The Geek Squad is partnering with IdeaFestival to promote a contest for ideas that help with e-waste, power conservation, and untapped resources. The Geek Squad is a national 24-hour computer support service that is offered by Best Buy stores around the nation.

The Idea Festival is a 3 day event from September 13-15, 2007 in Louisville, Kentucky, that gathers together leaders and thinkers across the nation to explore and celebrate innovations and ideas. Together, Geek Squad and Idea Festival are looking for great ideas in the following areas:

Solutions for eWaste: As much as technology is making life easier for most of us, the growing problem of eWaste is making things harder for the environment. Whether it’s an idea for a great piece of art made from recycled motherboards, or a biodegradable laptop made from sunflower seeds, Geek Squad wants to hear it.

Power Conservation: The world is awash in battery inefficiencies. Got a schematic for a more efficient solar panel? Send it in to Geek Squad. Think the world should harness the collective power of stationary bike riders and use it to heat museums? Even better.

Maximizing Untapped Resources: Geek Squad wants to hear about untapped resources, be they people they aren’t talking to but should, how to maximize ordinary things for extraordinary purposes (corn helps us make fuel now), or something else entirely.

The main purpose of the site is to promote ideas that people can suggest and it will also allow you to rate ideas submitted by others. Winners will get an all-expenses-paid trip to Idea Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. I am not sure how much fun you can have in Kentucky outside of the event, but the event sure sounds cool.

The Geek Squad Challenge

Idea Festival

Panduit Corp released a new Net-Access Server Cabinet System that features IBM’s Rear Door Heat Exchanger Water-Cooling Technology. It uses a five-inch deep cooling door that uses chilled water to dissipate heat generated from the servers. It does not utilize any other cooling system and can reduce server heat output by up to 55%.

Water cooling has existed for desktops for a while now, but has not been used in the server environment. As far as noise is concerned, they are great because they make almost little to no noise compared to the very loud fans that are often found in servers. According to a Gartner report, water can carry 3,500 times more heat than air at sea level which can significantly improve the temperature of datacenters with more cooling efficiency.

Cooling a server is the biggest concern for corporations and the energy necessary to cool the servers is one of the biggest costs. By having energy efficient cooling, it can save a significant amount of power and costs. Datacenters have become a topic of attention because of all the energy that is used to maintain these large environments. Big corporations such as IBM and Sun Microsystems have taken measures in increasing their environmental responsibility. It will be interesting to see the technology that these companies will come up with that other companies will take advantage of.

Western Digital launched a new line of environmentally conscious hard drives on monday that can use 40% less energy. The GreenPower drives can save more than $10 per drive per year in electricity costs. WD estimates that for a datacenter with 10,000 hard drives, this can add up to $100,000 in annual energy costs and reduce CO2 emissions by 600 metric tons. Obviously, a datacenter of that size would not switch out all their hard drives because that would probably cost a lot more than $100,000, but the theory in cost efficiency sounds good. Here are the following technologies that these new GreenPower hard drives include:

• IntelliPower(TM): A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and cache size designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.

• IntelliPark(TM): Delivers lower power consumption by automatically unloading the heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag.

• IntelliSeek(TM): Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.

The new line of hard drives is set to come out this quarter but there are no prices released yet. The hard drives will be at 5400 RPM, which helps reduce the noise; there’s still no evidence that they will outperform regular drives at 7200RPM. The performance will be a key factor in comparing these drives to regular hard drives, and it will be interesting to see reviews and comparisons when these hard drives come out.

Global warming and saving the environmental has recently been a very hot topic in the media. It was only a matter of time before it entered the video game industry. There are plenty of games that are filled with action and violence that get attacked and get blamed when you hear about kids and violence in the news. Maybe if we hear about kids doing something good for the environment, we can contribute it to playing video games as well.

In Second Life, you are able to plant virtual trees for 300 Lindens ($1.50 real world cash) where Second Chance Trees will take all the proceeds and plant real life trees in exchange for each virtual tree planted. There is another game called Global Warning developed by Midori, a small development company based in France that allows you to choose a character and make decisions to live a greener life while saving the world. Microsoft is teaming up with a nonprofit group called Games For Change and will be sponsoring a contest for college students to develop a game based on global warming. The goal is to raise awareness and educate while also entertaining. Another game by Adventure Ecology involves Dash and his sidekick Bay as they battle adversaries in their quest to rid pollution and defeat global warming. The genre of "serious" video games that raise awareness about issues such as global warming and poverty is a great way to use video games as a learning tool.

This reminds me of Captain Planet and the Planeteers. If you aren’t familiar with Captain Planet, it was a cartoon back in the 90’s where a combination of five ring powers summons Captain Planet to help the five planeteers fight eco-villains. The show also featured "Planeteer Alerts" that ends each episode with a tip on what you can do to help the environment. I am sure there will be another eco-friendly cartoon that will come out soon or maybe even a new Captain Planet that looks much cooler.

According to the US Department of Energy, businesses and industries consume more than twice the amount of power as residents in states such as California. As a California company of 35,000 employees, Sun Microsystems is one of those companies that play a big part in power consumption. The power consumptions from datacenters have doubled between 2000 and 2005 and many of those datacenter have Sun Microsystems servers. Sun Microsystems has realized that it has been a major contributor in the increased amounts of carbon emissions and has taken responsibility in making a difference. Fortune magazine recently declared the company, The greenest computer company under the Sun. The company is planning on reducing their CO2 emissions by 20% over the next five years and estimates that 90% of its greenhouse gas emissions are the results of its electricity usage. The company encourages employees to work from home and to share offices and has reduced the office spaces by having 55% of its employees work from home. In 2006, the company saved $67.8 million in operating costs and real estate as a result of the change. Sun has calculated that the reduced commuting and office heating/cooling has saved about 30,000 tons in carbon emissions.

Sun Microsystems has a dedicated eco center website. The website describes the efforts that Sun Microsystems is making to help the environment, and their goals in cutting their carbon footprint. Sun is also working on strategies to use alternative energy, and greening their datacenters using smaller, more efficient servers that optimize energy, space, and performance. Sun is among many of the hi-tech companies that are making a difference and many more are also taking its lead. At the KGO Eco Live 2007 event that I attended in May at San Francisco, Sun had a huge booth area that showcased its energy saving efforts.

To get more individuals involved, the VP of Eco Responsibility at Sun Microsystems, Dave Douglas has released 10 tips that everyone can do to try to save some energy.

10 FAST, EASY TIPS TO COOL YOUR COMPANY

• Try using natural light. If your office is too dark, try a reading light. The average reading light consumes about 60 watts – much less than overhead lighting.
• Don’t depend on the sensors. Even if your office is equipped with sensors that switch lights on and off automatically, there is still a lag in the time the sensor takes to turn off lights. Also, motion in hallways or from other activity can reactivate your lights. Both can add up to real dollars and greenhouse gas pollution.
• Shut the blinds first thing in the morning before you feel the need to. Doing this early on in the day reduces the overall heat gain of the building and reduces the need to use air conditioning. You can enjoy that view again once the heat wave subsides.
• Dump your screensaver. If you still have one of those screensavers that move – whether the psychedelic or a tamer variety – these can consume as much energy as when your computer is in use.
• Put your computer to sleep. Most computers come with an energy saving feature that automatically puts your computer into “sleep” mode after a set amount of time if you’re not using it. Studies show that 50-80% computers are not set to go into “sleep” mode. With a few clicks, you can set up your computer to go to sleep, or just ask your IT department to help you.
• Better yet, click off the power button. Your monitor is using energy even while it sleeps. Turn off the power button when you’re not using it, and power down any other hardware you’re not using, whether in your office, or elsewhere. Unplugging your equipment at the end of the day can bring the energy from 150 watts down to 0.
• Pull the plugs. Believe it or not, your electronic devices may still use energy when they are turned off because some use “standby power.” The US EPA estimates that 40% of the energy used by home electronics like Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), big screen televisions and cable decoder boxes is consumed when the devices are turned off or in standby mode.
• Kill the space heater. Despite the sweltering heat outside, many offices are over-air conditioned and cause workers to run space heaters. Space heaters can consume as much as 1500 watts per hour. During an energy crunch, try working in a common area such as a cafeteria or sitting outside. You should also contact your office manager or facilities to get to the root of the problem. It could be an easy fix or a sign of a larger problem that needs addressing.
• Get a free consult from your local utility. Many electric utilities offer free evaluation services. They will walk you through the power drains in your facility and help you conserve— both energy and money.
• Participate in a "demand response" program. Your local utility probably offers a demand response program, in which your company can be alerted when hot weather is straining the local power grid and threatening a black out. Your utility will call you during those peak times and ask you to turn down any non-essential lights or equipment. Some will ask that you simply reduce your usage by 5%, and that small amount across hundreds of local businesses can actually prevent a black out. Participating in a demand response program can save your business money since electricity is generally most expensive during these peak times.

Shakira Performs at Live Earth: Image credit: APLive Earth officially set the record for the most simultaneous concert viewers at 30 million streams on MSN on Saturday. It was the largest global entertainment event in history with an estimated 2 billion attending the events on 7 continents and 10,000 affiliated events. Having the technology of live streaming video has allowed the event to be easily accessible to people who can choose to watch the different concerts online as well as watch it at a later time at http://liveearth.msn.com.

According to Nielsen ratings, however, the three-hour special on NBC only received 2.7 million viewers and was the least-watched U.S. program on Saturday night. A total of 19 million people watched at least 6 minutes on NBC, CNBC, Telemundo, Sundance Channel, Bravo, MSNBC, and Universal HD. The event also occurred during the July 4th weekend, when most people usually aren't watching TV.

There has been skepticism about the event and its performers as it required many artists to fly to the events, some in private jets, and could have created more CO2 as a result of the concert. Al Gore has defended the cause as a start of a 3-5 year program with a message that reached out to 2 billion people across the world. While some celebrities such as Sting and Cameron Diaz take active participation in helping with the efforts, others may not. Madonna and Black Eyed Peas both performed new songs that they wrote for the event. The goal is that with the help of the celebrities, more people will be aware of the issues and even the celebrities that attended and performed at Live Earth learned a lot about the issues. Whether or not, the concert really made a difference is really hard to judge. What are your thoughts?

Sources:
Newsday.com
Foxnews.com

There is a new generation of super-thin displays that produce sharper images using less power. Organic light-emiting diode (LOED) screens use more than 40% less power than a LCD display and are also twice as thin, since they do not need backlighting (they glow on their own).

Currently, Samsung Electronics and Kyocera are already using this technology for music players and mobile phones. Sony will soon be selling OLED in Japan as early as 2008: it showed off the screens at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year.

Currently, OLED displays cost manufacturers 1.7 times more than LCDs, but as the technology advances, the prices will drop and it will be a strong competitor for LCDs. OLED is an regular LED that has an extra emissive electroluminsecent layer comprised of an organic compound film. The layer contains a polymer substance with organic compands that result in pixels that emit lights of different colors. OLED displays do not require a backlight to function, so they use less power and can last longer when they are being powered by a battery.

Via News.com

Editor's note: Yes, we're bringing on the new writers! Alex Ho is the latest to join the group. Alex blogs regularly at Generation Exe, and lives in the Bay Area. He'll be covering the green tech field for us.

The BMW Hydrogen 7 Series Sedan is not currently available for purchase, but I am sure it will be eventually. It has started a limited production run and will currently only be made available to influential public figures such as Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It has a V-12 engine that produces 260 horsepower. What makes this car great is that when it is running on hydrogen, it releases zero emissions as the hydrogen fuel just releases water vapors.

Since there are currently only a limited amount of hydrogen refueling stations, the engine is designed to run on either hydrogen or gasoline. There are two fuel tanks located at the rear of the car: one holds 17.5 lbs of liquid hydrogen while the other holds 16 gallons of gasoline. A filter pipe for the hydrogen is constantly chilled to -418 F degrees. In order to keep the gas cold, a special material 30 mm thick insulates as well as a 56 foot thick styrofoam panel. The driver can easily switch between the two by pressing a button on the steering wheel. The hydrogen can power the car for 123 miles while 300 miles can be driven with the gasoline.

The BMW Hydrogen 7 has gone through numerous development and testing processes including performance testing at the Nurburgring tracks in Germany, the heat of Death Valley, and the chilling cold of the Polar regions.

Here is a link to read more about the car. Here is a video from BMW on the Hydrogen 7.