O'Reilly News & Commentary

The IT Energy Challenge

By Sarah Sorensen
September 12, 2011

How do you balance 10 percent of the world's energy consumption with technology's potential to push the boundaries and redefine the world as we presently experience it? How do you balance 3 percent of the world's emissions with a promise to connect and support opportunities on a scale that will improve our personal, business, and civic lives?

Four short links: 3 August 2011 - Library Licensing, Mac Graphics, Coal Computing, and Human Augmentation

By Nat Torkington
August 3, 2011

Just Say No To Freegal -- an interesting view from the inside, speaking out against a music licensing system called Freegal which is selling to libraries. Libraries typically buy one copy of something, and then lend it out to multiple users sequentially, in order to get a good return on investment. Participating in a product like Freegal means that...

The smart grid data deluge - Why smart metering is the first wave of the power grid's revolution.

By Ciara Byrne
June 22, 2011

The smart grid is an information revolution for utilities, and the first line of the information the grid uses will come from smart meters. EMeter's Aaron DeYonker discusses meter use and data applications in this interview.

Can we capture all the world's carbon emissions? - Carbon capture tech would require huge scale, but could give the world needed time.

By Ramez Naam
May 20, 2011

Capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has major challenges, but it can be done at a price that would not destroy our economy. Doing so would give us more time to find ways to switch to inherently zero-carbon methods of powering our civilization.

Interest in renewable energy could benefit data services - The need for temperature, wind, and solar analytics will likely increase.

By Michael Ferrari
April 28, 2011

The increase of large-scale infrastructure investments in the alternative energy sector will likely be accompanied by demand for data-driven services that can optimize efficiency of the related operational costs.

The Moore's Law of solar energy - Solar cost per watt is dropping on an exponential curve, and will drop below coal by 2020.

By Ramez Naam
April 19, 2011

If humanity could capture one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the Earth, we would have access to 6X as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions.

Data is not binary - Why open data requires credibility and transparency.

By Gavin Starks
June 30, 2010

Open data isn't just about re-broadcasting data, but combining it, re-using it and building upon it. It's about creating new uses, creating new markets and building credibility into the data as it flows.

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