For Greener Good, Some Say Google Should Go Black

blackle.jpg

LittleJohn pointed out this effort by Heap Media, which posits that computers exert less energy if they display black screens instead of white ones. This does make sense considering on older TV sets, light only shines through areas that deviate from the darkness you see when the machine is off.

This trivia is not without motivation. To generate an energy-saving movement of sorts, Heap is promoting the notion of a black Google, which would save (literally) heaps of energy if it joined the dark side, considering the number of searches it supports. To get the search giant to see the light, users are encouraged to make Blackle their homepage.

LittleJohn's right: The name "Blackle's" totally forced. But that aside, there are psychological reasons to go white and not black. To start, people are generally under the impression that a white website loads faster than a dark one.

But to do our part, we tried using Blackle for an afternoon. That shit will bum you out, man. Halfway though the first hour we were Blackling mascara and reading emo-goth blogs. We even turned down the lights in our workstations and became little cocoons of quiet suffering.

Not cute. But interesting nonetheless.

Written by Angela Natividad    Comments (6)     File: Online, Promotions     Jul-27-07  
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Comments

What will those Aussie vampires think of next?

Posted by: Jetpacks on July 26, 2007 02:28 PM

From Wikipedia: On the contrary LCD monitors use approximately the same power to display black backgrounds because the backlight on an LCD is on for the entire LCD regardless of what is being shown. Robertson et al report a white background using only 2-3% more power than black. While savings are minimal at an individual level, the total amount of energy saved by millions of users would be significant.

Bummer. And no paid results on Blackle. That's not good for advertisers.

Posted by: pat smith on July 26, 2007 04:25 PM

wow. thx for the post!

Posted by: art on July 26, 2007 05:10 PM

All about saving energy, but dark screen/light type is really hard to read...

Posted by: tk on July 27, 2007 09:40 AM

OS 10.4 Users

CTRL + OPTION + CMMD + 8

Not only a great office prank, but a more colorful black.

Posted by: Edward on July 27, 2007 02:21 PM

Hi,

For those on an LCD screen (where the black actually burns more energy) you might want to try http://www.ripple.org.

It's got a normal background but each search generates money to fight poverty in the developing world through charities like Oxfam.

Posted by: Matt on August 1, 2007 11:56 PM

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