Google and Intel and Several Global Corporations and Environmental Groups Host Online Press Conference to Discuss Computing and Climate Change
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Google Inc.:  WHO:        Google Inc., Intel, and several other global corporations and environmental groups.  WHAT:       Online press conference to discuss new opportunities in computing and climate change.  WHEN:       Tuesday, June 12, 10:00-11:00 AM, PDT.
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Web search leader  Google Inc. and semiconductor maker Intel Corp. launched a  broad-based program on Tuesday to introduce more  energy-efficient personal computers and server systems to save  energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Companies tapping into a growing industry called in 'social media' will use an upcoming Arizona tech conference to showcase a new batch of online tools. The idea is to make the web a better medium for sharing information.
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Worldwide events showcase Google Gears, Mashup Editor, and other Google APIs to developers.
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IT vendors can play a major role in reducing the world&#39;s energy consumption, but information about the benefits of technology has been lacking in an ongoing environmental debate in Washington, D.C., three tech CEOs said Wednesday.While IT consumption of energy in the U.S. has grown in the last decade, technology also displaces more than its share of energy-consuming activities in other sectors, members of the Technology CEO Council said. The advocacy group highlighted a report, released Wednesday, saying that every kilowatt hour of energy used by IT replaces 10 kilowatt hours of energy that would have been used elsewhere.IT currently uses about 6 percent of U.S. electricity, up from 2 percent to 3 percent in 2000, said John &quot;Skip&quot; Laitner, co-author of the report and director of economic policy analysis at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). But through a wide variety of IT products, including tech that enables video conferencing, telecommuting, and e-mail, technology results in a net decrease in energy consumption, he said.Instead of flying to a conference in Sweden recently, Laitner attended by video conference, he said. And in preparing the ACEEE&#39;s report, Laitner received thousands of pages of documents by e-mail or downloads, instead of having them delivered.Few studies have explored the energy efficiencies created by IT, he added. &quot;We have to look at what that&#39;s displacing,&quot; he said.Users of computers and other tech products should expect more energy savings in the future, said Dell CEO Michael Dell. He joined Mike Splinter, president and CEO of Applied Materials, and Joe Tucci, chairman, president and CEO of EMC, at a press briefing focused on green technologies.&quot;As an industry, we have begun to take up the [environmental] issue in a serious way,&quot; Dell said. &quot;It&#39;s an issue that customers care about.&quot;The IT industry has come under some criticism for its energy use, particularly at large data centers. In January 2007, U.S. Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, introduced a bill that would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to analyze and report to Congress about the growth and energy consumption of computer datacenters by the federal government and private companies.Congress needs to &quot;more fully understand the impact that the growing number of computers in use throughout the country has on energy consumption,&quot; Allard said then.The Technology CEO Council isn&#39;t concerned about congressional mandates because the IT industry is already taking steps to reduce its energy consumption, said Bruce Mehlman, the group&#39;s executive director.But the U.S. government has a huge impact on energy consumption by adopting more green technologies, said Applied Materials&#39; Splinter. &quot;The government is the largest user of energy in our country,&quot; he said.In addition to the ACEEE report, the Technology CEO Council released its own report, called &quot;A Smarter Shade of Green.&quot; The report lays out the group&#39;s environmental policy principles, including:*&#160;The president should select a federal agency as a center for energy efficiency excellence, a model for other agencies going green.*&#160;The government should invest more in green research.*&#160;Governments across the world should reduce tariffs on green technologies.*&#160;The U.S. government should explore tax incentives for deploying energy-saving technologies.*&#160;Companies shouldn&#39;t wait for government mandates or incentives but should adopt energy-efficient strategies on their own.
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An international group of corporate leaders calls for global targets on reducing greenhouse emissions.
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Nonprofit emissions advisers The  Climate Group said on Tuesday that Google Inc.  has  joined its organization to cut or offset all of its greenhouse  emissions by 2008.
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This week, chip giant Intel is hosting its twice-a-year Intel Developer Forum, where PC hardware and software developers will hear the company&#39;s plans for future products.
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Google is calling on the computer industry to create a simpler and more efficient power supply standard.
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A coalition of technology companies and environmental groups led by Google Inc. and Intel Corp. launched an initiative Tuesday to conserve electricity and curb global warming emissions by making the world's computers and servers more energy-efficient.
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A vast online network is being used to promote social and environmental responsibility.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, California  - The high priests of free software have congregated at Google Inc.  headquarters this week to debate the future of the movement and face down recent patent threats by Microsoft Corp. .
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Advocacy is the hot topic at the world's biggest general science conference as researchers take on everything from climate change to creationists. By Randy Dotinga.
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Misses opportunity to enlighten CISAC Google gave a keynote speech to the biggest global gathering of authors' societies today.â¦
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Science & environment: Group behind Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas aims to show how technology can help the planet
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(InfoWorld) - Power consumption, parallelism, and the rapidly-expanding world of mobile communications are among the leading areas of research and development currently being investigated within some of the IT world's largest companies. Taking the stage at MIT's EmTech Conference (formerly known as the MIT Emerging Technology Conference) on Monday were top researchers from Cisco, HP, and Intel who shared their visions for the products of tomorrow by unveiling some of their leading areas of study and experimentation today. From the growing impact of mobile computing devices to the push to make IT eco-friendly, along with new efforts to take advantage of parallel data processing capabilities, researchers from the three technology bellwethers spoke of commons threads woven through all their work and in what directions they believe the results of those efforts will subsequently drive future technologies. Following a panel discussion on social networking tools that also focused heavily on the impact of mobile devices, Andrew Chien, vice president of research at Intel, said that the chip giant is also focusing heavily on the changes in IT usage and consumption that are being driven by handheld machines. However, despite the rapid development of the mobile space, Chien said Intel feels that wireless device, applications, and service providers are still falling short in terms of how "intuitive" and "seamless" their technologies currently work. "We have a healthy amount of concern about the amount of effort that these technologies require from all of us today," said Chien. "To that end, we're very excited about the idea of inference in the context of small mobile devices, about the richer senses and analysis of data that can be realized based on the body of techniques currently lumped under the umbrella of machine learning." Among the specific examples of the types of mobile applications that Intel envisions taking root in the near future are systems that offer "seamless presentation" of more useful information than those available today's handhelds, including tools that use geolocation and onboard sensors to give users data that is pertinent to their personal condition and immediate surroundings. Both Cisco and HP also count mobility among their leading areas of research, the panelists said, with Cisco looking into ways to merge "telepresence" with its recently acquired WebEx collaboration tools, and HP working on ways to more tightly link handhelds with back-end datacenter systems. Prith Banerjee, only six weeks into his new post of senior vice president of research at HP's Labs division, said that the company's work in mobility, green IT, and parallelism are converging in its larger efforts to make large data centers more efficient in general. In some cases, the work is oriented toward improving performance, such as through the use of photonic interconnects -- advanced electromagnetic technologies -- to allow datacenters to communicate more quickly. In other cases, HP Labs is looking at datacenter power consumption, using sensors built into its prototype servers to reduce costs and headaches associated with cooling the massive hardware farms. The challenges of parallel computing As for parallel computing -- roughly defined as the simultaneous execution of numerous program instructions on multiple or multi-core processors -- Banerjee said that HP is hoping to use its research efforts to help clear some of the software programming obstacles that exist on the market today. "We're very aware in our research of the challenges of making parallel software applications; we need engineers who can start writing code designed for multi-cores and to help transition software designed to run on a single processor," said Prith. If some of those roadblocks can be pushed aside, the benefits could be enormous, according to the HP researcher. "We're imaging a world where you plug in a computer and all the applications work automatically, and users don't have to worry about patches and updates," he said. "We're imagining a world where software is automatically updated and maintained so that environment for end-users will be completely automated and allow them to increase productivity. That is a very difficult problem to solve, but we're going to try to solve it." Another area of focus for all three organizations is the process of refining their internal research and development operations. Under Prith, HP will attempt to lower its overall number of research projects by folding them into larger efforts, the executive said, and Chien added that Intel is having success with "lablets," groups of researchers it sponsors at academic institutions to augment its internal R&D work. At Cisco, the massive networking company is attempting to inject an air of entrepreneurialism into areas of research that it believes can be turned into revenue-producing businesses rapidly, as evidenced by the launch of its physical security and telepresence product groups over the last several years, said Guido Jouret, CTO of the firm's Emerging Markets Technology Group. "We're trying to re-create the start-up atmosphere inside Cisco. So far, we've announced four different units, and the goal is to create one every several months," Jouret said. "We'll also continue to do small acquisitions where we can gain vital technologies or teams to help flesh out our ideas. The idea is to create an interesting mix of entrepreneurial drive." Along with security and telepresence, the company has launched a digital media group s part of the effort as well as a business devoted to replacing the static product displays found in retails stores today with "digitally-driven network displays." Jouret said that the telepresence group is working to mesh device geolocation with collaboration tools and multimedia-sharing systems. "We want to combine video with collaboration platforms for rich multimedia interaction, tools that allow companies and consumers to interact in ways that we can't even imagine yet," he said.
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Thousands of scientists will spend five days in Boston discussing global climate change, disease and the future of the developing world. It's the world's largest general science conference.