Their beefs is that they cannot be found on online maps.

Apart from the fact, as stated by Mary Spence, president of the British Cartographic Society, that online maps missed out on important or key points of interest such as centuries old cathedrals, royal castles and other stately homes, they were also effectively diminishing from national consciousness the British sense of nationhood.

You see, monuments that describe the British pride like Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about 3.2 kilometers west of Amesbury and 13 kilometers north of Salisbury, should be found on any serious map. But it is not referenced on Google Map for instance.

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Not only does your web site offer you a chance to market your company, it’s also an opportunity to exercise your commitment to sustainability. One way to green your marketing is to make the web your primary advertising focus. Through e-mail newsletters, online ads, and promoting your domain name on all company correspondence, you can drive traffic to your web site and cover a lot of marketing ground without having to waste paper. Focusing your advertising efforts on the internet means less printed advertising, which means less paper waste and fewer pollutants released (the printing process and ink pigments create a lot of them).

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One of my favorite things about using the internet to promote my business is that it’s green and inexpensive (if not free). So online marketing and social networking is a great way to get your name out there without using any paper or creating any trash. A good way to start your foray into the world of online marketing is to first establish a web site for your business. This will often be your potential customers’ first impression of your company, so it will be an important investment in both time and money. Once you have a web site, networking through social media sites is a great way to promote it and drive traffic to your site. Online marketing is a strategy that’s becoming more and more popular among entrepreneurs, and thankfully it is one with minimal impact on the planet.

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Google has offered to match donations made to UNICEF and Direct Relief International for all donations made at Google’s Support disaster relief in Myanmar page, up to one million dollars.

Internet users in Burma reported that access to Google and Gmail had been blocked by the strict military junta governing the country in the summer of 2006. By this time, Yahoo and Hotmail had already made the censored IT blacklist.

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Based on data from the Uptime Institute, a technology consulting company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the McKinsey report finds that, between 2000 and 2006, the amount of energy needed to power data centers doubled, and that consumption is likely to double again by 2012. In the U.S. alone, we would need to build 10 new power plants by 2010 just to meet the growing energy needs of this country’s data centers.

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North American Environmental News

CANADA — Ontario Bans Lawn and Garden Pesticides

Canada has proven once again that it is way ahead of the rest of world with its progressive government. Ontario has banned the use and sale of lawn and garden pesticides for homeowners. Quebec instituted a similar ban on 20 some pesticide products back in 2006.

The new ban is set to take effect by spring of 2009. Home Depot has already agreed to stop selling the pesticides by the end of 2008! This is a huge victory for anti-toxic supporters all over the continent. If only someone in the United States government could take such affirmative action we could all be spared. Ontario will basically phase out some 80 different chemicals and over 300 products that contain them.

Continue reading this article at the Environmental Blog. Join the discussion about this article at Care2.

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When the Internet extended its wiry tentacles to the small town that I grew up in, I had no idea what it was. I pictured it being a room full of wires and lights, like a super computer android version of a phone operator.

As I matured, I realized it wasn’t that at all, but a more mystic existence of floating pockets of digital information in constant flux, existing in digital clouds that were suspended just above the atmosphere.

Of course, neither of those images is or was correct. But as it turns out, I was closer to the target with my first guess. Massive server rooms take up space and energy all over the world, storing the information and websites we web junkies feed on for survival. Luckily, they are starting to go green.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc., a technology real estate company, has taken a bold step into the green world by renovating a 90-year-old printing facility in Chicago. They have turned the plant into the world’s first LEED gold-certified data center. Not only is this a paradigm shift for future data centers—it may change the way LEED building companies approach renovations.

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The internet is saving 10 times the energy required to run an internet-linked computer.

Remember when renting a movie required a trip to the video store or checking a bank balance required a visit to the bank? Now, anything from used books to driving maps are just a click away. Telecommuting is common and taxes can be submitted electronically to the IRS. The internet is shaping our lifestyles, allowing us to save energy.

A recent study by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) discovered that every kilowatt-hour of electricity used to power communications and information technologies is resulting in a 10 fold increase in energy savings.

“Acceleration of information and computer technology across the US landscape post 1995 is driving much of the nation’s energy-productivity gain,” says John Laitner of the ACEEE and coauthor of the study. “Had we continued at the historic rate of prior years, we would today be using the energy equivalent of 1 billion barrels of oil more [per year] than we were” in the early 1990s.

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The efficiency development model helps servers that used to be assigned to only one task to now multitask and move between tasks as needed. In other words, the servers can now meet the fluctuating demand that the internet has more quickly. This model reduces the chance that a website gets overwhelmed with demand and locks up. It is also said to increase efficiency and service by 20 percent.

Georgia Tech professor Craig Tovey was struck with a curiosity of honeybee behavior in the early 80s. He realized through conversations with a colleague from the University of Oxford that “bees and servers had strikingly similar barriers to efficiency.” Bees have very inconsistent resources. Sometimes there is an abundance of nectar to collect and sometimes there is very little. Year after year the supply is different and the location of the nectar oasis’s change. Yet somehow, they always seem to maintain a fairly consistent supply of nectar in the hive. Tovey saw this as a stimulating intricacy in the natural environment that yielded very effective results. Tovey among other colleagues conducted research for decades on how they work and how to use their brilliance in our built environment.

The greatest breakthrough was the discovery of the waggle dance. Australian zoologist Karl con Frisch won a Nobel Prize for this. When bees that hit an oasis return to the hive, they do a dance at the hive floor, wagging their tail back and forth. Each movement of the dance indicates location, scent, sound and gives other foragers clues about where the oasis of nectar is.

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THE TEN PROJECT

www.thetenproject.org

THE PROJECT’S AIM

To distribute a game in 2010 to every single ten-year-old living in the ten most influential mega-cities of the future, to inspire them to create a ten-year plan for redesigning their world into one that will be sustainable and worth inheriting in 2020.

THE GAME’S AIM

As the game Monopoly prepared previous generations for capitalism, this game aims to make lucrative sustainability second nature to the children of a new world in which biology and economics are inextricably linked. The game aims to do this by exciting its players into creating a ten year plan for sustainability problem solving, empowering them as a connected global network, and alerting them to their major role in this next crucial ten years of human civilization.

(Statistics quoted are courtesy of the UN, N.A.T.O., and WHO)

WHY SUSTAINABILITY IS VITAL

IPCC reports reveal that the world has reached a state of emergency, and that during the next ten years we must bring to fruition the monumental advances in Green Technology, social innovation and human compassion that have already begun, if we are to survive. The TEN Project focuses on the positive outcome of this critical age of change, particularly in the vibrant mega-cities of the future.

WHY THE MEGA-CITIES ARE VITAL

51% of all humans now live in cities. In seven years, Lagos Nigeria will be the third largest city in the world, after only Mumbai and Tokyo. We are building the equivalent of a city the size of Seattle (0.6 million) every four to seven days.

Well over a billion people live in resourceful slums and vibrant squatter communities, full of social and economic prosperity, innovation, and hope. In 2010 a global taskforce will distribute the game to every single ten year old in the following ten mega-cities: Lagos, Mumbai, Karachi, Dhaka, Mexico City, São Paulo, Jakarta, Tokyo, Shanghai, New York.

The effectiveness of such a global taskforce was proven by the eradication of Smallpox, which killed more people than all the wars, violence, natural disasters, AIDS and all the other infectious diseases of civilization added together. It was finally defeated in 1979 against all odds, by 150,000 volunteers who were mobilised (without cheap telephony and the internet) and inoculated over a billion households until they succeeded.

THE TARGET AGE GROUP

Over the age of about eight and before puberty, the child’s innovative capacities are boundless. They are not yet educated out of their creativity, their ideals are still flexible and they have a natural understanding of the transforming world (such as computers). More than one third of the world is under the age of fifteen, and they are becoming ever more connected, and they are every nation’s most valuable natural resource.

50% of the entire world population already owns a cell phone. OLPC are distributing millions of ‘$100’ wi-fi laptops to the world’s poorest children, with staggering results. The Project’s game will empower its players as they connect to form a global network.

THE FUTURE

We are hurtling toward a future no one can predict. Yet one thing is certain: our capacity to mend is as powerful as our capacity to break. Mass-extinction, bio-weapons, uncontrollable disease and the horror of climate crisis, are on one side of the coin. On the other is a powerfully connected society of problem solvers on the streets and in the labs of the world’s cities.
KEY POINTS OF THE GAME DESIGN BRIEF:

1) Must be cheap and self-maintaining, require minimal interface. A short form/ SMS game type would be practical and take advantage of rapid cell phone connectivity in squatter cities. The web, cell phone SMS, word of mouth and creating visual clues in the urban environment, might all be equally effective ways for the players to interconnect within the game. In this way the game environment could become the real environment of the player’s city. Instead of using elaborate graphics in a virtual world, the very fabric of urban life could become the game landscape. (This is also more practicable for areas without computer access).

2) For children in squatter cities who might have no community access to internet or other electronic media, periodic unofficial ‘social connector’ stations might be set up on a word of mouth basis for that particular community, each with periodic contact to practical nearby internet access in another part of the city. Gamers on a rotation suggested by the game itself could be responsible for these.

3) Must enable the children to keep track of and share each other’s ideas, scores and creations, across the global community. Regardless of the simplicity of the game’s interface, it must create a global video gaming community that crosses cultural boundaries as effectively as if it were a ‘Massively Multiplayer Online Game’ (MMOG). It must have networking, collaborative and web-based elements.

4) Must be able to develop and grow in complexity with the child, and maintain its appeal and functionality throughout a ten-year period.

5) Must inspire children to workshop a personal and a social ten year plan for surviving the current ecological emergency (short-term radical solutions to get us through the critical moment); as well as a long-term sustainable world that will never again forget how to maintain its own lifeline, its planet/world/environment.

6) Must not have anything to do with their schooling or come across as an educational tool, but be action-based, and fun enough to compete (or even integrate) with their current popular activities. It must be fashionable and at least as much fun as stealing cars, sniffing glue, skateboarding, playing play-station etc.

7) Despite operating above and without requiring literacy, the game will need still to demonstrate, however subtly, the following three key points… a) That technology is a biological system with its own evolution. b) That the onus is on us to ensure that system works properly (makes all species including our own happy, healthy and prosperous as opposed to miserable, diseased and extinct). c) That technology is sustainable for itself and in context to all biological systems, and how important it is to re-evaluate the things we think we need to make us happy in light of what is actually sustainable.
THE TWO-YEAR DESIGN PROCESS:
It is an ambitious design brief, but as an open source design project, a heavily networked global team of ten thousand voluntary designers (amateur and professional) will have two years to ponder the game (from January 2008 to December 2009).

Child psychologists, teachers, counselors, game designers, large corporations such as Sony Inc., and successful recruitment organizations (e.g. The Military) will be offered corporate sponsorship or other incentives in exchange for knowledge about how to captivate children’s imaginations, and possibly even promotion for recruiting volunteers.

The best ideas will be consolidated on the TEN Project website, where they will be instantly accessible for revision by everyone involved. Minimal game summaries will be encouraged at this point rather than over-complicated descriptions. The website will then divide into separate design branches for multiple cultures and tastes modifications, and the most successful ideas to emerge will be rigorously tested for appeal on children in multiple cultural, consumer and stylistic contexts.

2010 POINT-TO-POINT DISTRIBUTION PROGRAM:
The distribution targets of the game are every bit as ambitious as its design, but the globally conscious and philanthropic community that grows daily cannot be underestimated. Abundant and popular web 2.0 sites, which allow for an intermesh of discussion and social networking can be used to amass a vast team. This will operate in a decentralized fashion with a common directive. A million volunteers will be needed to personally deliver the game to ten million children of around ten years old across the globe.

The game will not insist on any proof of age, and its target figures allow for the fact that the game will very likely be played initially by eight to eleven year olds. By targeting every child of this age bracket in each of the target cities, the TEN Project hopes to make a significant impact on those cities, and in the way this growing generation, en masse, thinks about economics, sustainable city living and the future.

The cities were chosen based on having the highest ten-year-old populations in the world, with the exception of Shanghai and New York, which are included to complete the picture of global influence represented by this top-ten list of tomorrow’s mega-cities.

The numbers of children in the target age group for each city are:

Lagos (1,500,000), Mumbai (1,400,000), Karachi (1,300,000), Dhaka (1,200,000), Mexico City (1,000,000), São Paulo (900,000), Jakarta (800,000), Tokyo (800,000), Shanghai (600,000), New York (600,000)

The TEN Project is a way of maximizing the promises and staying ten steps ahead of the threats of this accelerating world in our race toward the sustainability of a future no one can predict.

—-

Sign up for participation in whatever capacity you like, however small, by emailing us at thetenproject@gmail.com

Any comments or suggestions whatsoever about the project concept, alternative name suggestions or the wording of the brochure would also be greatly appreciated at the above email.

For the past five + years my family has been practicing different ways of sharing gifts for the holidays. We made gifts a couple of years. Then we decided to pool our funds and purchase one big gift for someone in the family that would inspire their lifestyle, creativity, and passion… This year we decided that no one really need anything and we would prefer to do something together as a family to improve the lives and economies of others- invest in a micro-fund.

Microfinance creates social lending networks that gives us lenders the opportunity to connect directly with borrowers who normally wouldn’t get the support of a bank. This allows people in poor countries and rural areas who don’t have access to traditional banks or don’t have the credentials necessary for a bank loan, to start a business. The neat things it that in all circumstances (weather your money is controlled by the organization through which you lend or you choose who your money goes to) you can more or less track your loan. This type of investment has already made profound impacts on developing nations as it funds businesses that support their local economies. Instead of weaving baskets to be sold in the global market, people are able to start water distribution businesses to improve quality of life in their own communities.

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I’m leaving Green Options and Planetsave, though not to join Tom and John in their fight against the thetans.

I would like to say it’s to spend more time with my family, but that just makes me sound like a scandal ridden Bush official.

While I probably will get to spend more time with my family now, I’m leaving the company to work on my green home project and a few other side projects. My tenure at Green Options and Planetsave has been one of the most interesting, exciting, and invigorating times I’ve had. It ranks as one of my favorite startups (out of my current total of four) and I’m walking away with a greatly expanded network of friends and contacts, a ton of great experience in green publishing, and an awesome project to jump to.

What would have been called “The GO Home Project” is coming with me. I am buying the entire project from Green Options and taking it independent. I’m still working on a name for it (send it on if you have a good one) and will be building a site for it once that’s nailed down, but we’ll be starting up right away on sheagunther.org.

The short of it is is that me and my family are moving into two tipis to live for a year before building the coolest greenest house on the planet. We have 52 acres in North Yarmouth, Maine; the leading green architect in the state; a partnership with Smart HomeOwner Magazine, and a whole lot of great energy pushing it forward. Both me and my wife Heather will be blogging about living in the tipis and I will be set up in a smaller third tipi as my office. I’m sure I’ll have many a five minute snowshoe commutes to work this winter. We’re going to do our best to create a guide and recorded history of our life and work so as to inspire others to do choose the same green building path.

It’s been a great past year building Green Options and past few months working on the new Planetsave, but I’m super excited about all the fun stuff I’ll be able to take on now that my time is freed up from GO/PS work.

Here’s a few places you’ll be able to follow along on my adventures…

- SheaGunther.org - This is my home site, where I started blogging before I knew what blogging was (back in 2001) and current home of Musings of an Eco-Entrepreneur, the most kickass in-stasis eco-entrepreneur blog on the web. It’s been dormant since we launched Green Options but I’ll be doing a relaunch with a new theme in the next week or two. We’ll be blogging about living in the tipis and I’ll have a separate page for my links/musings drops . If you grew to like my blogs here on Planetsave, you’ll want to head over there.

- Treehugger- Graham Hill was kind enough to set up me up with a writing spot at Treehugger. I have to work out the exact details with their uber editor Michael but I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been a huge fan of Treehugger since back in the day (back in the day in the green blogosphere means two+ years ago) and have always wanted to write there. They have such a great group of editors, writers, and an amazing reach- about 25X more daily readers than what Green Options is pulling these days.

- Yet to be named website for the Green Home Project. We’ will be documenting the crap out of our experience building the coolest greenest house on the planet on our yet to be named website. Sheagunther.org is a good place to go to keep up while I figure out what this new thing will be called.

- Stumblegods.com- It’s not really officially launched yet, but my buddy Michael (editor and founder of Groovy Green, founder and publisher of Ecorazzi, chief editor guy at Ecotality Life) and I will be sharing our insights about the power of StumbleUpon at our new site Stumble Gods. Our thumbs move masses baby.

- Ecotality Life- I’ve been working as a consultant with the awesome and talented Brooke Lowry over at Ecotality on the relaunch of their blog. We’ll be getting Ecotality Life up in the next week, in the meantime check out the current site. Ecotality Life will be relaunched with a focus on green gadgets and green business and investing and should be a good read.

- Email: sheagunther@gmail.com, Skype: shea_gunther

It’s been rad, I’ll miss a lot of the people at Green Options and Planetsave. I’ve gotta give it up to my main man Jan, the founder of Planetsave (he sold it to Green Options this Spring and works on both GO and PS stuff) and pimp dad advertising sales guru man. HIC! He’ll be assisted by the talented Noelle d’Estries (Michael’s sister) who will bring her savvy news sense (have you seen the Green Report, that’s all her) and keen wit to the table trying to fill the void that my voluminous ego will leave behind.

Keep up the good fight. Keep on saving the world.

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• 45 billion pairs of wooden chopsticks were tossed in China in 2006, 25 million trees were cut to make ‘em

• 50,000,000,000 square feet of drywall was produced in the US in 2006, creating 51,000,000 tons of greenhouse gas

• The US spent $50,000,000,000 on bottled water in 2006

• American buildings are responsible for 48% of all US greenhouse gas emissions

Swing over to EnviroStats! to grab their feed and read more green stats.

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For those not in the know, Second Life is a virtual world that gives its residents incredible freedom, but at the cost of a clunky user interface and high learning curve. It took me about 5 hours of in world time to ‘get’ how cool Second Life was when I start playing a few years ago and it held my attention for a few months, but then I got bored with the lack of real community, slow loads, and lack of anything really fun to do.

So now the World Wildlife Fund has wasted a bunch of cash building Conservation Island, where you can chat with a virtual panda or elephant about how important it is to save the world.

What a big fat waste of money.

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The new Eco-nazis bang the green drum but march to a dark tune. Take Ecorazzi for example - or should that be Econazzi? They go crazy every time a celebrity launches a new eco-lipstick, but forget to report on Hollywood’s poisoning of the planet. The sleazy web site is run by two dorks from Miami with about as much fashion sense as Osama bin Laden.

Rebecca Carter and Michael d’Estries could care less about the environment - they have seen a market gap and now they are busy serving it - green gossip about celebrities, and about as much moral content as a Submarine sandwich. According to locals insiders the pair have their eyes fixed on one thing - and its not the end of golbal warming -its the IPO of Econazi.

What is most sickning about their twee reportage is the implication that anyone who is not putting out some bullshit line of green product is somehow inferiro compared to the dreary parade of hapless celebrities they use to fill their pages. More later.

(Editor’s note: Nick, spell check is your friend. It’s “sickening” and “inferior”)

What a prickstar!

First, to claim that Michael and Rebecca don’t care about the environment is beyond absurd. I am good friends with both of them, hired them to come on board as writers at Green Options, and just had Michael as a guest out here in Maine for a few days. These two are are legit and green as you can get.

Michael works a full time job as an IT guy and has spent most of his free time in the two years I’ve known him working on his mini green publishing empire. He founded the highly esteemed green blog Groovy Green, is a regular and popular contributor to Green Options, is working on the new relaunch of the Ecotality Blog, and yes- happens to also run a fun little site with Rebecca called Ecorazzi that focuses on green celebrities.

Rebecca has equally strong green credentials. She’s been blogging at GreenerMiami for years now, runs green events and whatnot to build and support the local Miami and Florida green scene, and was the lone editor of the Green Tips o’ the Day on Green Options for the first five months of it’s life.

Ecorazzi is just one of their sites, the most poppy and fun. It’s an easy way into green for people who might first come at the site as a fan of celebrity gossip. I also bet it gets ten times as much traffic as Nick’s site. Nick Rosen, in addition to acting like a petulant child, is taking himself WAY too seriously here.

I give Nick credit for the contributions he’s made to the green world. His book “How to Live Off Grid” is a good one and up to now his blog hasn’t been bad. But this is just stupid. He is coming off like a right jerkass, maybe he’s doing it for the link bait? It worked with me, I’m giving him all sorts of links, the big schmomar that he is.

Or maybe he really is offended that anyone is taking a fun approach to green. It’s deadly serious business, this saving the world and all, but Nick- you need to lighten up buddy. Maybe you should spend a few nights ON the grid, a hot shower does wonders for the spirits.

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Green Options has an interview done by the Ecogeek with my favorite green radio host and eco-entrepreneur Josh Dorfman that’s worth a click. Here’s a quick bit, swing over to Green Options for the full read:

EcoGeek: What is a Lazy Environmentalist?

Josh Dorfman: Lazy Environmentalists are people who want to be environmentally conscious, and will be, provided the choices are convenient and fit the way they want to live. Deep inside there’s probably a lazy environmentalist in just about all of us. After all, we live in the culture of convenience. The expectation of convenience seems like it has become hardwired into our DNA

EG: What do you say to the “America Can’t Buy Its Way to Sustainability” argument?

JD: I’d say that I agree. But that doesn’t mean we ought to disregard all the really cool green solutions presently available to us to get us moving in a significantly greener direction. To really solve climate change and other serious environmental challenges, we’re going to need a joint and massive effort from business, government, non-profit organizations, and consumer-citizens. We are all responsible for our situation, and we all have a role to play in achieving solutions.

EG: What, if anything, scares your pants off?

JD: The mindset that still thinks Hummers and McMansions are a good idea. That and snakes.

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For those unfamiliar with the concept of micro-loans, allow me to give you the quick rundown. Micro-loans is the act of giving small loans to entrepreneurs in the third world. The loans can be small, hence the name micro, as little as $50, and are used by entrepreneurs in places like Nigeria, Mexico, Peru, Indonesia, and East St. Louis (zing!) to start and expand businesses. We’ve made loans to shop owners, building contractors, seamstresses, natural medicines stores, and restaurants. Each fund at Kiva.org is in the $700 - $1,300 range and our average contribution per entrepreneur is $50-75. Each loan is built using funds from multiple lenders and are paid back, interest free, in 6-9 months. We have 24 Entrepreneurs in our Portfolio and we make new loans every week or two, all paid back loans go right back to new entrepreneurs.

Micro-finance has been shown to be an amazingly effective boost to people, families, and communities. It seeds a better quality of living and is truly giving people a helping hand up rather than a stream of ‘aid’ to become dependent on. The whole teach a man to fish thing. Kiva.org has a ridiculously low default rate of .02% on $886,385 in loans, so it’s a rock solidly safe investment.

I’m as die-hard an entrepreneur as you can get, so one of the first things I thought about when the idea of redesigning and retooling Planetsave was to bring micro-loans into the picture. Jan has been saving rain forest with the site since 1999 and he was glad to have the additional resources that are available to grow out the concept to include micro-loans and buying wind credits from Renewable Choice Energy (disclosure: I was a founder of RCE).

You can visit our Lender page on Kiva to see all the amazing people we’ve invested some of our profits into. You can read more and sign up yourself at Kiva.

That’s why Planetsave is better than your website. We just fucking care more.

It’s been just about a month since we kind of wobbily relaunched Planetsave. For those of you just joining us, let me give you the quick history of this fine website.My friend Jan started it in 1999 as a free email and green news site. He ran it successfully ever since, except for a brief stint in which he sold it and then bought it back for less. I met Jan after I moved to Portland, Maine at the beginning of the year and wanted to hire him on at Green Options. We ended up buying Planetsave as part of the deal and made him a partner and Director of Sales and Business Development. We chose a strong new logo and look (gotta love the fist) and have plans for rolling out more cool green services once we get our launch jitters settled down.

I’ve been blogging all by my lonesome since then and it’s time I got some new writers on board. So, wanna write for us?

Here’s my ideal candidate:

- Experienced blogger: you know how to link, you’ve probably used Wordpress before, you can find and insert photos into posts, and you know what a Trackback is.

- Has a sharp eye for news, people, and development in the world of green. You read a lot of news and blogs, probably have a closet RSS addiction, and you can quickly scan headlines to find the most important items of the moment.

- Wants to save the world and is crazy enough to think that they can do it.

- Not afraid to call out standards, authority figures, and commonly held beliefs. You can say it short, sweet, and to the point.

- Rock solid dependable. You hit deadlines every single time barring family emergencies and robot attacks.

- A sense of humor.

We pay up to $20/post (the figure in the title is a typo, stupid intern), more for longer form and interviews. I’m looking to get 3-5 regular writers on board posting 3-5 times per week each.

To apply, please send the following to me at shea@greenoptions.com

- Your name, email address, home town, short bio, and brief writing history.

- Your blog/s that you write/have written on, direct links to your author’s index or individual posts is appreciated if it’s a big group blog.

- One paragraph on why you want to write for Planetsave.

- One sample post. What would your sixth post on Planetsave be if you made the cut? Give me the headline, body text, and link to the photo that you’d choose.

I’ll kick out $10 via PayPal to the first 10 writers who apply as an incentive and for a little compensation for the time spent on the sample post.

A good pirate joke also goes a long way with me. Arrr….

Google has weighed in on the whole Black Google meme (the idea that a black google home page uses less energy than a white page) and the news is not good for sites like Blackle. According to Goggle’s green energy czar, a black screen on flatscreen panels actually use more energy than a white page. Add in the fact that flat screen panels already make up 75% of the market and growing and you have a big ol’ deflated green tech myth.

You should be doing your searching through our Google dealie anyways- we kick a portion of our profits every week to buying wind credits, preserving rain forest, and making micro-loans to third world entrepreneurs. Bookmark that baby!

via Environmental Leader

Even an ugly baby is kinda huggable.

But not this one: the new Hugg 2.0. It’s the latest incarnation of the Digg-wannabe from Treehugger, now a proud member of the Discovery’s Planet Green network.

You’d think Treehugger’s new corporate masters would expect a little more polish for something they just laid out $10 million to acquire. Or perhaps they were in such a hurry to dump Hugg’s previous configuration — a buggy, spammy, neglected mess — that the new site’s sterile, Web 1.2 presentation didn’t matter.

Letting the inmates run the asylum

No to speak ill of the dead, but the original Hugg gave new meaning to the term user generated content — as in, set up the site and never touch it again. Its rickety Pligg underpinnings always felt as if they might fly apart at any moment; features (such as reporting problems to the administrator) were broken or yielded cryptic error messages; and its pages were loaded with blog spam touting high-performance automobiles, vacation packages, and pitches for multilevel marketing schemes. It was all wrapped in an eye-searing electric green color scheme that would leave a nasty afterimage if you stared at it too long. Which few people did, judging from its long and obvious decline in participation.

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