A new software program claims to reduce the energy your computer uses automatically.  It is aptly named Granola.  The program is free and doesn’t interfere with your computer use.

My understanding is that the software works primarily by taking advantage of the ability of modern computers to vary the speed of the CPU in real-time.  Most of the time there is no benefit in your CPU running at maximum speed (your computer is probably idle or doing low CPU demand tasks like word processing).  Granola tries to give you exactly the amount of computer power you need for the current task, saving energy in the process.

It is a bit surprising that modern OSes do not fully take advantage of this already to cut power use.  Perhaps it hasn’t been a priority for them, or perhaps Granola adds additional secret sauce to provide power savings above those OS provides.

A neat way to verify their claims would be to use a power meter like Kill-A-Watt.

Ran across a great idea today: http://www.EcoEnvelopes.com.  Many mailings are a two envelope affair: one for the mailing and one for the response.  Think of bills and ads for example.

EcoEnvelopes created an envelope that can easily be used for both purposes reducing environmental impact AND saving businesses money. 

The ForecastEarth video show them in action.