carbon management – Old GigaOm

I Stream, You Stream, We All Stream with Ustream for iPhone

on December 9, 2009

Just released this morning, the new Ustream Live Broadcaster app (iTunes link) actually allows you to stream live video from your video-capable iPhone 3GS to the web, something which the recently released Qik app couldn’t (and still can’t) boast. It’s the first app to offer live streaming from Apple’s (s aapl) handset, and it even allows you to do so over both Wi-Fi and 3G connections.

In order to use the app, you’ll need to sign up for a free Ustream account if you don’t already have one. Ustream will prompt you to do so, and then allow you to register right within the app, without having to even pop out to Safari to complete the process.

As with any Ustream video, your live stream will be automatically recorded and stored on your Ustream account for later viewing. You can also notify your friends via Twitter that you’re starting a stream, and take advantage of Ustream’s built-in chat and Social Stream features to interact with viewers watching your video in real-time while you shoot. Obviously not something you can do while recording yourself, unless you are so intimately familiar with your iPhone that you can type when the screen isn’t facing you. Read More about I Stream, You Stream, We All Stream with Ustream for iPhone

Autodesk to Give Away Carbon Management Tool

Justin Moresco on November 9, 2009

A bevy of companies now offer flashy software packages for tracking an organization’s carbon footprint. But engineering software developer Autodesk (s ADSK) believes existing solutions don’t do enough to tie international climate targets (i.e., the IPCC’s 80 percent greenhouse gas reduction by 2050) to a company’s own emissions reduction goals. In fact, there hasn’t been a way to calculate how much a company should strive to shrink its carbon footprint based on the global climate goals until today, says Autodesk’s Emma Stewart, with the unveiling of Autodesk’s Corporate Finance Approach to Climate Stabilizing Targets, or C-FACT. The “methodology,” as Autodesk calls it, is free and described in a white paper, also published today.
“We talked to companies, even sharp, leading companies, and most said they set their emissions goals to be just slightly ahead of their competitors or at what just looked good,” said Stewart, the senior program lead for Autodesk’s sustainability initiative. “There wasn’t a rhyme or reason to it.” With C-Fact, which Autodesk used to set its own emission reduction targets, the San Rafael, Calif.-based firm is advocating for companies to calculate their climate goals based on revenue.
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CA Officially Unveils ecoSoftware to Manage Corporate Energy Use, Sustainability

Jennifer Kho on October 26, 2009

With increased awareness — and regulation — of issues such as energy security and climate change, more and more corporations are working to reduce their carbon emissions and consumption of energy and natural resources. But how do you know if your efforts are paying off? Software company CA (s CA) hopes to help answer this question with a new line of products, called ecoSoftware, officially unveiled Monday. The line includes ecoGovernance, which helps evaluate and track companies’ sustainability initiatives, and ecoMeter, which manages energy use from data centers and other facilities.

EcoGovernance helps manage a company’s sustainability strategy by comparing how well different potential initiatives would help meet companies’ goals, as well as existing and coming regulations, said Terrence Clark, CA’s senior vice president and general manager for ecoSoftware. It sounds simple, but it can be a major task considering that some companies have thousands of ideas to capture, categorize and sift through, and different departments can make individual decisions about what to do.
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Samsung Unveils Multibillion-dollar Eco Push

Justin Moresco on July 20, 2009

July could go down in history as a pivotal month for green consumer products. Less than a week after retail giant Wal-Mart (s WMT) said its suppliers must disclose the environmental impact of their products, electronics heavyweight Samsung Electronics on Monday unveiled a plan to cut its carbon emissions by 50 percent and invest billions of dollars toward developing greener products. Samsung’s announcement will add pressure to its competitors to take sustainability more seriously and could open new opportunities for companies developing products and services that help firms track and reduce the carbon footprints of their operations.

Samsung’s Eco-Management 2013 plan lays out four core green objectives: reducing greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing facilities by 50 percent by increasing the energy efficiency in its semiconductor and LCD lines and reducing the amount of emissions that result from the use of its products by 84 million tons over five years; ensuring all of its products exceed “global eco-mark standards” in terms of energy efficiency and the use of recyclable and green materials; investing about $4.3 billion developing these new products and reducing the carbon emissions of manufacturing facilities; and “enhancing” green partnerships with suppliers and partners.
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Wal-Mart’s Green Rating: A Boon for Carbon Management Software

Katie Fehrenbacher on July 16, 2009

walmartlogo The big news in the world of sustainability this week is that Wal-Mart (s WMT), the world’s largest retailer, will launch a labeling system to disclose the environmental impact of the products it sells and will be asking its more than 100,000 suppliers to start tracking things like the carbon emissions and water use of their goods. For companies that have developed carbon and energy management tools — from startups like Hara to huge software firms like SAP (s SAP) — Wal-Mart’s move is the equivalent of a massive crowbar wedging open the nascent carbon software market.

Wal-Mart is basically saying any company that wants to do business with the 10-ton gorilla retailer will have to provide related environmental impact data, which will lead many to start using this type of software. As Wal-Mart’s Chief Merchandising Officer John Fleming told the Wall Street Journal, companies that don’t supply the data probably won’t have a relationship with Wal-Mart for very long. Wal-Mart plans to use the data in a sustainability index that will rate the products according to their environmental impact, as well as for the labels for the products.
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Sustainable Software-as-a-Service Hara Launches, Backed By Kleiner Perkins

Katie Fehrenbacher on May 31, 2009

There have been as many new carbon management startups launched over the past year as super model-based reality TV shows — the promise of the carbon markets boosted by U.S. regulation are just too attractive to entrepreneurs. But one 18-month-old sustainable software startup, Hara, is coming out of so-called stealth on Monday, with backing from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and a claim that it’s doing something completely different.

HaraDashboard1

Hara CEO Amit Chatterjee tells us that Hara’s software-as-a-service product gives companies and municipalities the ability to itemize and track all of the inputs (water, electricity, chemicals) and outputs (the product, greenhouse gases, wastewater) that make up the business processes. By identifying both the inputs and outputs, Chatterjee says, Hara can then suggest how to optimize the overall system, enabling the customer to save substantial money and reduce waste. Many other carbon and energy management software tools focus exclusively on just carbon and electricity, and leave out the last step of prescribing ways that the company can tweak its business to become more efficient.
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Getting Green About Work Meetings

Aliza Sherman on April 22, 2008

I’ve always known there was a good reason why I worked from home in terms of the impact on my quality of life and the impact on my family.

But I have to admit, I feel a little bit overwhelmed analyzing the impact of my telecommuting or the impact of anything I do day-to-day on the planet. Luckily, it turns out I’m helping to save the world by working from home. At least according to the iLinc Web conferencing software.

iLinc announced their “Green Meter” to provide companies with a tool to measure the “environmental ROI” of Web conferencing – real time carbon emissions savings. The patent pending feature calculates the “standard emission rates” for cars or planes based on where each participant in the Web conference are located. How does it do this, you ask?