| Overall: | 18 | 8 |
| Design: | 10 | 3 |
| Navigation: | ||
| Usefulness: | 7 | 7 |
18
8
Did you know a light screen uses more power than a dark screen? BlackBobcat is mostly black and the search results (displayed on a black screen) is powered by Google (which now receives 700 million search queries each day). Think about the white space being wasted away on a daily basis with each Google query. By making the simple switch to a black background, you can save heaps of energy!
- Color Scheme?
- Useful?
- Need more features? Energy Saving Tips?
- Marketable?
I find your site very hard to use. With my LCD monitors set to my colors and contrast, I can not read your text. I would not use it. You need a better contrast on your text to background. Maybe a yellow font. For years I programed with a yellow on black environment.
Energy savings? I would not trust one blog post. Either link to a couple of major science trials, or run your own set of trials. Buy a watt meter (and/or amp meter), and test how much power is used with google for 60 minutes. Then run the same test with your site. Now run this across dozens of classes of monitors: CRT, LCD, Projection, Plasma, LED, large, small. See how much of a difference it really makes.
Marketable? Not really. As soon as you start to get any traction, google can (and will) offer a user preference cookie that sets their style sheet and you are out of business.
Good luck.
This is a myth, well for LCDs it is at least, for Plasmas and CRT there may be some truth in it.
From: http://www.plasma-lcd-facts.co.uk/myths/energy-use/
"LCDs by comparison run at a constant power regardless of whether a scene is dark or light, due to their use of an always-on backlight."
Personally I like the color scheme. I have to echo some of the comments from the other users though in that I can't see myself ever remembering to use this! It's not the shortest/easiest to remember URL in the world.
I also do not really buy the energy savings bit, especially since I do use LCDs pretty much all the time. Maybe you shouldn't play up the energy savings stuff so much and instead just focus on it being a google "skin" that's easier to read in low-light. I do a lot of surfing/searching in the dark so that part I like.
My main problem is there are so may other ways to do this if I really cared... from custom CSS support in browsers to a GreaseMonkey script to who knows what else. Your current solution is really not any easier for me to use at this point because I won't remember to use it. Maybe you should think about making this a GreaseMonkey script I could install instead. That way whenever I go to google.com to search it would flip the color scheme to yours? I'm actually thinking this has already been done though just judging on how many GM scripts there are for things like GMail already...
I would also agree with the others that there's really nothing marketable or monetizable (I don't think that's a word but whatever) here. Good luck!
Looks much better than http://www.blackle.com/ (although their domain is really good). The yellow on the search results is a bit dark; the yellow for a:active is easier to read.
It's a bit confusing that I get to choose between "Bobcat Search" and "Web Search".
If you really want to market this, you probably need some real data on power consumption for white and black pages. A single blog post means very little.
I like the idea and the idea of inject energy saving tips into the page. I don't mind the light yellow with the black. It terms of marketable, how are you going to make money? Ad rev share with Google I am assuming. I think it has potentially since everyone is on the "Green". I think the challenge will be how does someone remember your site as a reviewer prior said. If you can build a "brand" around the saving energy, you might be able to get some good traction.
The light screen/dark screen thing doesn't apply to LCD monitors (every laptop, a majority of desktops). Thus, I don't feel very good about this site, despite wishing that people used less energy.
- Color Scheme?
Do you really want feedback about this? It's black. Works for me. The logo is pretty cool.
- Useful?
To me? No. I don't use the google home page, ever.
Additionally, I use LCD monitors. Thus, this site would not help me save energy, and is mildly offensive to me by perpetuating half-truths.
- Need more features? Energy Saving Tips?
Maybe you could do a FF theme? Or windows/mac/linux desktop themes and backgrounds?
- Marketable?
Yes, probably. Though, I note that blackle has received some negative pub.
- color scheme? I like it, I think it's a bit difficult at first, but after a few seconds it's fine. Non-developers might have a harder time adjusting.
- useful? I think so, but in all honesty, I'll forget to go to your site instead of google.com
- need more features? Not sure since this is pretty much just a wrapper for google, or so it seems that way. Perhaps a graph showing how much energy has been saved over a period of time by those users using your site?
- Energy Savings Tips? I always like those! So sure!
- Marketable? hmm...I think you can try to partner up with Google for this. I don't know if this idea is patentable, but I'd investigate that first and get a patent ASAP. You should look into energy magazines and write an article about saving energy and how this simple change can make a big impact.
I liked your colors, but the scary cat eyes are well...a bit scary! I don't like see a cat looking back at me, but that's just me.
Great idea especially as we try to become more green. I don't think many people realize how many little things like this can help in significant ways.