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Archive for the 'Information tech' Category

How to keep up with your friends’ blogs & other news

I don’t expect friends to check my blog every two day to see if there are changes. But I know when their blogs are updated. How? Software gathers all the latest posts from blogs I subscribe to and manages it for me automatically. Here are my news feeds and blogs in Google Reader.

google-reader-screenshot.png

If you want to know how this works, and how you can set this up, see this video, RSS Feeds in Plain English.

RSS in plain English video

Sustainable business is the sh**!

My friend Ajay sent me a link to the post on the Google blog about their corporate campus going 30% solar-powered. The blog post says that not only is it a moral imperative that business, organizations, and individuals reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, but makes the point that its simply good business sense to reduce costs into the future and be prepared for a world in which energy shortages will become more common.

Google is a truly awsome company. The routinely exceed my expectations in delivering excellent products and serving their customers needs with truly generous services and feature sets. Many of the services and features they offer customers don’t even know they need yet, but soon realize afterwards what the Google difference is (free POP access for gmail, labels with gmail, etc.) Anyway, before I go to overboard in my praise for Google, I should mention the video Epic 2014, the original flash online movie made by Robin Sloan for the Museum of Media History which coined the word Googlezon. That’s all I’ll say at this point…

Here at Humboldt State University, we’re working to go solar, too. The Humboldt Energy Independence Fund, the project to put solar panels on our buildings and make HSU energy independed by 2040, just had a benefit concert at the Arcata Bike Library this weekend. Too bad even though 85% of students supported this new fee, Chancelor Reed of the CSU system has has refused to sign off on the project. Just like Google, as a higher education institution, we need to be leading the way towards clean energy and to be prepared for an uncertain energy feature. And the same benefits Google benefits from in terms of public relations are benefits HSU will get too — notice from bloggers like me, and from big, recognized news sources. Sustainable business is profitable business, for higher academia as well as Google!

Apple Computer, environmentally irresponsible corporate citizen

To all who own, use, or have thought about buying a Mac,

Consuming and using electronics, I’m convinced, is probably one of my most environmentally destructive activities. And it doesn’t help that I’m using a Mac (which I love), because Apple is one of the more environmentally irresponsible manufacturers. It takes two seconds to visit this clever Greenpeace site at greenmyapple.org and send a message to Steve Jobs. The Greenpeace campaign is awesome — hard-hitting, but with truly excellent business and marketing advice. If Apple changes their practices, it will be a huge victory, because the rest of the industry is bound to follow. And apparently, some of this is getting through, because I read Steve Jobs addressed environmental concerns for the first time ever in a keynote last week — but unfortunately this was only the shallowest of p.r. moves, and Apple has done nothing to institute real change.
If you’re interested in a more complete report, ranking various electronics companies on their environmental practices, see “Your Guide to Green Electronics” on the Greenpeace site.

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