SOME RANDOM DUDE

Considering how busy this week was, I am very surprised that the collection of links this week is this big. I would highly suggest looking at each link, but if I had to choose one, I would have a look at the House Switch Off article. I will be dropping the weekly links in a few more hours, so be on the lookout for that.

Enjoy the links.
(more…)advertising, anti smoking, chandelier, design, dissent, energy, falkirk wheel, good, house furnishings, house switch off, housing, interior, lighting, links, lot ek, makoto tojiki, moorman, organic led lamp, poor, power, recycled airplane, recycled bottles, scars, solar cells, solar power, stacking chairs, stairs, storage, tischmich folding table, war weekly

I still have at least one more post that I need to get out by today so this will be brief. Once again, there is a plethora of environmentally-oriented design this week. Lots of smart (and beautiful) architecture as well as emerging technologies to prevent further global warming.

Please drop your links of good design - I frankly count on it.

Enjoy the links.
(more…)architecture, car power, carbon dioxide, cardboard rooms, China, container housing, design, education, electromagnetism, energy, floating skyscrapers, fuel, global warming, good, Greenpeace, links, marketing, New York, physics, power, ren building, science, solar power, space, sustainable, vehicle grid technology weekly

It has not been a fun week. My hope is this weekend will be a little nicer to me… Honestly, this blog will get back to normal - just as soon as I do. Until then, there may be some late posts.

Still, this week has quite a nice collection of links. I highly suggest perusing through them. I will be posting the weekly links tonight or this weekend. Either way, enjoy the weekend and…

Enjoy the links.
(more…)100 dollar laptop, alternative energy, architecture, climate energy, darfur, design, designing, dubai condo, forestation, freewatt, genocide, glenn howell, good, google earth, honda, infrastructural greening, laptops, light wind, lighting, links, MIT, niger, plant a seed, power, solar cells, solar power, students, sustainable, trees, weekly wind powered outdoor light

TreeHugger has an excellent article about how a website’s color scheme can actually impact power usage of its audience. Actually, it makes perfect sense, I just had never really thought about it. If Google switched their background to black, it would have 750 Megawatt-Hours a year. According to the Department of Energy, this would roughly be enough to power the state of Pennsylvania for an average month of consumption. Frankly, I never would have thought the numbers would be so staggering.

As can be expected, some eco-minded folks are already changing their bright-color-schemed ways - such as ecoIron with an energy efficient color scheme. Even the slightest glance at this blog’s design shows how energy inefficient it is. White is by far the highest consumer of energy with red not too far behind. All of this is spelled out very clearly from another DOE page. Some Random Dude is the web equivalent to the Hummer. Yeah, this all sounds funny to myself as well.

So what to do? Do we all change our vibrant ways? I would like to scale things back a tad from this site, but I am very cautious of ruining the site’s identity. Either way, this is an interesting topic in the theoretical sense. Does design on the web need to start accounting for energy efficiency for the end user? Perhaps it is just me, but it seems that with every passing day, web design becomes more and more like industrial design.

del.icio.us linkblack, colors, efficiency, end user, energy efficiency, environment, global warming, google, megawatts, monitors, power, save energy, vibrant colors web design