Thursday, November 20, 2008

The Greening of the Web is Dark

A student of mine recently introduced me to Earthle, powered by Google so you have the same results, same options, but it's black. That's so you'll use less energy while you're searching. It's a great idea. I think more of the web should get darker to promote energy conservation. #000000 instead of #FFFFFF.

2 comments :

Anonymous said...

If I understand correctly, LED monitors -- now the standard -- take the same energy, if not more, for each black pixel. That's because they have a *backlight* that is filtered or entirely blocked by some combination of R/G/B obstruction.

For this reason, my iPhone screen, even when I make it "black" is much lighter than it is when it's off. Desktop LED monitors' pixels do better at hiding the backlight, but it's usually still there...

Erik N. said...

My phone does the same thing, seems to blink and flash a lot when it's black if I look at it in the dark. This article suggests that LED monitors are a step along the way to OLED monitors, which will become the standard at some point. They require no backlight at all and are much more efficient than the others.