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Fantastic
Advertising Opportunities Available in the
Independent
Newspaper
The eWell-Being Awards supplement
will be published on the 6th of May 2008 and there are discounted
prices for the limited advertising spaces left.
In addition to the hard copy productions,
which will be distributed via the Independent’s circulation of
around 250,000, the supplement will also be displayed on the UK CEED
www.ukceed.org and SustainIT www.sustainit.org websites as a
PDF document. This PDF file will be available for advertisers to
upload to their own websites. 2,000 glossy full colour A4 size
copies of the supplement will be produced and be made available at
the Awards ceremony on Wednesday 30th April.
If you are interested in advertising please
contact Niki Audsley at n.audsley@ukceed.org or 01733
311644.
Greening
IT
Renewables should
power computers
Bamboo computers at
CeBIT
Improving
Public Services
An extra £8million funding
for Scottish telecare
Whitehall to launch
Sustainability Centre
Digital
Inclusion
Low cost laptop to be
released by Intel
Byron Review highlights
digital divide
General
News
Best and worst broadband
providers
Unlimited broadband
phasing out
Greening
IT
Renewables
should power
computers
The world's computing power should be moved
from desktop computers and company servers to remote outposts where
renewable energy such as wind and solar power is abundant, according
to a Cambridge University computer
expert.
Explaining his idea to the Royal Society in
London, Prof Andy Hopper said
computing power could be shifted to servers close to the world’s
renewable stations.
By using wind farms, his theory is that less
voltage energy would be ready for use locally, foregoing the need
for the current high voltage energy via the national grid. In turn,
this would limit energy loss and benefit the
environment.
"The whole point is that we are
using energy that would otherwise be lost. It is more efficient,
more appropriate, cheaper to use it in situ," Hopper
said.
Office equipment (about a third of which is
computers) creates 15 per cent of carbon emissions in a typical
office, according to UK government figures.
Business computing in the UK creates 2.8 million
tonnes of carbon emissions every year, while the nation overall
emits just over 150 million tonnes of carbon every
year.
Top
Bamboo computers
at CeBIT
The computer fair, CeBIT, which opened in
Hanover yesterday, took on the
green theme for the first time in its 36-year history. It was met
with a mixture of praise and
scepticism.
The Eco Book was the answer, they said, to
the growing concern about the use of plastics.
"Bamboo is the most sustainable raw material
there is," said Jellent Sun, a senior director at Asus.
While the Asus Bamboo desktop is only in the
concept line of products, Asus has form for actually producing what
it shows off.
Top
Improving
Public Services
An extra
£8million funding for
Scottish telecare
The Scottish Government has announced an
additional £8 million to develop interactive care services for
vulnerable people in their own homes.
The funding will enable local health boards,
housing and social care partnerships to expand the provision of
telecare services.
Minister for Public Health Shona Robinson
said: “These services will help support people to live
independently, while providing peace of mind that help is at
hand.
“I am looking forward to seeing the results
of faster innovation and a new generation of interactive care
services which promise far reaching improvements to the quality of
people's lives.”
Telecare Development Funding has been
responsible for a minimum of:
- Around 1,300
additional people able to maintain themselves at home with
support
- 66 delayed
hospital discharges and 140 emergency hospital admissions avoided,
with 1,800 hospital bed days saved
- 74 care home
admissions avoided, and 6,900 care home bed days
saved
- 1,250 nights of
sleepover care and 107,000 home check visits
saved
- Associated with
these impacts are efficiency savings of around £2.9 million.
More
Top
Whitehall to launch
Sustainability Centre
The Cabinet Office is to set up a Centre of
Expertise for Sustainable Procurement (CESP) and appoint a chief
sustainability officer, with both moves announced on March 18th as
the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) published its sixth
annual report.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, who
took personal charge of work in this area last March, has made
sustainability of the government estate one of his four priorities
for the civil service. Sir Gus said:
"The Civil Service must be fully committed
to sustainable working, reflecting the increasing priority placed on
environmental responsibility by the public we serve. We must find
new and innovative ways of raising the bar for sustainable working,
planning and procurement.
"There is still a long way to go but the
establishment of the Centre of Expertise for Sustainable Procurement
marks the culmination of significant progress over the last twelve
months. This central co-ordination and guidance will help all
government departments work to deliver sustainable working practices
for the future."
More
Top
Digital
Inclusion
Low cost
laptop to be released by
Intel
Intel said that laptops costing $300,
initially designed for poor children, would soon be available to
U.S. and European
consumers, a development that could further push down computer
prices.
The company is pushing to bring the second
generation of the Classmate PC to schools and retail outlets in
the U.S. and
Europe this year, according to
Agnes Kwan, a spokeswoman for Intel. The company is expected to
disclose details about the U.S. version of the
laptop in April.
"We're expecting to see Classmate PC in the
U.S. by the end
of this year," said Agnes Kwan, a spokeswoman with the Santa Clara
chip maker. "In the past 18 months, we've been getting a really good
response from customers . . . as well as from consumers asking about
the product. We realised there was a big interest out
there."
More
Top
Byron
Review highlights digital
divide
A "digital divide" was growing up within
families as children mastered the internet and video games, said Dr
Tanya Byron, while their parents, grandparents and carers too often
had little clue about the material they were looking
at.
Dr Byron said:
“This is also about overcoming the
generational ‘digital divide’ where parents do not feel equipped to
help their children because they didn’t grow up with these
sophisticated technologies themselves and therefore don’t understand
them; this can lead to fear and a sense of helplessness. This is
compounded by children and young people’s greater skill and
confidence in using new technology.
Click here to read the full
report Top
General
News
Best and
worst broadband
providers
Orange has been ranked the worst
broadband provider in a survey by price comparison service uSwitch.
The survey claims half a million Orange broadband customers – over a
third – are not satisfied with its overall service.
BT-owned PlusNet, achieved the most
favourable rating, with 86 per cent customer satisfaction. The ISP
walked away with nine out of a total of 11 categories including best
technical support and best customer
service.
More
Top
Unlimited
broadband phasing out
The high-bandwidth use of new services such
as IP television likely spells the end of ISPs' marketing of
so-called unlimited broadband.
Most broadband users have been used to
signing up for these unlimited packages and in most cases they have
managed to stay within the fair use
system.
For some time, many ISPs have been offering
users what they call unlimited broadband, although it almost always
comes with some kind of "fair usage" cap on downloads. PlusNet has
been one of the few providers to buck this trend -- preferring
instead to offer packages based on fixed download caps -- and is now
warning that the emergence of IP television and the BBC's iPlayer
will make it impossible for its rivals to continue marketing their
packages as "unlimited".
More
Top
About
SustainIT
SustainIT
is an initiative of The UK Centre for Economic and Environmental
Development (UK CEED), an independent, entrepreneurial research
foundation. It conducts research on, and provides good practice
examples of, synergies between ICT and sustainable development.
For more information visit www.sustainit.org or contact us
on +44 (0)1733 311644.
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