Friday, April 11, 2008

|Search Alternatives

Two positive Internet search possibilities:
  • Blackle saves energy because black screens require less energy than white screens. It is independent of Google, so searches will return different links.
  • Good Search makes a donation to the charity of your choice every time you click search (just use it responsibly). You can also add it to your nagivation bar search box.

7 comments:

Wishydig said...

The savings are probably only relevant on Cathode Ray Tube monitors -- a technology that's getting phased out quickly.

LCD monitors work by blocking light -- but energy is still used to produce the light that's being blocked.

Here's a quick piece at the Wall Street Journal.

Probably best just to turn down the brightness. That makes the biggest difference.

Jeff said...

I just wrote back, but my comment was deleted when it timed out. Frustrating.

Basically, I had read a similar but less detailed critique of Blackle in the "criticism" paragraph of the Wikipedia article. I'm still using a CRT monitor, so it has some relevance for this unit.

I liked this quote from the About page, "We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy."

But actually, our NavBar search engine is set to Good Search. It works sufficiently well maybe %80 of the time. I just wish it were powered by Google instead of Yahoo.

And how are things in Wishydigland? Do you have any trips planned for the North?

Wishydig said...

I think maybe Google™ is pushing the "it's not so big a difference" angle to make sure they don't get the 'part-of-the-problem' label.

A few days ago they did the black out for the sake of calling attention to the issue. I think that's where the difference will grow. Keep everyone thinking about it so they start changing behavior in basic and permanent ways.

Things are pretty good. Busy.

I think a trip up is slated for early May once we get our semester's work done and handed in.

We should see if our radii can overlap.

Jeff said...

Overlapping is good. Indeed.

How do you do your comment tricks--superscript and links? How can I learn and do said tricks?

Wishydig said...

The superscript is simple. I just do the character coding by hand. so the superscript trademark is "(ampersand)trade(semicolon)" -- where the parentheses are signs and trade is spelled out. you can find a list of these here.

Now the links...
Some HTML tags possible in blogspot comments. The anchor tag follows the following format.

<a href="http://www.WHATEVER.com">click here</a>

Of course you can put any text in place of "click here".

I had to use character coding to make sure it shows up as code instead of actually being used as code in the comment. If you just type in those characters you'll get your links.

Hey If we work out a visit we could do an HTML/CSS tutoring session. I could spend hours on the stuff. I'm sure the bosses would love that.

Jeff said...

Yeah, bosses and their agendas!

Thanks for the coding tip§. Very ©°°⌊.

Helen said...

Cool! I've only ever been able to do bold or italic. So thanks for the unintentional lesson!