Billion Acts of Green: (free) “Wondering how you can do your part this Earth Day? Participate in the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day by downloading the Earth Day 2010 Billion Acts of Green application! Your actions matter, why not share them with the world? Use our app to log your personal “Acts of Green” and help us build a more sustainable planet. Your efforts will help Earth Day Network reach its goal of logging One Billion Acts of Green! Need ideas? Check out our tips or view acts from other eco-friendly people around the world. Don’t forget to share your contributions with your friends via Facebook!”

iRecyle: (free) “iRecycle makes it easy to find recycling locations anywhere in the U.S. Find places to drop-off your old cell phone (or water bottle or motor oil or… well, you get the idea), get directions and find out what else they accept. iRecycle also now hosts information on local green events in your area and the newest stories and features on Earth911.com!”

Ecoki: (free) “The Ecoki Reader brings you the best in sustainable lifestyle news, tips, vegan recipes, and hands on reviews.”

Greenopia: (free) “With green ratings for thousands of businesses in over 50 cities, Greenopia makes it easier than ever to shop, eat, and live green.”

Greenpeace Tissue Guide: (free) “The Greenpeace Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide makes it quick and easy to find out which brands of facial tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, and napkins are truly green and which should be avoided. Greenpeace’s experts have carefully evaluated over 100 brands and recommended those that: contain 100% overall recycled content; contain at least 50% post-consumer recycled content; and are bleached without toxic chlorine compounds.”

Green Map: (free) “This App connects you with the Green Map movement. With over 600 locally-led projects in 55 countries, each Green Map provides a fresh perspective on local green living sites and the community’s natural, cultural and social resources. Every Green Map is a unique project, but all combine local knowledge and globally designed Green Map Icons to highlight important assets and issues.”

Living Green – The Missing Manual: ($4.99) “Living Green: The Missing Manual helps make earth-friendly decisions more manageable by narrowing them down to a few simple choices. This all-in-one resource is packed with practical advice on ways you can help the environment by making simple changes in your home routine, work habits, and the way you shop and get around town. You don’t have to embark on a radical new lifestyle to make a difference. Living Green: The Missing Manual shows you how small changes can have a big impact.”

Gorgeously Green Survival Guide: (.99 cents) “The Gorgeously Green Survival Guide is a quick reference eco-guide for the woman on the go. Developed by New York times bestselling author Sophie Uliano. Sophie has appeared on Oprah, Good Morning America, The View, and other national television shows teaching women how to update their beauty regimen, create an eco-friendly home, adopt a healthier diet and fitness routine, indulge in guilt-free shopping, and more.”

Tipping Bucket: (free) “Can $1 change the world? We’re out to prove it can! Tipping Bucket taps the power of social media, micropayments, and money-back guarantees to launch social startups. Our project partners build community gardens in Baltimore, literacy centers in Bangladesh and maternity clinics in Bamako.”

iLocavore: (free) “iLocavore is a tool for locavores and ‘shop local, buy local’ enthusiasts. What is a Locavore? A locavore is someone who strives to eat food grown and produced locally. Oftentimes locavores choose to eat food grown or produced within a certain radius (50, 100, 150 miles).”

Good Guide: (free) “The GoodGuide app helps you find safe, healthy, and sustainable products while you shop. With this update, simply scan the barcode of the product and immediately see detailed ratings for health, environment and social responsibility for more than 65,000 products and companies. GoodGuide provides this information about personal care, household chemical, toy and food products for free on your iPhone / iPod Touch and is adding thousands of products every month. By making information about consumer products transparent, GoodGuide’s goal is to help people shop smarter and motivate companies to offer even better products.”

Simply Organic: (free) “The Simply Organic iPhone app is a key to a simply healthy way of life! ”

Tree Hugger: (free) “TreeHugger is the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream. Partial to a modern aesthetic, we strive to be a one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information.”

Find Green: (free) “Find green and sustainable businesses quickly and easily with the Find Green app. It helps you make everyday choices to reduce your environmental impact and make a difference!”

Go Green: (free) “How Green are you? Are you part of the solution or are you part of the problem? Get this app and get collectible Green tips that are saved to your Green list. You get a new Green tip each time you visit the app. Your Green status also changes as you earn more Green tips.”

Green Energy Now: (free) “Stay up to date on the latest Green Energy News, learn how to protect the environment and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and share your knowledge with others. Impress your friends with your knowledge of Green Energy, and test your knowledge with Green Trivia Challenge.”

Carbon Calc: (free) “Carbon Calc is a Green House Gas (GHG) emissions calculator. If you have wondered what your contribution to global warming is, Carbon Calc is a simple calculator that lets you input your Driving, Flying, and Home energy use. Once you know your footprint, you can compare your net emissions to the US average and the world average. You can optionally offset your footprint by purchasing Carbon Credits.”

Earth photo source

With this integration, you will be able to link relevant text to products sold on Amazon directly within Blogger, while crafting your posts. No need to open a separate tab to hunt around for products.

To add links to your site:

1) Open an Amazon Associates and Blogger account, if you don’t already have one. If you already have a Blogger account but not an Associates account, you can create your Associates account directly within Blogger (so create your Blogger account first)

2) You will need to create a gadget associated with your account. Blogger provides simple steps for doing so.

(click images for more detail)

2) Once the gadget is created, your post area will now look like this:

Write your post as you normally would, including any text regarding a product.

3) Highlight the relevant text and the Product Finder will recommend the ones most closely associated with the text.

4) Choose to either insert the product link or an image of the product. The link will automatically include your Associate number.

Amazon wants to hear what you think about this, so they’ve created a hashtag (#AMZN4BLGR) to use on Twitter. Or you may contact them via the contact form.

Earlier in the year I wrote about Cozi and gushed about how fabulous I though the site was for creating lists. I’ve long been a fan of their clean, simple design and layout, their useful and relevant ideas and “how-did-I-live-without-that” tips.

Amazingly, the site just keeps getting better. They have added more content, including an online magazine (Live Simply) and menu planning (Nourish), but have still managed to do so in a way that is easy to navigate.

Two other new features:

• If you have a smartphone, you can now take Cozi with you, as they have launched (beta) Cozi Mobile Access.
• Print your family journal to save as a keepsake or memento.

Still not convinced if you should try it?

From the site:

Wish you had some help organizing your busy family life? Cozi is a FREE online family organizer that helps you manage the family calendar, organize your shopping list and to do list, share favorite memories in a family journal, and enjoy family photos—all in one spot. With Cozi’s mobile access, your information is not only available from any computer with an Internet connection, but also from any mobile phone. All you need to get started is a Cozi account and signing up is quick and easy with no downloads required.

Using Cozi has really helped me stay organized and keep track of my children’s busy schedules. Having it all in one place, without the mess of scratch paper, crumpled notes shoved in my purse has saved my sanity many times.

Let me know if you’ve used Cozi and how it’s changed how you organize your time and family.

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Are you looking for a blogging conference that will cover social media, social networking, the business of blogging and managing your time?

Do the costs of such conferences make you sick to your stomach?

Enter: The Girlfriend’s Guide to the Business of Blogging conference

Learn the ins and outs of Social Marketing. Learn how to set up your blog, the basics of page rank, SEO, ethics, and very basics of business will be discussed. How to’s of offering ads, advanced sponsorship opportunities plus legal and professional insights and much much more. Every session includes actionable take aways, hints and tips you can put to use right now, today to drive traffic, make money and become a success!

This event is totally online. You don’t need to travel and you won’t need accommodations.  The whole event will be broadcast via a webinar type format complete with videos, graphics and more from your session leaders. At the end of each session we’ll offer a question and answer period where you can submit your questions to the speakers directly and get answers.

Cost: $15.00

Date: December 8th, 2009

Wants more details?

Sessions

Speakers (including me)

Register

Social Media and Customer Service are working hand-in-hand, as companies discover new ways to incorporate new media into their marketing and business plans.

Lufthansa Airlines has recently introduced MySkyStatus. When you go to the MySkyStatus page, you simply input your flight information and your Twitter and Facebook pages will be updated automatically with your flight schedule information, including departures and arrivals.

I’m sure it won’t be long before most US airlines implement something similar.

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There are a lot of ways that you can now send emails and update your Twitter, Facebook and blog. Smartphones make it easier to do so when away from your computer. What if you don’t have a smartphone yet, or access to all of the handy apps that are available? Or what if you do, but want a quick easy way to do it?

Dial2Do is a free site that does these things for you. You call a number. Say what you want posted, then finish with “Twitter”, or “email” etc. They transcribe it and take care of the rest.

From the site:

Dial2Do lets you do common tasks by just calling a number and speaking. Use it to send EMAIL or TEXT messages, record REMINDERS to help you remember things, post updates to your TWITTER or JAIKU stream and LISTEN to your favourite internet content. It’s easy and handsfree..

For more info: watch the tutorial video here and read the FAQs.

Note: There are currently 26 countries that this site works in [though it only works in English]. See the listing on the FAQs page.

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Homemade gifts are always hit. There are a million and one different ideas for what to make, but really, unless you started making them last March, do you really want the stress that goes into making a bunch of last minute holiday gifts?

There are several sites that have taken the stress out of it all by allowing you to just upload photos, create a calendar and VOILA! Instant gift giving! And don’t you even dare think that these are cheesy ideas. What family member WOULDN’T love receiving a calendar full of your smiling family?

Here are some of the good ones:

Big Huge Labs: great prices; order before December 14th for Christmas delivery.

Vista Prints: BIG variety of styles – from posters, to desk calendars to magnet calendars. They have 3-day rush shipping for any procrastinators.

Create Photo Calendars: they also offers fundraising calendars. $5 flat shipping fee.

Kodak: You know that the original photo paper people will have these. They offer volume ordering as well.

Shutterfly: lots of cute layouts; currently offering 20% discounts.

Snapfish: you receive 20 free prints when you start your account to create your calendars.

If you are feeling really brave and organized, create some at home on a word processing program, save to a flash drive and take them to Kinkos/Staples/OfficeMax etc for printing.

Is there a technophile on your gift list? Or maybe you are the one hoping for some gadgety goodness under the tree.

Use these guides to help make your lists, and maybe, if you’ve been good this year, you’ll find something from one of them under your tree:

cnet: Holiday Gift Ideas Broken down into manageable categories, there is even a Tech for Foodies and Cheapskate category. (also includes a way to create your own wish lists)

Digital Trends: 2009 Holiday Gift Guide

ZDNets: Holiday Tech Gift Guide

PCWorld: Holiday Gift Guide

As you peruse the web, how many times have you come across an item for sale and thought “I wish someone would get that for me”? Do you scribble items on paper, or figure you’ll remember them later when someone asks what you want for your birthday… only to lose the crumpled up paper or completely forget what it was?

With the holidays coming, you’ll realize even more how useful Wishpot.com can be. Most people will probably use it as a bridal or baby registry, but why not go ahead and make your own wish list.

The premise of Wishpot is simple: gather a list of all of the gifts you’d like to receive from around the web into one spot. It’s not a shopping site – Wishpot doesn’t sell the items on your list. But it does make the shopping more manageable.

Wishpot offers several different options to make it easy to gather and share your lists:

1) Add the button to your browser to save items you find:

2) Import your Amazon.com wish list

3) Take a photo with your mobile phone, enter the ISBN number and email it to your Wishpot account (you must sign up for your Wishpot email address on the “mobile settings” page under “Account settings”)

Additionally, you can:

• sign up for price alerts:

“Now, when you add an item to your wish list you can set a price alert. This means that Wishpot will notify you when the item you selected goes on sale or reaches a target price. Click here to see how to add a price alert.”

• request contributions for a gift:

“Now you have the ability to request contributions for items you add to your wish list or registry. Click here to see how to request a contribution.”

• request cash gifts:

Click here to see how to request a cash gift

• create lists for various friends and family members to save gift ideas for each (there is no limit to the number of lists you can create, so list your little heart out)

In my opinion, nothing beats the ease of shopping online. I’d rather sit in the comfort of my home, in my pajamas than fight the crowds and lines at the mall. And the fact that Wishpot makes it even easier? Priceless.

Sound off: How often do you shop online?

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Is there a topic that you are an expert in? Something that you’ve learned about, studied and now would like to share that knowledge with others? Maybe you want to learn more about a topic.

I’ve pointed out GuideSpot as an online learning spot. It’s a great site for sharing what you know. But did you know that Google also has a similar platform?

“Knol” (Google’s made up term for “a unit of knowledge”) has been around since 2007, and came out of beta in 2008.

Knol makes it easy for you to write and share your knowledge with the world.

• Ease of use
  All you need is an account, a name and a desire to write and we’ll take care of the rest.
• Control
  You specify the level of collaboration you want with the community. Your knol, your voice.
• Community
  You can connect with other experts in your area of interest to share and grow knowledge.
• Visibility
  We value and promote authorship. Great content will be visible on popular search engines.
• Growth
  Sharing your knowledge with the world is rewarding for everyone.

Watch this video for tips on creating a Knol:

Some Knols to get you started:

• Scavenger Hunts – How to Write Fun and Challenging Clues
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 101
• How to Save Somebody’s Life
• Apple Bliss Cookies

Lightbulb Image courtesy of Jacci Howard Bear http://desktoppub.about.com/