper documents into an electronic system, as the data can be read from the barcode printed on the paper. âBy embedding the information from the paper document in the barcode, we are preventing information in paper documents from getting disconnected from the rest of the system,â Anjaneyulu said. The new technology is effectively ânetworking the paper world," he added. The technology can also be used by agencies like the government to issue authenticated documents online. The document with the barcode can be then printed by the person requesting the document, Ramani said. HPâs business units are interested in commercializing Trusted Hardcopy, Ramani said. HP Labs India is also working on new applications of the technology such as using mobile phones with built-in cameras to take a snap of a barcode, for example on a driver's license, and transmitting the image on the mobile service channel for verification and updating. As part of HP Labs India's research in the area of pen-based interfaces, the lab has developed a stylus sensitive touch-pad, called the âgesture-based keyboard,â that enables users to enter text in the Devnagri script used in many Indian languages, using a combination of tapping and gestures.
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard has launched the FOSSology Project, a tool for tracking and monitoring the use of free and open-source software within an IT environment.
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By MATT SLAGLE   Associated Press writer  HOUSTON -- Hewlett-Packard Co.
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(InfoWorld) - If just a small portion of the world's mobile phone users unplugged their charger when the battery is full, it could save enough electricity to power thousands of homes. So said Nokia on Thursday, as it unveiled a new industry group that aims to make mobile phones more environmentally friendly. The group also includes Motorola, France Telecom, Vodafone Group, TeliaSonera, and others. It was created as part of a European Commission project aimed at uniting members of different industries to work on reducing the environmental impact of their products. Members of the new group will try to educate people more about how they can reduce the environmental impact of using their cell phones. For example, manufacturers will start displaying a reminder on phones to unplug chargers once the battery is charged. If only 10 percent of phone users did that, they would save enough energy to power 60,000 European homes each year, Nokia estimates. The companies will alsoÂ reduce the hazardous materialsÂ they use beyond what current legislation requires. One example is Nokiaâs decision to stop using any components in its phones that contain a certain type of environmentally harmful chemical flame retardant. The operators will also increase the number of used phones that are returned for recycling. Theyâll examine existing recycling schemes around the world and identify successful ones. They also plan to try out incentive initiatives to determine if they might improve recycling rates. Environmental organizations including World Wildlife Fund, the Finnish Environmental Institute, the European Consumersâ Organization and the U.K.âs Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are also part of the new initiative. The European Union recently instituted new regulations on the types of hazardous materials that can be included in electronic devices. Most manufacturers were able to alter their products to comply with the new laws, but Palm in July stopped shipping what was its latest smart phone, the Treo 650, to Europe because it didnât meet the regulations.
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The $100 millionÂ datacenter consolidation projectÂ being undertaken by Hewlett-Packard will help it be more efficient but also informs the consulting advice it gives to client companies.
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The technology vendor is working with partners on improving the safety and environmental impact of electronic waste-recycling in the region.
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By Nic Fildes  The drive to make computers more environmentally friendly has been given an extra boost after the technology giants Google and Intel joined the rush to prove their green credentials.   The move was widely welcomed by environmental groups.
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Sets 'carbon footprint challenge' for employees Hewlett-Packard announced Tuesday that it would be setting a "carbon footprint challenge" for its 4,000 employees in Ireland to help make the company greener.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - The $100 millionÂ datacenter consolidation projectÂ being undertaken by Hewlett-Packard will help it be more efficient but also informs the consulting advice it gives to client companies. HP officials updated customers, employees and partners on the progress of its project Tuesday at the HP Technology Forum being held in Las Vegas. The company is in the second year of a three-year process to consolidate 85 datacenters worldwide in just six -- two each in Atlanta, Houston, and Austin, Texas. Three of the six new sites are already up and running and the remaining three should be completed within 60 days, said Randy Mott, executive vice president and chief information officer of HP. "It's not just around moving stuff to a different place," said Mott, in a clear case of understatement. Data center consolidation gives HP, and any company that does it, a chance to refresh their technology, move to industry standard products, eliminate redundant or outdated hardware and software, and engineer energy efficiency, a major concern of late, into the datacenter. At the Tech Forum, Mott said the data center project, which is scheduled to be completed in late 2008, will reduce the total number of servers by 30 percent, but increase the total processing power by 80 percent. It will reduce the cost of storage but double total storage capacity, and the cost of running HP's corporate network will go down but the bandwidth will be tripled. HP has already decommissioned 12 of the 86 datacenters, said Mott. And for HP, going through the process gives its HP Services group new insights they can apply to customers trying to upgrade their data centers. "We try make sure it's done right inside HP and then we can do that for customers," said Tony Redmond, vice president and chief technology officer for HP Services. Teams from HP's IT department, which handles the company's own IT systems, and from the HP Technology Services unit, which provides technology to client firms, work together on the datacenter project. Work the HP Services people do will help the Technology Services people advise their own clients, Redmond said. HP's technology infrastructure developed in a piecemeal fashion, just like that of many other companies. For instance, part of the project involves what companies call "software rationalization," going through the thousands of software applications that HP uses to weed out those that are redundant, outdated or just useless. HP applications may be duplicated by similar applications from Compaq Computer, which HP acquired in 2002 and Digital Equipment, which Compaq bought in 1998. HP is also going to deploy a new approach to cooling at the new datacenters. Called Dynamic Smart Cooling, it involves a number of heat sensors attached to each of the servers in a datacenter. The sensors can tell when a server is heating up because it's doing a lot of processing and then directs cold air at that server. When the server slows down, the sensor can tell and the cold air reduced. Dynamic Smart Cooling, developed within HP Labs, will demonstrate at HP's own datacenters how the technology may work for others.
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HP has a new process in place to recycle its used inkjet printer cartridges.
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MSA line gets makeover Hewlett-Packard has reworked its low-end storage line to make some new systems more virtualization friendly for SMBs and remote offices.â¦
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SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Hewlett-Packard this week announced three initiatives to reduce workforce costs even as it reported strong growth in revenue and profit because of brisk holiday sales of consumer products such as laptops and photo printers.
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EBay Inc. and Intel Corp. launched a recycling program Thursday to motivate Americans to safely dispose of mounting piles of used computers and other electronic gadgets.
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Climate Savers Computing Initiative gathers vendors, groups, and EPA to push energy-efficient PCs.
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Computer users are being asked to donate their unused processor power to help solve social and environmental research problems. The IBM-backed project, called World Community Grid, aims to put the untapped
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Hewlett-Packard has built a 70,000-square-foot data center in Bangalore that it is powering with diesel fuel. But it hopes to reduce energy costs by using a sensor-based cooling technology.