Tan DingXiangSingapore’s city skyline dimmed in commemoration of Earth Hour on Mar 26, at 8.30pm. It was part of a phenomenon that saw other landmarks around the world, like the Big Ben in London and the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia do the same.
Besides physical locations “blacking out” voluntarily to drive home the message of energy conservation to care for our planet, a few very popular websites also did their part to save energy by going black for day.
You may sniff at these efforts, but according to blackl.com, a black search engine website powered by Google, they can save up to 750 megawatt hours every year, enough to power a house in America for 75 years.
Tan DingXiang takes a trip into the dark and rates these websites.
Blackl.com – The Black Google
Contrary to the, ahem, dark (and probably racist) connotations that the title of Black Google conjures, Blackl is the permanent site that allows fans of the #1 search engine in the world to save power, since Google itself only implemented a black appearance for a day on its Canadian domain on March 29, 2008.
Blackl.com, which claims to have saved 2 megawatt hours ever since its launch in 2007, works as fast as Google Search.
Its Singapore domain, which shows up searches from Singapore can be viewed at sg.blackl.com.
However, it lacks the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button, which redirects your search to the most relevant page.
Blackl only utilises Google Search, which means that Google Images, News and Videos have to be viewed on their original pages.
All in all, Blackl’s limitations made my search experience more of a hassle, as I, and presumably most UrbanWire readers, tend to search more for videos and news rather than plain links alone. Useful for the simple searcher, though.
Rating: 3 stars
BlackMail
Mozilla Firefox users will be familiar with the types of add-ons they may include to their browsers, such as YouTube downloaders and Skype plugins for making calls.
Stylish, a third-party add-on developer, released BlackMail in 2007, which it touts as the “real black gmail [sic] theme”.
Unfortunately, BlackMail was only able to turn the background of the inbox page black. The message area, which made up more than 60% of the page, remained stubbornly in its default light blue.
To make matters worse, black and bold text in the background blended into the dark, meaning that my email address, located at the top right-hand corner of the page, was now invisible.
Things looked slightly better when it came to composing mail, with the body text changing into a more friendly grey shade.
Most of the page went black, but my biggest grouse was that the hyperlinks stayed dark blue, making them difficult to read at times.
Other than a black background, the changes which BlackMail made seemed not to be very helpful for saving energy and yet translated into a poor viewing experience.
Rating: 2 stars
YouTube – Switching green ‘on’
Video-sharing website YouTube, currently ranked #3 on the ‘Most Visited Websites’ list on Alexa, offered a simple switch to the top-left of its page, next to its logo.
The light bulb symbol does a little curious act when the switch is flicked – it turns off as well.
The video page turns black upon switching ‘off’. But what makes it pleasing to the eye, despite the drastic colour change is that links, related video titles and comments turn from black to grey, instead of blending in with the dark.
This reduced contrast gives you less glare, next to white fonts.
YouTube’s attention to detail in ensuring that viewers’ eyes are neither strained nor assaulted by difficult-to-read fonts or glaring graphics warrants a four-star rating.
Rating: 4 stars
Conclusion
Of the 3 websites, YouTube provided the best Earth Hour experience. Its already user-friendly interface, coupled with the smart, easy-to-switch option, made my video viewing experience in the dark less of a glaring affair.
The UrbanWire is all for all websites going black in the name of going green, but, only when well-considered and tested changes are made to these websites, before giving them the all-clear.