• Five ways to improve data center power efficiency you might not have thought of

  LAS VEGAS -- While few doubt the importance of maximizing the energy efficiency of their corporate data centers, executive vice president of data center technology for Las Vegas-based Switch, Mark Thiele's talk at Interop this week showcased just how much companies might still be missing. 

• Panasonic team to lug solar-charged batteries up Mt. Fuji, live-stream eclipse

  Panasonic will broadcast live a solar eclipse next month over Japan from the top of Mount Fuji, using batteries that are charged at the base using solar power and then carried up to the peak.

• Japan picks eight tsunami-battered regions for smart city projects

  The Japanese government will provide assistance to eight cities that were heavily damaged in last year's earthquake and tsunami to rebuild using "smart city" technologies that use IT to cut dependence on traditional power sources.

• Apple and Chinese environmental group to audit factory for pollution concerns

  Apple and a Chinese environmental group for the first time plan to jointly audit one of the company's supplier factories in China, in what could lead to more open inspections of Apple's suppliers for pollution concerns.

• Opinion: Microsoft, instead of turning the lights off on XP, make it open source

  To state the obvious,, Microsoft is hugely important economically and culturally, and as Peter Parker (AKA Spiderman) was told by his grandfather: "With great power comes great responsibility." (Actually Voltaire said it first but he said it in French so that doesn't count.)

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  Save printer ink by choosing an ink-saving font

  I've written before about ways you can save money on pricey printer consumables.

• 20 amazing, amusing and alarming IT facts

  A new report warns that the cost from lost productivity at work related to the new NFL season could add up to US$10.5 billion. And there we were, thinking the biggest waste of time at work came from fielding an endless stream of IT industry reports?

• 20 more IT mistakes to avoid

  Back in 2004, InfoWorld's then-CTO Chad Dickerson polled the best and brightest to reveal 20 IT mistakes that were surefire recipes for cost overruns, missed deadlines, and in some cases, lost jobs.

• Tech's looming battle against rising energy costs

  IT has gotten a bad rap when it comes to energy consumption. Walk into any datacenter, and you can almost feel the carbon emissions leaking into the atmosphere. However, research shows that the datacenter actually accounts for a very small percentage of a company's overall energy usage. And businesses are missing the other significant opportunities where they could cut energy usages -- and costs. Ironically, the same IT department that is reducing energy usage in the datacenter could lead the energy-savings initiatives across the enterprise.

Whitepapers about environment

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  Virtual Certainty - Best Practices for Gaining Monitoring Clarity in VMware Environments

  The benefits of virtualisation are unassailable: increased agility, scale, and cost savings to name but a few. However, so too are the monitoring challenges posed by these environments—including complexity, lack of visibility and control, and inefficiency. This white paper reveals the best monitoring practices to employ in virtualized environments—best practices that are essential in enabling organizations to overcome their monitoring challenges so they can get the most business value from their virtualisation investments.

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  Trend Micro's End-to-End Vulnerability Management: A New Approach to Layered Security

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  Deduplication and Compression: Maximizing Effective Capacity Utilization

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  NEWS RELEASE: HP Recognises Australian Businesses for Driving Environmental Sustainability through their Imaging & Printing Infrastructure.