"green tech" entries
Industrial Internet links: smart cities return, pilotless commercial aircraft, and more
Small-scale smart city projects; the industrial Internet as part of big data; a platform for smart buildings
Mining the urban data (The Economist) — The “smart city” hype cycle has moved beyond ambitious top-down projects and has started to produce useful results: real-time transit data in London, smart meters in Amsterdam. The next step, if Singapore has its way, may be real-time optimization of things like transit systems.
This is your ground pilot speaking (The Economist) — Testing is underway to bring drone-style remotely-piloted aircraft into broader civilian use. One challenge: building in enough on-board intelligence to operate the plane safely if radio links go down.
How GE’s over $100 billion investment in ‘industrial internet’ will add $15 trillion to world GDP (Economic Times) — A broad look at what the industrial Internet means in the context of big data, including interviews with Tim O’Reilly, DJ Patil and Kenn Cukier. (Full disclosure: GE and O’Reilly are collaborating on an industrial Internet series.)
Defining a Digital Network for Building-to-Cloud Efficiency (GreentechEnterprise) — “Eventually, the building will become an IT platform for managing energy a bit like we manage data today. But to get there, you don’t just have to make fans, chillers, lights, backup generators, smart load control circuits and the rest of a building’s hardware smart enough to act as IT assets. A platform — software that ties these disparate devices into the multiple, overlapping technical and economic models that help humans decide how to manage their building — is also required.” Read more…
Life With TED – Micromanaging Your Carbon Footprint
I've spent three days watching my power consumption like a hawk, here's how it's going
I’ve been interested in having a better handle on my electrical consumption for a long time. Our family regularly goes through 1100-1200 kWh a month, and it’s been frustrating that I couldn’t really get a grip on where or when the power was really being used. I want to get my power usage under control. Fortunately Google announced on their blog that normal mortals could now order a device called The Energy Detective (or TED, as he’s known by his friends…) Using TED, I’ve been able to quickly find the critical items that I need to make sure get shut off when not used.
ETech Preview: Why LCD is the Cool New Technology All Over Again
One of the things that the One Laptop Per Child project is best known for is the amazing transflective display technology that it utilized. Combining a traditional backlit color display with a black and white display that could be used outdoors, it both met the needs of low power usage and outdoor readability that is crucial in developing countries. When Mary Lou Jepsen, who developed the display for the XO, left to form Pixel Qi, the expectation was that some of the revolutionary engineering that was used in the XO would begin to make its way onto the broader consumer market. Since she’ll be talking at O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference in March, we decided to check in and see what she’s up to.
ETech Preview: Living the Technomadic Life
One of the themes at O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference this March is nomadism, and no one is a better example of a technomad than Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard. Traveling around the country in a custom 17′ trailer towed by a Diesel Jeep Liberty, they manage to run a consulting firm while satisfying their desire to see new places and meet new people. We took a few minutes to talk to them about what it takes technologically to make it work, and what a life on the road is life.