Userful
I spent some time recent;ly playing with and learning about the concept of public computing. Computers placed in public locations, primarily for accessing the Internet.
Public workstations appear in libraries, internet cafés, hotel lobbies, work camps, military bases. They are anywhere people want to or need to access the internet, but personal computers don’t fit, or aren’t available.
There is a Canadian company who has really nailed the whole concept, Userful Corporation, out of Calgary (www.userful.com) has a product called the Discover Station. It is a Linux based computer, that is designed from the ground up for public computing.
A single PC can run up to 10 workstations, which is both economical, and very environmentally friendly, with less power consumption and manufacturing waste than 10 individual PCs. In fact last year Discover Station saved us all over 13,500 tons of CO2 emissions over what would have been generated with stand alone PCs. That is the equivalent of taking 2300 cars off the road.
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Original Airdate: October 13, 2007
No one, not even Al Gore, is more concerned about the Environment thAn Steve Dotto! So when Steve heard that this week is “Waste reduction Week” in Canada, he dedicated the entire show to supporting that theme. Steve takes us to several web sites that explain the concept of being “Carbon Neutral” where you can calculate your impact on the environment and, more importantly, what you can do to offset that impact.
And if you’ve ever had a yen to open your own cyber café, Steve takes a look at a public computing system developed by Userful, a Calgary based company supplies economical and environmentally responsible solutions for public access to the internet.
One of the biggest environment problems is what to do with all those empty ink cartridges, and Steve takes a look at HP’s innovative ink and toner cartridge recycling program.
Other web sites looked at in this episode include:
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