Blackle.com is a website created by Heap Media and it looks like Google and is powered by the Google Custom Search, but it has one large difference.  Blackle.com (clever name, right?) has a black background instead of the white background of Google.com we all know. 

The eco-thinking behind Blackle.com is some studies claim that darker images on monitors consume less energy, so this is Heap Media’s way to “remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy”.  Alexa.com ranks Blackle.com in the top 8,000 websites as far as daily traffic.  In other words, it receives hundreds of thousands visits a month.  If their theory is true, then that is a lot of energy conservation.

 

Darren Yates, a technology journalist who reviews computer hardware, tested four CRT monitors and twenty-three LCD monitors, and found that the CRT monitors did use more energy displaying a white screen, but less than the calculations made by Blackle.  The LCD monitors tested showed slightly less power use displaying a white screen in the majority of cases, although most of the larger (24-inch) monitors did use slightly less power displaying a black screen. As of the writing, Blackle claims to have saved over 1,702 kilowatt hours.  The jury is still out on real life numbers.

Try it for yourself, maybe you’ll like it.  You can follow Blackle.com on Twitter as well at: http://twitter.com/Blackle and/or go to their energy saving tips.  Sometimes I use Blackle.com, but the black background is harder to read and can be a strain on the eyes.  It does, however, make for an interesting option to a very popular product.