[ Background music ] >> Mark Licea: Hey I'm Mark Licea and this week Apple certified chargers pursuing a degree in green IT and why real time traffic navigation can save you days of travel time. The Green Show starts now. ^M00:00:15 [ Music ] ^M00:00:22 >> There are a lot of green chargers available on the market but I just so happened to notice 1 particular model that got a lot of attention in the blogs this past week, mainly because of 2 words: Apple certified. ^M00:00:35 [ Music ] ^M00:00:40 [ Background music ] >> Mark Licea: Novothink unveiled the first ever Apple licensed solar charger for the iPod touch and iPhone. It's called the Solar Surge and for 70 bucks you slide it onto the back of your Apple device and 2 hours of sun will give you around 30 minutes of talk time on a 3G network. It's out later this month for the iPod Touch and the iPhone version should be out by the end of the year. Now, unlike most solar chargers on the market you can't charge other gadgets with this but hey it doubles as a case, it comes in a variety of colors, it's solar powered [bell] and Apple certified. If you decide not to devote your life to Apple you could maybe pursue a degree that combines technology with being environmentally conscious. IBM joined with the metropolitan community college in Omaha Nebraska to create one of the first programs on green IT. The 2 year associates degree is called Green Data Center Management and it's designed to cover technologies for consolidating computer work loads. The EPA says that at this stage in technology most data centers in the US could reduce power consumption by 25% which would roughly save $4 billion. The program will be held in an actual data center stocked with IBM servers and all to teach students everything from building an IT facility including monitoring and caballing. Yeah see no one said green IT would be glamorous. Moving right along the BMW 123D isn't sold here in the states but the car's engine gathers kinetic energy to help recharge the battery. Brian Cooley has more. >> Brian Cooley: Let's check out some of the technologies they're using to make it really efficient. First of all its got auto stop start technology. Like a hybrid it'll shut itself down when you come to a stop at a red light or a stop sign and then as soon as you lift off and want to drive again it fires itself right back up borrowing that from the hybrid world. It does another hybrid trick break regeneration to recapture electricity. So it doesn't have a big power pack to drive its motor because its not electric but it does have a regular battery like all cars and that's normally driven by an alternator that is always spinning, always being driven by the engine via a belt and always putting some parasitic drag on the engine lowering your fuel economy. So what BMW does is it says we're only going to engage and run the generator when you're either off the accelerator and coasting or when you're actually breaking. So that's a time when you don't need the engine to be applying its full efficiency to moving the car at that point we'll use the kinetic energy to recharge the battery, very clever. They say gives you about a 3% improvement in fuel economy, that's measurable. Now this car isn't sold in the US so there are no official EPA numbers on it but in the European cycle 63 miles per gallon and 0 to 60 in 9 seconds thanks to all that diesel torque which by the way is turbo charged in this car. For the Green Show I'm Brian Cooley. >> Mark Licea: Thanks Brian and on the subject of green cars Tokyo plans to test out electric taxis in the city. The project is in collaboration with the Japanese government and a company called Better Place. Better Place provides a service that lets a driver change out their depleted battery in exchange for a fully recharged unit at a special swopping station. The trial will begin in January and the program will gather data on the driving range and the durability of the batteries. Very brave of them to test this technology in cabby's that drive around Tokyo all day. By the way Taxi in Japanese [inaudible]. If Tokyo wants to truly go green perhaps their GPS systems will use real time traffic navigation. A new study from Navtech says using GPS systems with real time traffic info could reduce emissions by 21%. The study pulled data from 3 groups of drivers and found that real time traffic users spend 18% less time reaching their destinations compared to other drivers. The study says that over the course of a year drivers could save around 4 days total in time spent traveling. Now you don't need a dedicated GPS unit for this, a lot of smartphones are already equipped to run similar real time traffic software [ background music ] >> like Google maps. That's it for this week. Send your feedback to greenshow@cnet.com. I'm Mark Licea thanks for watching. ^M00:04:43 [ Music ]
