WinXP had some power schemes, and Vista improved on the power management options for desktops and laptops. But they were all pretty geeky, you had to know what was going on and to do a good job of getting it set up right there are a bunch of places you needed to go to install things.

Steve Clayton has just reminding me that Microsoft, Climate Savers Computing Initiative and Verdiem have made available Edison as a free download.

Edison (an application we’ve been testing at home for the last 90 days) is a free installation to help you optimize power usage on your PC as we all strive for a greener computing experience.

Download it and give it a try – every little big helps :)

My tree at Carbon Grove

Thanks to the folks on the Internet Explorer team I planted a Virtual tree. I’ve made some commitments to help improve the environment (for instance I don’t drive to work any more, I take the bus or ride my bike) and if I visit my tree over the next six weeks then the IE folks in conjunction with Carbon Grove will plant a real tree.

As well as supporting the environment the site takes advantages of not only some of the new IE8 features (though it will work just as well in older browsers) but the folks at Jackson Fish Market have done a really creative job in bringing the forests to life.

This is just one of many ways you can get involved in making the world a bit better – recycling, composting, reducing your power bill … it doesn’t have to be hard (just remembering to turn out your office light or shut off your PC when you’re not using it) and over a year it adds up.

On May 3rd 2008 that is the challenge. Will you be able to join with people from around the world, turn off your computer and spend Saturday unwired?

The goal is both to reconnect with the physical world, and at the same time try and save some power - or at least raise awareness of the number of devices we have plugged in draining current every day.

I’ve got quite a list of devices to shut down (and we’ll try to include the TV and Xbox in the list as well). Just doing a quick count at home we have 2 PCs, a Media Center, a Server, 3 (yes, 3) laptops, one UMPC as well as assorted printers, scanners, monitors, external drives, WiF gateways, switches etc. It probably adds up to quite a few watts consumed every day.

I’m not sure I can totally disconnect – I’ll make sure my phone is charged up :)

Oh, and on Friday night before you go home from work… don’t forget to turn off everything you can in the office as well.

Spread the word before the countdown reaches zero… find out more a ShutdownDay.org

I wonder if enough people turn off their transformers will it cool the planet. At least it might remind us to flick the switch every now and then :)

We live in a push-button, instant-on age. We leave devices in standby mode because we believe it’s helping save the planet… but is it really?

How much does your flat screen TV or l33t gaming rig consume when it’s “sleeping” and all you see is the little winking light telling you that you’re doing good.

And then all those wall warts. The chargers for your phone, your music player, the DS Lite. What are they draining long after the device is fully charged and idle?

I don’t know either – I’m lazy! But I do wish there was an easy way to shut things right down when I’m not using them, that was easy and wouldn’t inconvenience the family.

It looks like Belkin may have an answer to at least one of these problems about to hit the market. A powerstrip that you can turn on and off with a remote control!

It has two sockets that are always on (ideal for, say, the cable box and modem) and then 6 sockets which can be toggled with a remote control that you can put somewhere convenient.

For our house it means that for the $50 expected retail price we can easily power down the TV, the amplifier and speakers, the XBox360 and SqueezeBox music player without having to struggle and reach to find the wall switch.

Also from Belkin is a neat 3 way power strip than includes two USB chargers – that can eliminate a couple of the wall warts… really handy both at home and when you’re traveling (I often end up unplugging the alarm clock or kettle in a hotel room just to feed all my devices over night!)

While neither of these are a perfect solution – the remote control power strip probably still consumes some power when it’s idle (hopefully in the 2-5W not 25-45W range some surge protectors apparently consume) and the USB charge capabilities of the wall adapter which great I wonder if the transformer (and I hope it’s only one) shuts down when there’s nothing plugged into the sockets to need power…

I guess you could go a long way with some of the home automation solutions to managing this (and all with a universal remote control) but it would be nice to see a more common, consistent approach across all the equipment you find in home and office to really make an effort to stop sucking juice when it’s not needed. Your power bill will thank you now, and your kids will thank you when they don’t have to worry about the consequences!

No offense to the trail blazing Hybrid from Toyota, but somehow it doesn’t quite match up to the $98,000 starting price, 139mpg equivalent, 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds roadster from Tesla Motors that is now officially in production after many months of rumor.

Not that it’s going to do you any good… they’ve already sold out the initial production run, and they’re taking deposits for the 2009 wait list!

If you’re wanting to go “green” but you’re worried about the damage to your street cred then this is a great sign that in the coming years you won’t need to compromise. Now all we need is an all electric Ferrari to be reviewed on Top Gear and we know the new era is here…

There's been a lot of things floating around on the net recently about multi-touch displays and the new interface design that it's going to enable.

Movies like Minority Report and The Island have set expectations about how a multi-touch wall-screen or table interface should work

Now Microsoft have delivered a real world product. At various stages in its life it's been know as Play or Milan and has combined technology from Microsoft Research, the hardware group and the WPF team.

Visit the official site, and have a look at a 15 minute walk-through to see the power at on10.

Initially the hardware is going to appear at a number of partners including Sheraton Hotels and T-Mobile stores, but expect to see them turning up at technology and entertainment shows and when the volume ramps up ... a store near you ;)

The Microsoft Surface platform runs Vista with most of the UI developed in WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation - the big brother of Silverlight). It uses a set of cameras sensing differences in Infra Red light to track objects on the surface and a DLP projector under the diffuser to project the images that you see and interact with.

Wonder what the processor specs are on this machine?

Amazingly people have already started to reproduce the Surface UI using Silverlight!

Update: A fairly detailed overview from Popular Mechanics with a couple of great videos showing Surface in action.

Having lived in Australia for several years, and watched the weather change in both the UK and US I can't help but be aware that something is going on.

Too many people however are not even aware (despite documentaries like Al Gores "An Inconvenient Truth" ) that there is even a risk or reason to be concerned.

Luckily this July - 7/7/07 to be precise - MSN are presenting a series of concerts called Live Earth around the world (in the US, UK, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, China, Australia, and Turkey) to raise awareness of the problem.

To kick the process off, for the next 7 days a new song written and performed by Madonna exclusively for Live Earth is available for download from MSN so check out the site, find out where your closest concert is and check out the new track.

Then spread the word....

It's easy to question the speed with which Microsoft has embraced the internet age - and many in the past have. But today that's no longer true (though the competition wishes it was)!

They're a significant player in almost every aspect of the evolution of the web as a platform, a service and a commodity and with announcements of technologies like Silverlight and beta Live services their stamp on the space is only going to continue to grow.

The opening of the new server farm in Quincy WA should firmly remind people that Microsoft are pretty serious about the cloud and their place in it. They've got the focus, the determination and the funding to build on a pretty fantastic scale.

I hope though that they think about following in the footsteps of Yahoo! and Google and going green with their power supply...

I've been a concerned consumer for a while. Not concerned enough to go off-grid, turn off my polluting lifestyle or get a Prius, but concerned and trying to do my minimally disruptive bit.

But thanks to a link from William Gibson this morning, it looks like people are finally starting to wake up to the threat a future outlined by the likes of Gibson and Bruce Sterling. And Bruce is happy that they've noticed...

We're moving into a new house next week and while we don't have a big enough yard for a wind farm, or enough roof-space to make solar power practical in WA we'll be doing what we can to ensure we make the house as energy efficient and recycling friendly as we can over time. Little things like LED lighting or better door seals don't require much effort or lifestyle change but have an incremental effect...

What can you do today?

I like my electronic equipment to be unobtrusive. I'm not a fan of needy toys that constantly seek to attract attention to them... even when they're not doing anything.

A few days ago I got another external drive (I'm amassing quite a collection, but that's another story). My Maxtor ones are slightly annoying as they have a green flashing light when they're doing something but at least it becomes a (relatively) restful pale orange when the drive is inactive. This new one (first thing I've bought from Iomega since the ZIP drive fiasco) has a blue light. An intense blue light. It flashes when it's doing stuff, but more annoyingly it blinks slowly when the drive is idle. The rest of the time it just burns quietly to itself.

My Media Center has blue lights too. One to tell me the power is on - as if the status display on the front wasn't a clue, or the flickering blue HDD light, or, perhaps a real give-away... the TV being on!

I used to have a set of speakers attached to the Media Center (they're back in Australia as they wouldn't be any good new - no dual voltage) which has an LED and a small screen that displayed the mode when they were active. When they were in standby the LED flashed at a really annoying rate.

Now there's been a bunch of research done (I read it somewhere on the interweb, must find a reference to cite one day) that shows the blue LEDs are the most visible. So why do manufacturers put them (and make them flash) on bits of entertainment equipment and entertainment/home use focused hardware. A lot of the time it's going to distract users from watching what they want to watch, and, let's face it, a lot of this stuff will end up in bedrooms or small apartments where the flashing will mess with sleep patterns!

If I wanted to be constantly reminded of the needs of an electronic device I'd get a tamagochi. I hope manufacturers realize soon that there is a market for people like me!