A few years ago, I mirrored a hoax version of a hoax eBay auction for 24 Japanese children. To make a very long story a very short one, the result of this was that I met the first person ever banned from eBay and helped harass some racist plagiarist. Anyway, I lost touch with this guy for a very long time, but I've come into contact with him again.

He brings Blackle to my attention, which is an all-black web browser. There's really nothing special about it, of course. Any monkey could make a black version of Google. The idea behind it actually is pretty neat, though:

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

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.

I usually think internet campaigns to save the world are stupid and a waste of time, but this one's not so bad. Of course, as with all things much of the justification is flimsy. The idea behind Blackle only works if we assume people are all using CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors, which actually do use more energy for brighter colors. LCD monitors (flatscreens, plasmas, etc.) don't work the same way, and typically use less energy on the whole to begin with.

Be first to comment this article

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.6
AkoComment © Copyright 2004 by Arthur Konze - www.mamboportal.com
All right reserved