How many of you have heard of the phrase 'cloud computing' in recent months ? Quite a few, eh ? However, have any of you heard about 'black computing' ? I doubt it, since I've just coined the term myself (Ha !). What I'm leading to by this zealous new phrase is that we could start a whole new era of surfing the internet with only black web pages.
It's a proven fact that on the humble monitor, a black screen takes less energy to be displayed than a white screen, with all the colours coming in between. The difference isn't small, it's quite significant at almost 15-20% of energy consumed. Now for a single user that's not saving much in a day. A few watts maybe ? However, put the entire world wide web on the chart and results will start forming in front of your own eyes. We could save enough energy to power a small country, just to put in terms of practicality.
A Google-based search engine named Blackle does exactly this. If you visit the website, you'll see a minimalistic design and absolutely no traces of colour. It's a black search engine, just as the name suggests. Having been released in January 2007, it has been gaining momentum ever since and brags a saving of over 2.5 MW of energy just by bleing colourless. Now that's no joke. That's enough to idle a car for more than a month. If all the websites were black, you'd take just about every car off the road wouldn't you ?
It might sound like an outlandish idea at first but if you really give it some thought, the concept is as clear as darkness.
To visit the Blackle website click on : http://goo.gl/Khhyy
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