The Greenest Office Building In The World Is Inadequate Without This Tool

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A very smart building from the movie iRobot

Computer chip giant AMD recently issued a savvy statement regarding its sophisticated LEED-certified office building in Austin, Texas:

"While this certification means that the design features are amongst the greenest in the country, it does not guarantee that the people working in the building are always mindful of the environment."

To get around this human error, AMD is installing smart e-building technology.

Smart e-building provides 24/7 real-time information on how energy is used. If a computer or light bulb is left on overnight, this technology will let you know. It will also identify surges in power and other inefficiencies that are driving up the power bill.

There is an old saying that "what gets measured gets managed," and that's exactly the idea behind AMD's new energy management tool.

It's not an entirely new concept. Smart metering was initially popular in Europe in the early 2000s, though it's been gaining momentum in the U.S. since 2006, when GE, Intel, HP, Oracle, Cisco, and Capgemini came together to form the Smart Energy Alliance.

It makes sense that AMD is launching its own smart e-building program at its Lone Star campus, since Austin ranks among the greenest cities and intends to become carbon neutral by 2020.

Ongoing initiatives by the city of Austin, such as the Pecan Street Project, show that citizens support getting 15-second updates on their energy usage — because it encourages them to become more energy efficient, and they ultimately save money on utilities.

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Here's More Proof Apple's Building A Cheap 'Entry Level' iPhone 4 (AAPL)

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Gizmodo just posted some images of a brand new iPhone, codenamed N90A, from Foxconn's brand new factory in Brazil.

The pictures of the new iPhone don't look much different than a images of an iPhone 4, except this phone's model number is a bit different.

The iPhone in the images from Brazil is called the N90A, while the iPhone 4 we've been using for a year is called the N90.

Rumor has it that Apple's new iPhone, whether it be a true iPhone 5 or an iPhone 4S, is called the N94.

Just a few days before Apple's big iPhone announcement in Palo Alto, this would seem to be confirmation that Apple's producing another round of iPhone 4's, perhaps pricing them at $99.99 or less and including only 8GB of internal storage.

See below for the full-sized image, via Gizmodo.

Don't Miss: Here Are The Best iPhone And iPad Apps You Missed This Week >

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San Francisco Is Building A Net Around The Golden Gate Bridge To Stop People From Killing Themselves

24 people have killed themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge so far this year, putting 2011 on a pace to have the most such suicides ever (the previous high is 1977, which had 39), reports Scott James for the New York Times.

Another 12 people have thrown themselves under trains in the area, which exceeds the 11 who killed themselves that way all last year.

San Francisco's suicide prevention lines say many people who call are mentioning the economy as a factor in their despair:

“We constantly hear, ‘I’m going to be homeless; I would rather be dead than be homeless,’ the head of the suicide hot line said.

About 500,000 Californians have been unemployed for so long that they've run through their 99 weeks of unemployment benefits.

At least 1,400 people have killed themselves by leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge since it was built in 1937. And it turns out it's a brutal way to go: Many jumpers suffer "blunt force trauma" with cracked ribs and other limbs and then drown.

In response to the Golden Gate suicides, the city of San Francisco is planning to build a net around the bridge, at a cost of $45 million. (That's $10 million more than the $35 million it originally cost to build the bridge.) The net will be made of metal, and it will hurt to to jump into it--a factor that the city hopes will dissuade people from jumping.

One woman who jumped a few months ago, 55-year old Barbara Sue Beaver, emailed a friend from the deck of the bridge and asked him to check in on her pit bull. Beaver had been unemployed for two years since losing her job in a bookstore, and she had no health insurance. A letter found at her home said "I'm too lazy to navigate further."

Read Scott James' article at the New York Times >

(via @ariannahuff).

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