Top 5 Articles for November 17 - 23, 2008

Last week there was a focus on the impact that Green IT can have in the global climate crisis abatement strategies, political discussions on government actions as well as Gartner sharing data center best practises.  On the social side of things, FastCompany discusses a 'people-powered Internet".  These were our favourite articles and resources.

1. "IT has the power to green the world"  by Ted Samposon, InfoWorld

"Don't underestimate the potential impact that ICT (information and communications technology) can have on fighting global warming while saving organizations money. A recently released report titled "SMART 2020: enabling the low carbon economy in the information age" says that ICT could help cut global greenhouse gases 15 percent and save up to $946 billion by 2020."

The reports referred to can be found at the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) website and definitely worth the read.

2.  "How to sell green IT to your senior managers" by Vawn Himmelsbach, ITWorldCanada

"As global markets plummet, and the world experiences a general tightening of the purse strings, going green probably isn’t at the top of your organization’s priority list. The latest federal election showed that Canadians were not ready to accept the Liberal’s carbon tax and environmental initiatives. So how can CIOs convince their executive team that going green is not only good for the environment, but for the business?"

Politics also played a role in the United States.

3.  "Google's Schmidt: Innovation must come first - Calls for more support of broadband, alternative energy" by Grant Gross, ComputerWorld

"November 18, 2008 (IDG News Service) WASHINGTON - The U.S. government needs to pump billions of dollars into alternative energy efforts, broadband infrastructure and research in an effort to rebuild the nation's economy, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt said today.

It's time for the government to take a new approach toward issues such as energy independence and broadband adoption since recent years have shown that private efforts are not enough, Schmidt said during a speech in Washington sponsored by the New America Foundation, a think tank focused on broadband, wireless and other issues."

Google being one of the top energy users in America, certainly has an interest in pushing the alternative energy agenda.

4.  "Gartner shares data center efficiency secrets" by Tom Jowitt, ComputerWorld

"November 18, 2008 (Techworld.com) Power consumption at data centers is once again in the spotlight, after analyst firm Gartner Inc. came up with a list of best practices in the data center that are designed to save electricity and improve cooling.

Gartner claims that if companies follow all of its best practices, they could typically expect to save 1 million kilowatt-hours. It says that in a conventional data center, between 35% and 50% of the electricity consumed is for cooling compared to only 15% in best-practice or 'green' data centers."

Data center efficiency one piece of the overall Green IT puzzle.  Check out the Green IT Guide for Sustainable Business to learn more about our approach to Green IT.

5. "People-Powered Internet Grows Up" by Chris Dannen, FastCompany.com

"On today's Internet, algorithms rule. But a handful of startups are using large-scale human participation to offer online services that computers alone can't deliver. Can human judgment scale with the Web?

The question of the next decade is: How can we find what we want -- the perfect job, just the right pair of shoes, exactly the news that's important to us -- amidst the maelstrom of information that's available on the Web? Google, of course, is the de facto answer, it's algorithms generating a ballpark guess at what we want when we type in a few search terms. But the burgeoning mass of data on the Internet is threatening to outmode such robotic tools. So a growing number of start-ups is putting forward another strategy for filtering the Web: Use human judgment first, computer power second."

Comments?  Post your comments on any of these articles below.  We'd love to hear about your favourite articles, whitepapers and blogs.