Technologies Mother Earth Can be Proud of

Green and clean is the name of the game, and with the environment under the cosh it is worth taking a moment or two to give credit to those technologies that do their bit in the fight against global warming.

Water-Powered Alarm Clock: Getting the environment tickety-boo

This is no wind up, so don’t be shy above phoning your friends about it. Boffins at Bedol have worked out a way to tell the time without the use of a battery or the twist of your fingers. The clock is delightfully raindrop shaped, and with its design and excellent functionality, it is easy to see that the designers sweated every last drop of perspiration to tick every box with their Drop Water Clock. Powered entirely by water, the clock can keep track of time, has daily and hourly alarm options, as well as being able to switch between 12- and 24-hour display. Waste is minimal as the water only needs to be replaced on a six-monthly basis. A built-in memory chip will also keep track of the time while the water is being changed. The Drop can stand tall despite being only six and a half inches high.

Opteron Server Chips in with some substantial power savings

AMD has powered in with some weighty chips for servers to add to its chip portfolio for notebook and desktop PCs. Their lab technicians have shown that their appetite for innovation remains strong. They have cooked up a wonderful recipe for power-saving in servers with the Opteron series of low-power chips.

Efficiency has not been sacrificed in their bid to cut down energy costs. The Opteron 6200, 4200, and 3200 series are all specifically designed for servers and the latest, the 6200, in particular delivers a world-saving 86 percent increase in performance despite only necessitating half the power-per-core than previous server chips offerings.

Another energy-saving feature is its Thermal Design Power Cap which gives data centre operators the ability to customize the chips to adjust to specific power and workload demands as well as take advantage of unutilised space on a server rack.

Samsung’s Smart Window to a better world

At the CES in January 2012, Samsung introduced a prototype transparent, half-PC, half-window that blew the attendees away. It also has the added bonus of having some fairly impressive green credentials.

As we all know big is beautiful but unfortunately big can also be well a little larger than life and more troublesomely bigger than the space you have left on your living room wall. The great thing about Samsung’s groundbreaking technology is that you can simply hook it onto your window. Thus you can have the luxury of a 46-inch LCD touchscreen PC and still have space for your wall to wall mirror or your life-size poster of David Hasselhoff. Once placed over a window the screen can be used as a PC screen or when you need a break from work you can still stare through the screen and out the window and imagine what it would be like to escape the confines of your house or office for a little while. It also works well as a touch screen and with its size you will feel like you are on the set of a science fiction movie.

The product won’t just make your neighbours green with envy it will also help the environment because it makes use of the natural ambient light to make images readily visible. It is estimated that the device will hence only require a tenth of the electricity consumed by traditional LCD displays to power itself up.

Special Add-ons: Gadget/Mobile Phone Recycling

A few mobile carriers offer an easy way that helps a gadget user to convert their old gadget to cash. Old gadgets were either recycled or repaired with nothing going waste. Did you know that by recycling old phones you can save enough energy to power one laptop for 44 hours? According to Maria Vickers, acting director of EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery. O2’s mobile phone recycling is one of the examples of this recycling method. Contact your carrier if they offer similar programs.

About the Author

Reese Jones is a tech and gadget lover, a die-hard fan of iOS and console games. She started her writing venture recently and writes about everything from quick tech tips, to mobile-specific news to tech-related DIY.

Find more about her and her work at Reese+.