Rogers Communication announced Friday that they are going to stop deliberately “throttling” bandwidth on certain peer-to-peer file sharing applications like BitTorrents that are used for things like movies and music files.

In a letter to the Communications Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission the company said starting in March they will start to remove traffic shaping equipment in place on their network. This in response to the preliminary finding last month where Canada’s telecommunications regulator reported that the company has been breaking the rules on how Internet Service Providers control the flow of traffic on their networks.

Rogers says that by December, 2012 the process will be complete and that as early as June, 2012 half of Rogers’ customers should see the changes in effect.

Senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, Kenneth Engelhart, said “going forward we will stop traffic shaping all together.” Adding, “we’re making some big investments this year to increase our capacity so that is enabling us to end traffic shaping.”

Steve Appleton, Micron CEO and chairman, died today at the age of 51 while piloting a small experimental plane near Boise Airport in Idaho. His plane crashed shortly after take-off Friday resulting in death of the head of the Idaho flash memory maker. Appleton, a former motor cross racer and professional pilot, has been Micron’s chairman and chief executive since 1994. Micron was founded in 1978 and has since become one of the leading manufactures of NAND, DRAM, SDRAM and NOR flash memory. Also SSD and CMOS senor chips.

Appleton was the sole person aboard the plane when it banked aggressively, stalled and rolled to the ground according to witnesses. Appleton radioed a request with air traffic controllers just minutes after taking off to return for landing. Zoe Keliher, an air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, confirmed it was the plane’s second attempt at take-off that morning.

“Our hearts go out to Appleton’s wife, Dalynn, his children, and his family during this tragic time,” the company said in a statement. “Steve’s passion and energy left an indelible mark on Micron, the Idaho community, and the technology industry at large.”

In 1995, Appleton over saw the decision for a $1.3 billion computer-chip plant to be built in Lehi, Utah. Micron postponed the project only a year later due to a weakening market for flash memory chips. But in 2005 Intel and Micron entered into a $5 billion deal to finish the massive 2.3 million-square-foot plant that now manufactures some of the planet’s most advanced chips for digital devices. This joint venture between Intel and Micron resulted in the IM Flash Technologies plant which is now one of Utah’s biggest high-tech companies which employs nearly 1,600 people.

In a statement Micron’s board of directors said that, “Steve’s passion and energy left an indelible mark on Micron, the Idaho community and the technology industry at large.” After the announcement of Appleton’s death trading for the company’s stock has been temporarily halted.

Although your electric bill does fluctuate during the year, you might find that it is rather expensive even for the few items you actually use. However, there is a hidden cost in powering up your computers and other equipment. This is not only having the equipment running but having the hardware plugged in also. When products are connected to an electrical outlet the product is always drawing a current, so it is using electricity even when the product is turned off. Unless you have a power outlet with an on/off switch, you need to consider disconnecting equipment from the electrical outlets when not in use. It is possible to save a considerable amount of energy by doing just this.

When running a desktop computer PC, you are going to use anywhere from 60 to 250 watts of electricity. This even includes when the computer is running a screen saver. The power does significantly drop off when it shuts itself down into sleep or standby mode, but it does continue to use a current. When using a Mac computer, the power runs from 87 watts up to 120 watts. Laptop computers do not use as much energy, generally ranging from 15 to 45 watts, depending on the size of the computer and the brand. However, this is generally the amount of watts the equipment uses per hour, so keep that in mind.

In order to determine how much electrify you would save in a year, you need to determine how many hours the equipment is turned on when you are not running it per day. If you are using a computer that uses 100 watts, and you leave it powered on for six hours a day, that is 600 watts. You then multiply it by 365 days a year to determine the total amount of watts you spend money on where it is not necessary.

If you want to find out exactly how much money this is you actually need to contact your electricity provider. The cost for electricity varies between cities and locations throughout the country. They are able to give you this information, which you can then take and multiple it by the total number of watts you use every year on the computers and other hardware. This gives you the final number for how much money you spend that you don’t need to and how much money you’d save in a give year.

In 2009, Samsung introduced its new cellular phone model called the Samsung Blue Earth. It is a touch-screen phone packed with the usual features of Samsung cellular phones but with eco-friendly features. With just one click, the user will know how much pollution he may have contributed and how many trees were saved by using the new environmental phone.

The Samsung Blue Earth structure is made of materials recycled from plastic bottles or now known as post-consumer materials (PCM). It has built-in solar panels at the back which prolongs the battery life as it continues to charge every time it is exposed to the sun. Even its packaging is also made of recycled material. Samsung even encourage the cellular phone user to use the box into art projects. Samsung was indeed successful in developing an eco-friendly phone.

Due to the use of recycled materials and the solar panel, the Samsung Blue Earth is heavier than the other Samsung phones. This is a potential cause of concern to the users despite the compact design of the phone.

For some users, the slight heaviness of the phone is easily ignored as Samsung made the Blue Earth attractive to use especially with its color (blue!) and great design that makes it a real stand out from the crowd. Also, even if it is made of recycled materials, it has a design that can compete with high-end Samsung Phones.

One other concern for this phone is the fact that its structure is a bit fragile. Some users claimed that the Blue Earth breaks when they accidentally sat on it or when it falls from a relatively low end table. Some users found it irritating that they still have to remove the battery if they will change their SIM card or their microsd memory card.

Nevertheless, these concerns are pretty common to cell phone users. Of course, no one can expect that Blue Earth phone will be lighter with the solar panels built on it. Phones most probably will break if it will be sat down or if it fell from a high place. Blue Earth is not the only cellular phone which requires the battery to be removed first in order to get the memory card or the SIM card. The fact remains that this compact, recycled, eco-friendly cell will have a great impact in the environment and the society. In fact, there are environmentalists who encourage other phone companies to follow the ingenuity of Samsung Electronics. Some even suggest that instead of making new phones like the Blue Earth, why not have all other phones use recycled materials and make them into eco-friendly tech gadgets too.

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Every year, millions of families drape their homes, fences, trees and bushes with hundreds of beautiful twinkling little Christmas lights. This year, why not make the choice to choose a more eco-friendly string of lights – ones that save energy, rather than drain energy.

These lights are better also because they are designed so that if one bulb goes out the rest will stay lit. Each light has a clip on their base so you can easily attach the lights. These bulbs use 50% less energy than standard C7 lights without compromising brightness.

While on the face of it, computing has plenty of benefits to the environment. Emails, E-readers and online communication saves paper, while telecommuting and conferencing saves gas. Computers, however, are anything but eco-friendly. The resources used in computer production, combined with the energy demands of computers, servers, data centers, and even the increase in air-conditioning and heating, to keep us comfortable while we spend long hours over the keyboard, all take their toll on the environment.

But there is an increasing trend towards greener computing, with manufacturers and service providers intent on reducing the impact that computer has on the planet, and in particular climate change. However, there is more to eco computing than just getting the latest low energy laptop, any attempt to reduce the environmental impact of our increasing reliance on computers needs to be multifaceted, and the key to all of it is the user.

Hardware and Software Demands

Computers use power, there’s no getting away it. In recent years there has been an increasing drive towards more energy efficient machines, particularly in the laptop industry, with LED backlights replacing energy hungry fluorescent tubes and a move towards digital flash drives rather than the motor driven hard drives. But while this trend towards more energy efficient models is certainly beneficial, trading in your older PC or laptop for a low energy model may be doing more harm than good. The carbon footprint of manufacturing a new machine is huge. Nearly three quarters of the natural resources used in the life cycle of a PC go into its production. Furthermore, discarding a PC also has a detrimental effect on the environment, with the average computer containing dozens of hazardous materials that are difficult to recycle.

Longevity, therefore, is one of the best methods of computer energy consumption, but with the exponential rate computers advance, it is something many users struggle with, but upgrading an older system is far better than replacing it completely. The resources required in producing a new RAM module is far lower than that of producing a new PC – however, upgrading software can have the opposite effect. An independent study by French IT firm GreenIT found that Windows 7 and the latest Microsoft Office requires 70 times more memory than the versions used ten years ago, meaning that if users stick with older programs for longer, the energy consumption of their computer use will be reduced.

Searching and Web Hosting

Web searching may seem like a benign act. When we search for the latest mobile phone, a new organic mattress or quotes for car insurance, it doesn’t occur to most people that quite a large amount of energy has gone into getting us our results. However, in 2009, Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross worked out that a typical Google search on a desktop computer produced about 7 grams of CO2, that’s equivalent to the same energy used in boiling a kettle every two searches! Google has made tremendous strides since then, with their data centers using 50 % less energy than they used to, and intends to power its data centers with 35% from renewable sources by 2012, investing heavily in solar and wind energy, but it still emits 1.5m tonnes of carbon every year, the equivalent of a small country such as Laos.

Websites too use a considerable amount of energy to keep up and running. Servers need to run 24 hours a day and require energy not just to power the machines that hold all the data, but also the air conditioning that maintains the stable temperatures necessary for the servers to keep running. Attempts are being made here too, with an increasing number of web hosting companies looking to renewable energy to power their data centers. Some companies are managing better than others, so choosing the right web hosting company can also go a long way in helping reduce the environmental impact of computing.

And the user can make even further savings in energy use too, by using power saving settings, turning off machines when not in use and resisting the urge to replace machines every year, which can all go a long way in helping to make computing a far greener activity, which will benefit everybody.

It’s not the antenna this time – it’s the battery. According to numerous (thousands) complaints at the Apple Support Communities forums, iPhone 4S users are claiming battery drainage at rates that range from 1%every 3-4 minutes to 10% overnight on standby.

Light usage has users claiming their batteries drain at about 12 to 35% every 30 minutes.

Theories are suggesting that the issue is a software one. Users who have upgraded their device to iOS 5 are reporting issues, leading experts to believe the problem might be attributed to a glitch in the software, and not in the actual guts of the iPhone.

At IFA 2011, LG Electronics is showing off their new smart home appliances. A highlight will be its smart refrigerator, which combines the world’s first Smart Eco Door on smart fridge with a series of functions that stand to transform how customers manage their food and their kitchens.

“We see European customers as being very conscious of leading an environmentally responsible lifestyle, and LG is well placed to meet these demands,” said Young-ha Lee, President and CEO of LG Electronics Home Appliance Company. “The combination of our Core Technologies and Smart ThinQ™ technologies not only reduces energy and water usage, but also saves customers’ time and energy. The combination of the two means previously unimagined levels of convenience and energy efficiency and a fundamental change in the way people manage their homes.”

LG’s smart refrigerator offers a smart saving solution to save energy while keeping food fresh. Smart saving provides a “Night Saving Mode” that reduces energy consumption for up to four hours at night time and a “Customise Saving Mode” that cuts back on energy use during periods preset by the customer. LG has also added the Smart Eco Door to make the overall configuration more convenient and less prone to energy loss.

This Thursday, search giant Google revealed their energy usage for the first time.

Google says that it emits 1.5m tonnes of carbon every year, but were fast to add that their data centers use 50% less energy than the industry average. The emissions numbers are just above the energy usage numbers of the entire country of Laos.

The company decided to reveal its energy usage numbers alongside its goals for the next few years. The company wants to get 35% of its energy from renewable sources by 2012.

Google has invested over $800 million in solar and wind energy sources, creating 1.7 gigawatts of renewable energy.

Electronics giant Sony has announced that they will begin shipping two Android Honeycomb tablets in September. The two units are the Sony Tablet S and the Tablet P.

The 9.4-inch, 1,280×768-pixel touch-screen of the Tablet S looks like a pad of paper with sheets folded over. Sony already started doing pre-orders for the $499 6GB and 32GB $599 Tablet S models.

Sony first revealed the juicy details of their tablets this spring, officially launching them at the 2011 IFA conference in Berlin. The Android tablets both support WiFi connectivity and the Tablet P will run 4G on AT&T’s mobile broadband network.The new Sony tablets will run using Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 CPU.