Photo from Ericsson.

I found an interesting programme called The Green Power for Mobile that wants to promote the use of renewable energy for mobile networks. The plan is both to increase connectivity to people lacking access to regular electricity and to substitute diesel in those places where there is off-grid infrastructure based on fossil fuels.

That is such a great project! I will keep a look about how it is developing.

Photo from Ericsson.

From the time in Ericsson I remember their projects about using renewable energy powered mobile systems. From the base stations, to mobile solar chargers as shown in the picture. Now they have a nice specific site presenting their projects with videos and links to several white papers.

One thought. Shouldn’t this idea be extended to normal base stations? For instances retroffiting network equipment in sunny south spain with solar panels. Even if you keep it on the grid without batteries, it would reduce the total energy consumption of the site and probably resell energy on the grid in the sunniest times.

I would keep an eye about this. A sustainable pervasive information cloud.

Pattern Recognition, originally uploaded by It’s a mobile world.

People usually ask if I have adapted to read electronically, it seems to look like a big step to leave paper behind.
But my opinion is the advantages are so big that the reverse adaptation is more difficult. I have loaned Pattern Recognition from William Gibson from the library, a book I wanted to read for some time. And well, it is heavy, I get tired of holding it, I can not take it with me for commuting (I could but I would it’s not that easy), I lost the bookmark at night and have to look again the page I was reading.. Well at least is from the library so I don’t need to take it with me in the next moving..

On the other side, the most negative aspect of electronic books I have found is the impossibility of sharing with your friends and family. Now just because there are not so many people using e-readers and then because copyright protections. I miss that social aspect of sharing literature objects.

Well, it seems that this blog is just about electronic readers, I’m sorry about that! but there are so many exciting news about it recently.

Recently I was talking about a e-reader adapted to academic needs, A4 documents and so on. Here it comes, by Plastic Logic supposedly early in 2009.

Who doesn’t want one? Our offices would look so much nicer without all the paper “kipple“…

Seen in NYT regarding its newspaper capabilities. Also tipped by Björn Hedin, regarding its academic possibilities.

I’m home suffering the first autumn cold virus. But I take advantage of it to telework from home, read papers drinking warm coffee, and look through the online news for updates regarding my research.

A new that have reached mainstream newspapers is that the Sony e-reader is for first time available in Europe, well, at least in UK for £199.

This togheter with Penguin’s coming relaunch of their eBook service can mean a long-expected breaktrough of electronic reading. Let’s see.

Then I’ve been reading GeSI (the “global e-sustainability initiative”) report: SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age . A good call to action for using ICT to reduce GHG emissions. I will be commenting on it soon.

Majora Carter keynote, originally uploaded by It’s a mobile world.

I saw the presentation of Majora Carter at the Vårt Klimat conference, she presented the idea of environmental justice, how pollution is also a poverty and and racial issue. Really interesting to see a hands-on approach on sustainability, green-collar jobs, greenroofs inititatives, grassroot community building.

Her presentation at TED
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/majora_carter_s_tale_of_urban_renewal.html

Sustainable South Bronx initiative
http://www.ssbx.org/

The sky is more blue, originally uploaded by It’s a mobile world.

How do we persuade people to live more sustainable and make better choices? This is one of the big questions of my research.
In China I saw this example of local adaptation, using images of blue skies to promote solar energy. In Spain for instance this would not work, but in grey-skied Beijing blue skies can be what is needed to make consumers aware of the benefits of sustainable choices.