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News

• Residents cut energy bills 11% in smart meter test

  Some residents of a small town in Iowa have cut their electricity use by 11 percent in a test that combines smart meters with cloud-based data analytics.

• Data centers largely unaffected by East Coast quake

  Staff were evacuated at several data centers following Tuesday's earthquake but operations at most facilities appear to have been unaffected, according to Twitter posts and other sources.

• Using renewable energy in the data center

  Earlier this year, social networking giant Facebook finished construction of its newest data center in Pineville, Oregon. In a press release, Facebook officials touted the new facility as "setting new standards for environmental responsibility in data center design and operations." Those standards incorporate renewable energy tactics such as rainwater reclamation, solar energy, and heat recycling.

• Top 8 ways feds (and corporate users) can take advantage of green IT

  How does the federal government go about implementing green IT? According to a report out today from the Government Accountability Office, the feds have adopted a number of practices that are useful not just for government IT but all manner of private and public company IT groups as well. These include everything from dedicated funding for green products, to improved employee training and reducing use of paper.

• Google, data centers using less power than expected

  Data centers have been using less electricity than you think ... or at least, compared with what they have in the past.

• Foxconn to rely more on robots for manufacturing

  Foxconn, the maker of Apple's iPhone and iPad, plans to rely more on robots for manufacturing over the coming years, allowing the company to invest more in research and development and save on labor costs.

• Dell warranties servers for 'fresh-air cooling'

  Dell said Thursday it will warranty servers to run at 113 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) for a limited number of hours per year, so that customers can make wider use of "fresh-air cooling" in their data centers.

• Foxconn worker falls to death in suspected suicide

  An employee of Foxconn fell to his death in China earlier this week, just a year after a string of suicides at its facilities in the country.

• US gov't to push e-recycling, energy-efficient electronics

  The U.S. government will push its electronics suppliers to provide energy-efficient and easily recycled products under a new policy released Wednesday.

• Energy hogs: Servers vs. desktops vs. set-top boxes

  Set-top boxes supplied by cable companies are likely using more power than desktop and laptop computers, and about 25 per cent of the power used by a two-socket server.

• Australia China Holdings to enter clean energy JV

  Australia China Holdings (ASX:AAK) will take a 45% stake in a joint venture to commercialise clean energy - including natural gas - technologies in China

• Emissions from Microsoft, Dell data centers worry residents

  Some residents of Quincy, Washington, home of massive data centers operated by Microsoft, Yahoo and others, are growing concerned about pollution from backup diesel generators at the data centers, and on Wednesday they'll have the chance to discuss the issue.

• Intel adds sensors to aid data center cooling

  Intel is adding new sensors to its server chips to help companies improve the efficiency of data center cooling systems, with a view to cutting operating costs and prolonging the life of equipment.

• Survey: US agencies aren't tracking data center use

  Even though the U.S. White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has pushed government agencies to reduce the number of data centers they operate, a new survey has found that most agencies aren't tracking how close to capacity their data centers are or how much energy they're using.

• How Japan's data centers survived the earthquake

  Smart construction and good planning allowed Japan's data centers to escape virtually unharmed from the massive earthquake that rocked the country in March, a Japanese data center executive said Thursday.