Many companies are going green because it makes sense financially. GM is a great example, as they are installing fields of solar panels at various location.
General Motors broke ground Wednesday on a six-acre field of solar panels in front of its Detroit-Hamtramck plant as part of an effort to green the production of its Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car.
DTE Energy will own and operate the 516-kilowatt system as part of its Solar Currents program, which is installing photovoltaic systems at sites such as Monroe County Community College and a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan parking structure in downtown Detroit.
DTE will lower GM’s energy bill because of the solar panels, which were first reported by the Free Press. That savings, about $15,000 a year, will combine with more efficient lighting and equipment updates to lower Detroit-Hamtramck’s energy costs by nearly $3 million annually.
This is just one of many examples of corporate American being ahead of the curve compared to those who view alternative energy in a skeptical light. This is our future . . .
If you are a designer, then you already know about saving planets. As you design and advertise in a digital world, you’re also reducing the amount of paper you’re using.
What happens when you’re working with graphic design that needs to be physical and not in the online environment?
Bring your planet-saving techniques into the office to help make print jobs more environmentally friendly.
Printing Alternatives
Want to show a co-worker your latest project or report? Try emailing them a screen shot instead of printing out the page. Cartridges and ink are definitely unfriendly for the environment, and printing also uses up paper. If you really must print something, conserve ink by using smaller fonts for words and by printing in black and white instead of color whenever possible. You can also use programs like Skype that will let you video chat and share your screen with others, which helps reduce printing jobs. Set up an electronic office network so you can reduce printing for office announcements.
Use Environmentally Friendly Printers
Although you might do your best to reduce your print jobs, there are times when you will have to use a printer. Try to use printers that are designed to help save energy and reduce ink. Some printers on the market are designed with the environment in mind. They use soy ink and allow for double-sided printing. Some will merge pages so you can print several pages of a report onto one piece of paper.
Of course, you can always consider scanning as an option for reducing print jobs. Instead of using ink, just scan an image or document, and then send it to a co-worker or client by email or through a social networking site. You can also use scans instead of faxes.
Consider using digital printing when you have to do a print job. Digital printing reduces waste since the ink won’t get absorbed by paper with a digital press. The print stays on the top of the paper.
Reduced Printing Can Save Energy
Help the environment by cutting down on the amount of energy you use. Turn your printer off until you need to print a specific project. You might find that this is just annoying enough that you will find reasons why you don’t need to print certain papers. This is a double-help since reducing print jobs reduces pollution. To make shut-downs and start-ups easier, consider plugging your computer and printer into power strips that you can shut off with the click of a button.
Reduce Paper Usage in Printing
When you use paper, make sure you use both sides of a page, and fill the pages up. Try to use recycled paper whenever possible, and when you purchase new paper, look for a lighter stock. Don’t forget to recycle your own papers when you have finished using them.
When you’re working in graphic design, you’re already a step ahead of most people. You know about strategic planning and proactive maneuvers. Take this information into your office to reduce print jobs. Develop strategies to minimize printer usage. Take your creativity and talent and put them to use in the office as you help save the planet.
With the budget battle raging in Washington, our investments in a green future are in jeopardy. President Obama wants to make responsible cuts to spending while preserving our investments in clean energy that can help us gain energy independence and a greener future. Here’s President Obama from his weekly radio address:
Both Democrats and Republicans believe we need to reduce the deficit. That’s where we agree. The question we’re debating is how we do it. I’ve proposed a balanced approach that cuts spending while still investing in things like education and clean energy that are so critical to creating jobs and opportunities for the middle class. It’s a simple idea: we need to live within our means while at the same time investing in our future.
That’s why I disagree so strongly with a proposal in Congress that cuts our investments in clean energy by 70 percent. Yes, we have to get rid of wasteful spending—and make no mistake, we’re going through every line of the budget scouring for savings. But we can do that without sacrificing our future. We can do that while still investing in the technologies that will create jobs and allow the United States to lead the world in new industries. That’s how we’ll not only reduce the deficit, but also lower our dependence on foreign oil, grow the economy, and leave for our children a safer planet. And that’s what our mission has to be.
This article from Time is fascinating on several fronts. It highlights the potential for a green movement in Africa, where the expansion of deserts can be halted and reversed with green initiatives. It also addresses how carbon credits can be used to great effect.
Two global agreements aim to put that right. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows developed-world businesses that need to offset their pollution to buy certified emission reductions, or carbon credits, to fund the reduction or sequestering of carbon dioxide in the developing world. The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program (UN-REDD), launched in 2008, allows polluters to pay developing-world farmers to keep their trees, which store carbon dioxide as they grow. UNEP is working with scientists in Kenya, China, Niger and Nigeria to quantify how much carbon each ecosystem swallows — comparing the appetite of a rain forest with, say, that of a mangrove swamp — and when completed in 2012, those formulas will determine how much to pay each landowner. The UNEP’s Steiner says “farming carbon” this way is far cheaper than new technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions at their source.
Estimates of how much the new market is worth vary wildly. The World Bank says carbon sequestration could be worth $1.5 billion a year to Africa, while Sukhdev reckons UN-REDD will be worth an eventual $30 billion to $110 billion a year globally. Manfred Kern of agritechnology company Bayer CropScience argues that the potential for monetizing natural assets is almost infinite. There is no reason, he says, that what works for trees should not also work for earth. “For the urbanized world, soil is just dirt, mud,” Kern told a U.N. conference in Bonn in May 2008. “But soil is the source of our food, the very future of humanity. We must recognize that soil has a value higher than gold.” What is clear is the potential. “It is essential that climate change be viewed as a major development opportunity for Africa,” World Bank managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said last year.
Carbon credits and trading are very controversial, but the impact on places like Africa cannot be discounted.
It’s not exactly what anybody wants and it’s not the ideal situation for the American people, but it is looking more and more like there will be a government shutdown in the United States of America.
Online wagering fans have been betting back and forth over the last couple of weeks while keeping a close eye on the situation, but as of now, it looks like the two main parties of government can’t come to an agreement on the budget and there will be a shutdown.
Leaders in both Chambers of Congress spent the last few hours pointing fingers and trying to win a public relations battle rather than trying to settle the situation.
And with both sides offer different versions of the story, it’s unclear what is exactly happening amidst the talks.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suggests that the problem stems around ideology and claims that both sides have actually made plenty of progress as far as the actual budget is concerned. The Republicans, on the other hand, suggest that this is solely based around the numbers and they are trying their best to cut down the American debt, which is currently at $14 trillion.
In the mean time, it doesn’t look like a short term bill will be an option. President Obama has vowed to veto any such temporary solution, calling it a distraction from a long-term solution, which is obviously what is really needed to remedy this mess.
As it stands now, the government shutdown will begin at midnight Saturday – that is unless the two sides can agree on a budget for the rest of the year.
Stay tuned as the we are going to find out more about this situation very shortly. Hopefully cooler heads prevail but as of right now, it looks like both sides are too far apart to prevent a shutdown.
In his speech today about energy independence, President Obama made it clear he would not abandon nuclear energy. This may be controversial for many in light of the tragedy in Japan, but Obama pointed out the fact the nuclear energy does not emit carbon, so it’s critical if we are concerned about climate change, along with its importance for energy independence.
The key is safety. Just as with offshore drilling, the key is learning from mistakes and having a commitment to sensible regulation and safety.
It will be interesting to see how this sells to the left. On the right, this was probably necessary to get Republicans like Lindsay Graham back to the negotiating table on an energy bill.
In today’s exploding world of technological advances we have seen the development and introduction of so many different programs that can help us perform just about any computing need. These new programs can include digital photography, file sharing and video playback and editing.
Users around the world have seen many different digital formats introduced into their computing realms. It can be understandably confusing, and often times very frustrating. This seems especially prevalent in video players. It seems you just find a video play back program so you can watch that video that your brother sent you and then you receive another one that is in a completely different format and unfortunately your playback software can’t read that format.
Fortunately, open source software is free, and most of their media players, such as VLC player, KM player, and BS player have all the correct codecs in order to play most formats on a number of different platforms. As with any open source software, to download vlc or any of the other popular media players, there is no risk of corrupting any present files or your computer.
You should consider trying a program called BS.Player. BS.Player is considered to be one of the most popular multimedia players in the world. Within the computing world BS.Player has received numerous awards and accolades. In fact some 70 million users around the world use it. Its popularity globally could be due in part that the program has been translated into 90 different languages.
Other positives about BS.Player are that it is free and it doesn’t take a huge computing platform to work. It is free due to its open source background and the fact that it is part of the GNU General Public License. In addition, the player does not require large amounts of RAM or CPU space.
BS.Player will allow playback of just about every popular video format including:
-QuickTime
-MPEG2
-XviD
-DivZ
-WMV
-Flash
BS.Player can also be used as an audio player as well. This great program also provides the capability of managing all of your multimedia content, and it can also make media compilations of your choosing.
There are millions of users who use their internet connections for communication — whether it be emails or instant messaging or both. In the past few years we have experienced an explosion of instant messaging, not only on our computers but our mobile devices as well. We enjoy that “instant” communication. We login and start chatting away — we could be communicating personal information and happenings or even conducting business transactions.
Many users start out by choosing a single instant messaging platform such as Yahoo or MSN Messenger or Google Talk. All of these platforms generally do not allow other users on other services communicate. This means that if a user has many friends and family on disparate services and networks, he or she may have several different chat clients installed. And imagine if that person wants to communicate with different people on different networks simultaneously? It’s a frustrating and time consuming process.
However because of two Open Source instant message platforms, these contacts and services can be brought together on one single application.
Miranda IM and Pidgin IM are two Open Source programs available to users to bring all their separate messaging contacts onto one easy-to-use platform. Not only are these two programs easy to use, they are free to download and use. Both Miranda and Pidgin are part of the Open Source initiative and as such, are licensed under the GNU General Public License. Both programs were developed by a group of like-minded programmers and developers who want to produce strong software programs for Open Source users. These programs are easy to download and install. They will both collect the current contact and chat buddy information and consolidate them into one easy to navigate list.
But chatting isn’t where the sharing has to stop. Aside from all the current social networking sites, businesses and their clients or friends and their family can share music, videos, files, photos, and more using another open source program called Ares Galaxy. This program helps you share and unshared only what you select over a secure, virus free platform. Between the multi-chat platform and a single program that can help you securely transfer multi-media business as we know it could evolve to internet dependent.
It’s become a core part of web marketing to use media — whether that’s audio, image, or video media — to spread word about your group. From bands spreading album preview to mega-corporations releasing made-for-web advertisements, this new arena is both plainly visible and obviously important. However, many new companies will have trouble breaching the media marketing front, in part because of an inability to effectively spread large media files. FileZilla is one of the best FTP solutions to this problem.
There are multiple ways to resolve the media sharing issue. The first, and most common, is to send out videos through video sharing sites like YouTube, audio through audio preview widgets like Podcast Player, images through Flickr or Picasa, and so forth. However: users who aren’t especially web-savvy won’t be able to easily download the file for later use, and won’t be able to access the media at all while offline; advertisements may well be shown alongside or even over-top of your media; and, of course, you lose almost all control over distribution.
FileZilla provides an alternative for direct distribution of larger files, but it requires neither heavy investment nor advanced learning. As an FTP program, FileZilla will allow its users to upload large files — up to hundreds of megabytes in size — to a single web location, allowing users to download the file just by visiting the appropriate destination URL. Since this program is open source, it’s completely free to use. All you will need is a domain name and a web host that lets you store files on the server, and provides bandwidth for your uploads and downloads.
The exact directions will be different for each specific instance, but the basic summary of this procedure is: download File Zilla, upload your file to a web server, and provide the URL to anyone who you want to have access the media file.
A computer network involves using connections, whether wireless or cable-based, to connect different devices. You can make a computer network in a variety of ways, depending on the devices you want to connect to each other. In some cases, the Internet can act as the connection point, making it possible to link devices thousands of miles apart.
If you have a computer network in place, you can incorporate Audacity into it. Since Audacity is an open source project, you can download the audio editor on any computer in your system. The program also works on a variety of operating systems, including Linux, Mac, and Windows. Having the same program available no matter what operating system you use can be beneficial.
Another way to use Audacity with a computer network is to save your files in an Internet-based storage system. This will allow you to work on the file from any computer in your network. You can save your changes, and they will be available the next time you open the file.
Some people don’t want to mess with downloading a program onto every computer in the network, so they include a server that stores both applications and files. If you have this type of system, you can add Audacity to the server. It’s also possible to set up remote access to a computer. This can be an option for a person who wants to network applications without using a server. By logging in to the computer that is acting as the remote client, you can see and use the tools and files on that computer from another one.
Setting up a computer connection can be easier than many individuals believe the process to be. Having access to your favorite programs, including Audacity, from any point in the network may be the incentive you need to install a network today.
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