GreenITStrategy.com

I personally like things that are a bit quirky. I am not your average geek: I have never seen Star Wars or whatever that other star movie is, I dress a little funny sometimes and I listen to metal and progressive rock (OK - I totally defend those things as being quirky not geeky :)). So when quirky things catch my eye I can't help but share it with everyone...

This story comes from Discovery News where they reported on students at the University of Illinois who created a product called "Bio-Grow".  In essence this product is made from computer parts that effectively cultivates algae. And in return the algae can be used in the development of biofuel to replace petroleum.

This cool algae bioreactor cultivates the photosynthetic process through a tank made of an Apple G4 CPU tower and using an Apple iMac CRT to generate light and heat for algae production, with a modified Dell Latitude laptop controlling the CRT to generate specific light spectrums at different times and temperatures.

Now thats quirky.

Read the whole story here: Electronic Waste produces algae for biofuel (Discovery News).

I got this message through from BAN (Basel Action Network) on Monday.  Generally I don't jump on one side of a story until I hear all the facts however given the content, I thought it was an interesting example of what I spoke to Shane Mulholland to back in 2009 around ewaste loopholes:

At first when you ask yourself this one, you kind of go - of course! Think about all that packaging & shipping! But then you kind of go: wait a sec - those digital downloads are hosted in big, power-hungry data centres.  Microsoft recently undertook a study where they invited in the Natural Resource Defence Council to review their analysis on this very topic.  And the result was that digital downloads ARE more environmentally friendly.

A couple of the key stats from this report are:

• Digital download of Office (a nice chunky sized download that one!) avoided 8 times the amount of carbon compared to shipping & producing a DVD;
• Carbon emissions avoided through online purchasing of 10 million copies is equivalent to:
  • the electric consumption of 7,715 US households, or
  • 13,008 passengers cars driven in one year, or
  • 231 acres of avoided Amazon rainforest deforestation.

Checkout the full paper here:  http://us20.trymicrosoftoffice.com/go-green/

Even if you aren’t interested in the so-called concept of ‘saving the planet’, there is one thing you can do to help your IT department better manage your Microsoft software repository. When I was in an internal IT department we seemed to experience what I called "CD/DVD FEAST or FAMINE"!  We would either receive a ‘tonne’ of CDs and end up throwing most out or have to find somewhere to store them (in our already cramped space!); or alternately we would spend ages trying to FIND a CD with the right software and the right volume licensing key!

To help with both the environmental and operational issues, Microsoft has introduced the concept of ‘Digital by Choice’ – which is essentially opting to have your Microsoft software downloadable via the central licensing site rather than sent out via CD/DVD, once your purchase order is processed by your LAR. This is pretty efficient as you can give access to those that require access to the software, and restrict it from those that don’t, and you get the software faster!

This program is available for any customer on a volume licensing program but for the meantime is limited to a set of pilot countries until 22nd August:  US, Canada, UK, Norway, Sweden, Singapore and Australia.  However for those of you outside these countries the program will be available from September - not too long to wait. Today there are very few Australian’s on this program (c’mon Aussies!).

To enable the program you just need to click on the 'Digital By Choice' icon in your Volume Licensing website:

Step 1...Click on the 'Digital By Choice' logo

Step 2... Click the link 'Join Digital by Choice NOW' to email your details to the licensing team

And if you ever want to disable the program, you can opt out at any time and start receiving CD/DVDs again.