August 1

It's a good feeling knowing you're doing your bit to save the planet by changing a few things in your world.

So am I recycling more...? No, not a lot.

Am I changing my lightbulbs to energy saving ones...? Sure, maybe a couple.



Have I ditched the car and bought a push bike? Not on your nelly.

But what I have done is stopped using Google as my search engine in favour of a new greener well, blacker, alternative.

'Blackle' (www.blackle.com) was created earlier this year by Heap Media in a bid to save energy.

With its searches powered by Google Custom Search, Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black.

As it states on its 'About Blackle' link: "In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine.

"Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

"We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up.

"Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy."

Those nice people at Blackle claim that if computer users set the search page as their home page, they will save a little bit of energy everytime they connect to the internet.

By the time that I came across it a counter stated that 125,281.348 Watt hours had been saved.

While Blackle doesn't offer the same options for searching images, maps or news, it's surely only a matter of time before it begins developing the search engine to compete with the Google giant.

While I can only apologise for my lack of blog activity lately (Been busy buying a house see...) at least I can boast I have been helping to save the planet. Albeit in small steps.



(Rather hypocritically) here are the latest games reviews:

Title: Transformers: The Game

Platform: Xbox 360

RRP: £29.99

Hit count: 4/5

At last... a game that packs the punches of its movie franchise! And how long have we been waiting for Transformers to come to the consoles...? Too long that's how long.

In Tranformers: The Game you can choose which team you want to be on: The nicey nicey Autobots, or the cooler than cool Decepticons.

Like the movie it is difficult to tell one end of a robot from the other due to the detail of the graphics and the colours used, but the action scenes are fun and the array of weapons is awesome!

Smash, blast and wreck your way through the various levels... or simply smash up everything in your path be it buildings, cars or lamp posts. Oh, and the coolest but? You get to transform as often as you like into helicopters, planes cars or trucks!

For me the only snag to the game is the sometimes confusing graphics and the shortage of characters. While the good old Transformers comics and the series boasted bloody loads, the game and latest movie sadly boast around 10.

Still when you're having this much fun... who cares about the cast?



Title: Big Brain Academy

Platform: Nintendo Wii

RRP: £39.99

Hit count: 2/5

Yawn... I'm sorry but if I spend money on a game I expect action and adventure, and to be taken to a magical place removed from my old school classroom.

But with this game I find myself back there testing my memory and numeracy skills.

While I can appreciate that it might be fun for a family with small children eager to strengthen their brain power, I found this all rather dull. The Wii is a great fun console, but this is rather bland.