Earth Hour took place this past weekend, but you don't have wait another year to do something about global warming. Doing simple things around the house, like shutting down the computer when it's not in use, can make a huge difference too. A free application called LocalCooling can help you adjust your computer's power settings so you can save money and reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. This utility only works on machines running Vista or Windows XP, but really, anyone can go into their control panel to change the power options at any time. The one advantage this application has is that it tells you how many watts your computer is using. More specifically, it tells you which PC components (monitor, CPU, hard drive) are using up the most power, and it gives you the option to choose from a low, medium, or high power savings mode, so you don't have to waste time guessing which options will save the most energy.
The widget also translates your overall stats into the amount of gas, trees, or kWh you're saving over time so you can brag to your friends. What's neat about LocalCooling is once you've created an account, you can either set up a local group or join an existing one to take the energy savings competition to another level. This is definitely a cool tool you can use to teach the kids about saving energy and money.
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