The Green Battle: Microsoft and Google Fight for Our Energy Data

Read my complete post on The Scholarly Kitchen. Excerpts:          

Hohm is a Microsoft home energy monitoring software available in beta since July 2009. The premise is straightforward — consumers complete an individual energy profile online and agree to let Microsoft access their current and historical data from participating utility providers (the first to partner with Hohm were Xcel Energy, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Seattle City Light, and Puget Sound Energy). Via the information that consumers supply and these utility-provided datafeeds, Microsoft acquires detailed data about on-site usage of heat, cooling, lighting, appliances, water heaters — even electric cars.          

The proposed consumer value is that Microsoft will monitor your energy use to provide dashboard-like reports analyzing your household consumption and energy use and make recommendations for system or practice modifications that will result in lower energy use and cost savings.    

  

Source: Library of Congress via flickr

 

As with all things in the hot-and-getting-hotter showdown between Google and Microsoft, that’s not the end of the story. Paul Miller on Engadget mentions the competitive offering from Google, the PowerMeter API. And, just days ago, MicroChip announced that has partnered with Google PowerMeter to release a more developer-friendly Reference Implementation that will “make it much easier to create products that are compatible with Google PowerMeter.”      

Read more …

Are Google and Microsoft Squaring Off Over Public Domain Works?

Source: Inner Geek blog at umn.edu

 

Read my complete post on The Scholarly Kitchen. Excerpt:  

… Microsoft has plans of its own involving public domain materials. An article  in Sunday’s Times Online announced that 65,000 19th century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection will be made available for free public downloads this spring .  Cited as, “the latest move in the mounting online battle over the future of books,”  one wonders if the British Library’s Microsoft-backed project  may be the first in a series of initiatives aimed at reducing Google’s stranglehold on public-access materials.