So the government has finally decided to put some meat on the bones of its smart meter plans.

The long awaited Smart Metering Implementation Programme Prospectus was released this week in the last proper splurge of business before the dog days of summer. Not much of a fanfare then for what the government admits will be one of the biggest public sector tech projects of recent times.

But then any news is good news right now with the silly season looming – another week and the tech press will be awash with the usual summer space fillers of “How to stay connected to the office while on vacation” or “Top tech books to take to the beach”. While it might be exciting to engage the conspiracy synapses and imagine government spin-doctors trying to bury some Machiavellian smart meter sub-plot – the truth is probably just that this much material takes time to accumulate.

And what a pile there is. Never mind summer reading, anyone interested in how the government intends to pull-off this feat will be eschewing Stephen King and Dean Koontz in favour of Chris Huhn. The smart meter prospectus might not be exactly beach reading material but some aspects of it seem every bit as fanciful as a bestseller.

A Fantasy Bestseller?

The most obvious example of this is the new timetable the government has set. The EU electricity and gas directives behind the UK’s smart meter push mandate 2020 as the date for the deployment. That might still be nearly ten years away but even that seemed ambitious given the small fact that the country is broke and most other large-scale public sector tech projects have been mothballed or scrapped as the coalition furiously bails out our collective life-boat. The rash of tech quangos that have been nuked in the last few weeks, together with high-profile cuts such as ID Cards and Microsoft losing its lucrative NHS deal, show exactly how much cash and good will there is available for tech projects in Whitehall right now.

Despite some pre-election stories about cosying up to Google, the coalition government has not exactly endeared itself to the tech industry so far. Even the hip games industry’s attempts to get a tax break were shot to pieces, Call-Of-Duty-style, by George Osbourne.

For more go to eWEEK Europe UK

From eWEEK Europe UK:

In an earlier column, I publicly named and shamed myself for my rampant addiction to shiny new kit.

This guilt over tech consumerism had been boiling under for a while but the iPhone 4 launch proved to be the gadget which gave the camel a nasty case of lumbago. No more being sucked in by the Jobs distortion field I told myself. From now on new tech will only be purchased to replace devices that have gone to the great tech museum in the sky.

Given all the furore around the iPhone’s antenna issues, the decision to out myself turned out to be a pretty good one. Being an early adopter is always a risky strategy given the penchant of Apple and others to beta test their new kit on the live market.

So I am feeling rather smug and sustainable at the moment knowing I dodged the antenna bullet, saved some cash and avoided consigning another bit of kit to the waste-stream (albeit with a short stop-over in my bottom drawer).

Dodging The iPhone 4 Bullet

But there is a but. Even knowing all about the antenna issues and Apple’s potentially duplicitous behaviour is shipping the iPhone 4 with a fault in the first place – I still want one. The desire for shiny new – precious – things is hard-wired I suppose, and eventually I will succumb. But I am adamant that won’t be till my existing iPhone 3GS is beyond repair. So in a strategy which I guess is tech addiction’s equivalent of a nicotine patch, I bought myself a shiny new case for the old model and also downloaded Apple’ latest iPhone OS update. Hey presto – a new iPhone or something very close to it. The outside looks different and so does the software.

This tactic of modification rather than upgrading could be seen as the IT equivalent of the car body-kits and silly transfers that teenage boy-racers are so keen on. Slapping a new spoiler on your Nissan Micra is not as satisfying as owning a new Golf GTi but it helps to satiate the upgrade demons.  Moreover, improving or modifying existing kit might sound like a pointless diversion but it is actually closely allied to a more fundamental approach to electronics, domestic appliances, and even cars – repairing and reusing them for as long as possible.

For more go to: eWEEK Europe UK

(From eWEEK Europe UK)

The sooner that the whole concept of “green” IT is abandoned altogether the better.

That might sound a tad odd considering this column is meant to explore developments in sustainable computing but I think that continuing to talk about a separate category of “green technology” is the one sure way to retard its development.

Unfortunately, sustainability is still seen as a marketing edge by device makers and service providers and will probably continue to be so until legislation and consumer preference erases the alternatives.

It appears that consumers still very much view “eco” or “green” alternatives as a separate product category – and are wary of them as a result.

Rather than being a more complete or sustainable offering, some consumers actually see green products as somehow substandard, according to the results of a new report. UK sustainability organisation WRAP questioned consumers on their attitudes to a variety of electronic goods ranging from the solar-powered Samsung Blue Earth Mobile to the Electrolux Green vacuum cleaner. While some of the results were encouraging and the environmental value of green design was recognised, there was also a fair amount of scepticism.

Cautious About Green

On the whole, respondents still viewed “green” as something novel and distinct and admitted to being “cautious” about buying such products.

For more go to: eWEEK Europe UK

Last week, I wrote about how a rising tide of eco-guilt has finally driven me to stop buying new hardware.

Tired of being whipped into a consumer frenzy by another messianic performance by Steve Jobs, I have now committed to stop buying any new kit unless it’s replacing something broken. I have almost any scenario covered tech-wise and there is really no excuse to buy any more until natural wear and tear dictates otherwise.

Of course there are machinations of tech companies to contend with, such as the expiring support for Windows XP, but I am pretty sure I can port my netbook to Linux when the time comes. Actually, I should have done it before now but, infuriatingly, it still pays to have access to a Windows machines for those proprietary apps that will run on nothing else (which included the CMS behind this website until very recently).

Making the pledge to “sweat my assets”, as it’s known in environmental circles, got me thinking about whether the plan would scale-up for a business. As a freelance journalist, I am a one-man business and I have no real concerns at this stage that the hardware ban will massively affect my own productivity. However I reckon that the idea of a complete hold on new kit wouldn’t go down well at, say, a global enterprise.

But then again, IT budgets have been pretty tight over the last two years as management juggles with the impact of the financial crisis. Sure, there has been less business to do and therefore potentially less need for sophisticated new platforms to cope with it, but I wonder whether this make-do and mend attitude to IT spending has really affected productivity? What would happen for instance if a company did make a similar commitment to no new hardware for, say, a year. Would it really make a massive difference to its performance? I am betting it wouldn’t.

Sweating Assets

Environmental and tech experts, including some from the UK government, agree that we should be using kit for longer. Last year, Cabinet Office deputy champion for green ICT Catalina McGregor, said that government departments should get tough on sweating their IT assets and hang on to kit longer.  “It is going to be uncomfortable when it first comes and I think there is going to be a lot of raised eyebrows but certain areas really needed to be sweated, sometimes for up to 10 years, and you are going to be shocked,” she told an audience of IT managers at last years Green IT conference.

For more go to: eWEEK Europe UK