Computers and Gadgets

Open Green Map: Social Mapping for Green Living

Jaymi Heimbuch

If you get a kick out of online maps programs and eco-graphic info, there’s an online resource launching soon for map geeks and green tourists – Open Green Map. It’s a Google Maps-style layout that offers interactive elements so visitors can mark green areas, resources, businesses, etc and write reviews and information about them.

Icons (a LOT of icons) show areas in a city where a resident or visitor can find people, places and businesses that support sustainable living, nature, and culture. By checking the map, people will know exactly where they can go to hit up a green restaurant, a recycling center, a park that practices sustainable techniques, green transportation…It puts living and traveling cities on a whole new level of easy for people who like to be eco-friendly.

The project isn’t one of those lame sites that attempts to be user interactive only to be coated in spam before the day’s end – no, this is going to be a seriously cool resource, and it is backed by a long history. The Green Map System has been going since 1995, creating over 350 maps for more than 50 countries that promote sustainable community development. But now, they’ve hit a new level of ecogeekiness by taking it online. I love this because we’ll be able to access this on our phones or palms while tooling around a new city – it takes info that is sometimes tough to find and puts it right at our eager little green finger tips. Plus, since it is interactive, the locals who really know their home can give the inside scoop – it’ll be like being with the green in-crowd wherever you are.

Features will include ratings, commentary, an impacts index, onsite markers, and of course mobile access. I’m really excited about this because my most favorite cities to visit – and even my own town – will suddenly have a whole slew of new secrets revealed, and a little bit of that guilt over traveling can be reduced. Currently in Beta testing, Open Green Map should be live around September of this year.

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Worldâ€™s First Stable Artificial DNA to Be Our Future Computers

Peg Fong

We all know we have the power to make the world a bit greener – and many feel that includes messing with DNA for environmental improvements, or just better efficiency for our gadgets. Now there’s new hope that DNA could play a major role in making computers run with little or no external power.

Researchers at the University of Toyama say they have created the world’s first stable artificial DNA molecules, made from mainly artificial bits to resemble their natural counterparts. Their findings were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society yesterday. Scientists from all over the world have been trying to do this for the promise of using artificial DNA to create biotechnology materials, including powerful DNA computers.

As Ruchi Mallya, an analyst on the use of technology in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology with Datamonitor, explains, such computers are constructed using DNA as software and enzymes as hardware, rather than traditional silicon-based components. This could then hopefully be the start of a new kind of external biological information storage system.

DNA molecules are similar to computer hard drives: they save information about an individual’s genes, but they have one advantage in that they have the potential to perform calculations faster than any man-made computers. The computer on which you’re reading this article is using nowhere near as many simultaneous actions as your DNA molecules required to make reading this article possible.

“In addition, unlike today's PCs, DNA computers require minimal or no external power sources as they run on internal energy produced during cellular reactions,” says Mallya. “There is a huge amount of potential for a computer that does not need to be plugged in the implications this has for laptops and true mobility are endless.”

The goal is to one day integrate DNA into a computer chip to create a biochip. That will make standard computers faster and more energy efficient. “DNA computers could potentially be the future of green IT,” she says. Research team leader Masahiko Inouye says the findings could lead to improvements in gene therapy, futuristic nano-sized computers and other high-tech advances. Already DNA has been harnessed to create simple electronic circuits but the University of Toyama scientists have taken it one step further by stitching together four entirely new artificial DNA.

Mallya says there are still years of research ahead, but she anticipates that companies such as Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel and Sun Microsystems might begin investing in research that emphasizes artificial DNA and its possible applications, shaking a potential Pandora’s Box next to their ears.

Via LiveScience, ComputerWeekly, Guardian, ScienceNews; Photo via jurvetson

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For Real: HP Sends 17 Boxes to Protect 32 Sheets of Paper

Hank Green

I'm not swallowing this whole yet. But The Register is reporting that one of their readers just received 32 documents from HP in a box that could have held around four million sheets of paper.

It's hard to imagine how this kind of stupidity might occur, and I doubt we've heard the whole story here. But, really? According to the email the Register received the box contained sixteen boxes that each contained two sheets of paper. There were SEVENTEEN total boxes in the package.

Apparently the two sheets of paper, each licenses for software that the business had purchased, were very fragile, and could not be mixed. Each license (two pages long) was not only in its own box...but wrapped in foam. The only reason this isn't worse than those book-length iPhone bills is because they only did it to one person (that we know of).

I mean...really, really? The really ridiculous thing is...couldn't they have just emailed PDFs?

Via The Regsiter

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What to do With Your Crummy Old iPhone

Hank Green

It's that time again. The first-generation technology is being replaced, and even some of the ecogeekiest folks in the world simply can't stand to have an outdated cell phone. So, if you simply can't stand the slow speeds and lower-cost service plan of your old first generation iPhone...what's the best way to dispose of it?

It turns out that there are a lot of answers to that question. Since we at EcoGeek are maniacally concerned about these things, we've decided to put together a list (in order of greenness) of what you can do with your old iPhone (and, by extension, most electronic devices.)

Greenest: If it Ain't Broke...Don't Fix It
The new iPhone doesn't have any ecological advantages over the old one (it's not like it's solar powered...yet), so there's really no reason (from my perspective) to upgrade. Buying a new phone is simply creating a larger market for the resource intensive creation of electronics. So, in general, your greenest option is to keep using your current phone. Of course, if it is broken, you can use services like buymytronics.com, which will give you up to $90 for a busted iPhone (a price that would likely be higher if Apple didn't make the things so darned difficult to fix.)

Brett Mosely, CEO of Buymytronics says that Apple devices tend to hold onto value very well, "I don't think that the iPhone G1 market is going to drop out. It's still a solid phone... better than the competition. I think they'll drop a little, but will hold well for a while. They're still awesome phones."
Greener: Give, Sell or Trade Locally
If you can avoid shipping your phone across the country to a new buyer, you absolutely should. Craigslist lets you sell or swap your phone locally. And you can get a good deal without the hassle of shipping. 16 GB iPhones in great condition are going for around $375 on Craigslist right now.
Green: Sell Globally
If staying local and selling yourself is too much trouble for you, simpler options abound. The aforementioned buymytronics.com will give you $250 for an iPhone in good condition with minimal hassle. Other's providing the same service include Second Rotation ($235 for a used 16 gb iPhone) and CellPhoneTradeins.com ($210 for a used 16 GB iPhone.)
Not Green: Recycle It
There are electronics recycling options available nowadays, and I heartily suggest you explore them for devices that are no longer in demand. But even if your iPhone was run over by a truck and then lit on fire, BuyMyTronics.com will still find a use for it, and pay you $10 to send it to them. Their CEO, Brett Mosely, says they once scavenged parts from an iPod Nano that had been run over by a tank in Iraq. And whatever they can't use is recycled by a basel-certified, local recycling facility.

Recycling is for devices that have outlived their useful lives. And, frankly, there isn't an iPhone in the world that has yet outlived it's useful life. So don't even think about recycling one of these puppies...it's a waste of money and resources.

And for those precious few ecogeeks who want to actually downgrade to a more environmentally friendly, low power option. You can actually sell your in-demand iPhone, and buy a green phone for far cheaper.

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CherryPal: The Green Little PC That Could

Jaymi Heimbuch

Even the name is adorable. CherryPal. This tiny 10.5 oz PC is coming soon, and will use no more than 2 watts of power without sacrificing speed. The triple-core processor uses only 20% of the components of traditional computers and will start up in only 20 seconds, promising to be faster than Vista and mac’s OS-X…though it doesn’t take much to be faster than Vista.

It can be so fast with so few part by utilizing cloud computing. So while the PC itself has just 4GB of flash storage, 256MB of memory, and 400MHz of processing, it will be able to access resources from a third-party provider in a data center. So not only can it be small and fast, it will also be virus-free, not needing constant virus protection upgrades that take up room and slow it down. It’ll have standard features like two USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet with jack, headphone level stereo audio, and a 10 watt AC-DC adapter to charge it up. Creators say the small size will provide a great energy savings, and combine that with the low cost of the computer itself, they say it’ll be “the most affordable, greenest computer on the market.” Official prices aren’t out yet, but Inhabitat’s sources say it’ll be well under $400…but add on to that the cost of the monitor, keyboard and other accessories, which can be found very inexpensively for those of us who care about the affordability factor.

When I first read the title, I was expecting to read about something that would be solar powered, or use recycled or clean materials in the creation. Sounds like CherryPal, though far cuter than other cheap “green” computers out there, only has low power usage as its leg up on the competition. As for "green," the low power thing is kind of a so-what feature. With the leaps and bounds being made in low-power, high-ability computers, I don’t think this will be in the lead for long, if at all, which I suppose really is a good thing for all of us if it means more computers that use less power on the market.

Via Inhabitat

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