Benji Kirkpatrick

I came across a folk artist on Wednesday via the Mike Harding show on Radio 2. It was one of those few times when you hear a song and by the time it's a third of the way through know you are going to buy it as soon as you get home....and his two latest albums are on the way to me as we speak!

He is called Benji Kirkpatrick and has been around for a few years, predominantly on the folk festival scene. Anyway have a listen here, the song I heard was called Wallbreaker, a song about water, however, there are others to listen to on his My Space page and I think they are all really good, plus you can find out lots more about him. I will report on the albums in due course.

Also I have recently been introduced to Blackle, which is for those who don't know, an energy saving search engine, created by Heap Media. It uses Googles Custom Search Engine and has a black screen which apparently saves shed loads of energy. The Blackle homepage boasts 282,996.041 of watt hours saved.

For more info. and a better explanation see below, taken from About Blackle:

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

How can you help?

We encourage you to set Blackle as your home page. This way every time you load your Internet browser you will save a little bit of energy. Remember every bit counts! You will also be reminded about the need to save energy each time you see the Blackle page load.

Help us spread the word about Blackle by telling your friends and family to set it as their home page. If you have a blog then give us a mention. Or put the following text in your email signature: "Blackle.com - Saving energy one search at a time".

Have a look at our energy saving tips page for ideas on steps you can take to save energy.
There are a lot of great web sites about saving energy and being more environmentally friendly. They are full of great tips covering the little things that we can all do to make a difference today.

Try Blackling "energy saving tips" or visit treehugger.com a great blog dedicated to environmental awareness.

So have you listened to Benji Kirkpatrick yet? You know it makes sense!