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Is The Cloud Environmentally Friendly?

The digital world is shifting to the cloud. Proof of this is in the new Apple operation system we discussed last week. However, the movement toward cloud computing is raising some questions.

Many environmental activists argue against the benefits of the cloud movement, saying that the data centers used to run “the cloud” require more energy than traditional computing. However, others feel that our move to an online economy saves us more resources than we realize or give ourselves credit for. Aside from data storage, many businesses operate entirely online, and there is potentially a drastic decrease of resource consumption that is not being tracked.

Do you think the cloud-movement is “green” enough or are we still wasting energy unnecessarily?

Story 2
Google Buzz Quietly Disappears

Google has announced plans to shut down various features in order to focus on their new social network, Google +. Google Buzz, which was introduced in 2010, was Google’s first attempt at social networking within the Gmail infrastructure.

A Google blog post said, “Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past. We learned a lot from products like Buzz and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+.”

Google Labs, which offers beta-versions of new features, will be removed from the website today. With a company-wide increased bandwidth for development and innovation, it will be interesting to see how Google+ works to recruit and retain users.