SOUTHERN TAIWAN was hit by a 6.4 earthquake this morning local time which led to all sorts of disruptions in the southern parts of the island. The good news is that no one was seriously hurt, but the quake cause a lot of damage to buildings and infrastructure.

THERE ARE A lot of 'green' devices that pop up every day, most of which are about as green as an old coal power plant built on an environmentally sensitive wetland. At CeBIT, a small Korean company called HiSaver showed off a green power strip that actually makes a lot of sense.

OK, SO WE might be a little bit sarcastic here, but we can’t quite figure this one out. Asus has announced no less than six new motherboards, based on very basic chipsets, that are not only meant to have the lowest electromagnetic emissions in the industry, but they also feature “advanced protective shields”, “anti-surge features” and reduced “system-wide power consumption by up to 80.23 [percent]”.

IT IS SO PRETTY we hardly have any words for it. Notice the business card being held behind the screen and how much is visible along with the bright colors.

NATRALOCK by MWV (MeadWestvaco) could in an alternate world have the slogan "We suck less" and it would be absolutely right.

GLOBAL FOUNDRIES JUST announced a major win by signing Qualcomm to a fab contract. If anyone was waiting to see if Global Foundries had what it took to compete for the best, they now have their answer.

CompuLab has a winner. Yup, indeed a winner. It's not often that you find someone at a booth bragging about low power and is willing to let you test it.

DELL TAKES A STEP toward curbing emissions, even before the upcoming Copenhagen protocol that's likely to force everyone to reduce emissions. Foresight is a good thing if you want to stay in the game and with these improvements in efficiency, it looks like Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) is trying to stay ahead of the curve, and competitors.

INTEL KICKED OFF IDF in the traditional way, a keynote by Paul Otellini. The topics were the usual, where they are going, new chips coming up, and all the ways Intel is making things better.

NEW IDEAS USUALLY don't just happen, most have years of work and tweaking behind them. One of these is called Punch, a new way to take and 'print' digital photos.

SUPER TALENT just announced a line of DIMMs it is calling 'green' because they use less raw materials and packaging. It's a good idea with an attractive marketing spin for the company, but the truly important ramifications are more subtle.

ONE OF THOSE press releases that snuck by under the radar answered a year old question about solar panels, would the huge Applied Materials panels live up to their early promise? Based on the recent IEC certification of their 5.7m^2 panels, the answer is yes.

WITH EFFICIENCY GAINS at the CPU level becoming harder and harder to find, a lot of work has turned to the platform to squeeze out a few more watts here and there. During Research At Intel Day (R@ID), Intel was showing how to bunch I/Os intelligently for large system power savings.

IN CASE YOU haven't noticed over the past two or three years, Intel is very interested in sensor technology. During Research At Intel Day a few weeks ago, they were showing off technology to make air quality sensors mobile and ubiquitous.

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE solved disconnecting and low data rate problems with L2, the DSL low power mode. By using artificial noise during initial connections, they have stabilized the modem to prevent crashing and restarts at lower data speeds.