IT

Your Gmail box lives somewhere in the jumble of servers, cables, and hard drives known as the "cloud" but it often migrates in search of the ideal location.

Google today released an animation that answers the question: what happens when I press send on Gmail? The company created the interactive feature called The Story of Send to highlight the security and relatively low energy footprint of its data centers. The graphics repeat Google's estimate that its data centers use 50 percent less energy than a typical data center and 30 percent of their data center energy is … Read more

Greenpeace has uncovered documents that the group claims indicate Apple has plans to draw more power at its North Carolina data center than it has stated.

The environmental watchdog group yesterday published a permit application and permit for back up diesel-powered generators at Apple's Maiden, N.C., data center that's now under construction.

The documents indicate that Apple requested and was approved to use significantly more than the 20 megawatts of power Apple projects its data center to use at full capacity. The company received environmental permits to install 54 megawatts of diesel back up power, but because … Read more

It's time for your DVR to get as smart as your iPad. If designers get it right, energy use from household electronics will stay under control without sacrifices in features.

By necessity, mobile devices, such as tablets and smart phones, need to be clever about power, just like an efficient hybrid car uses many tricks, such as turning the engine off when idle, to sip less gas.

By contrast, always-on electronics devices, such as set-top boxes, DVRs or often game consoles, operate as if they were going top speed at all times. As more devices in the home, such … Read more

To make its data center greener, Apple will be getting energy from old garbage.

The company plans to power the fuel cells at its Maiden, N.C., data center with biogas from landfills, according to a regulatory filing spotted by Data Center Knowledge.

The filing also indicates that Bloom Energy will supply the 4.8 megawatts worth of fuel cells that will partly power the data center. Yesterday, Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar told CNET that the company will supply its 200-kilowatt parking space-size Bloom Boxes to Apple.

By using biogas rather than natural gas to power its fuel … Read more

In a new twist on using waste for energy, Microsoft is designing a data center powered by biogas, the gas given off from landfills and other sources.

The company last week further detailed its Data Plant experiment, an idea to bring more reliability to its data centers and lower pollution from them.

Fuel cells would supply power to the data center and make it independent from the grid, said Christian Belady, general manager of Data Center Services in a blog post last week. In theory, having on-site power allows a data center operator to use the electric grid as bac … Read more

Commentary In its trademark smashmouth style, Greenpeace this week took cloud computing companies to task for using dirty energy -- and then came under fire itself over its methods and assertions.

Whatever Greenpeace's shortcomings, though, its activists have a point.

In the latest event of its "Clean our Cloud" campaign, Greenpeace activists yesterday rappelled off a building near Amazon and Microsoft offices and attached a banner which reads "Amazon, Microsoft: How Clean is Your Cloud?"

Earlier, it released three videos that poke fun at Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft by showing workers shoveling coal into a … Read more

A day after being criticized by Greenpeace for its energy practices, Apple said Greenpeace's estimates for power use at the company's latest data center are much too high.

Apple said that its data center now under construction in North Carolina will use about 20 megawatts at full capacity. Greenpeace put the estimate at 100 megawatts.

Greenpeace gave Apple, Amazon, and other companies low marks for locating their data centers in areas that rely heavily on coal and "dangerous nuclear." Those companies also scored lower than competitors, including Google and Yahoo, because they disclose less information on … Read more

Greenpeace is pushing harder for cloud-computing companies to cut back on coal and tap into cleaner sources of electricity.

The environmental watchdog group today released its latest rankings of companies, including Google, Apple, and Amazon, that run giant data centers to serve up Web pages and services. Greenpeace now has a "clean energy index" to measure how much electricity from renewable sources is used by these companies.

Greenpeace has been pressuring cloud companies for years to improve the efficiency of their data centers, advocate for clean-energy policies, and disclose energy usage.

This year, Yahoo, despite its dire financial … Read more

Google received top accolades from Greenpeace for its work advancing cleaner energy, while Apple and Facebook didn't make the environmental watchdog group's IT industry list of leaders.

Greenpeace released the latest of its periodic Cool IT Leaderboard today and singled out the work of Google on renewable energy technology and policy.

Energy consumption from computing, including large data centers, continues to grow rapidly, one reason why Greenpeace has targeted cloud computing companies. "The IT sector might like to consider itself forward-thinking, but it is keeping far too quiet while the dirty energy industry continues to exert undue … Read more