We’ve been offline for the last month or so reevaluating some of our goals and we’ll be sharing our thoughts on this soon. We’ve had some pretty cool inquiries in the last few months and are playing off those for inspiration about our next steps.
So stay tuned and we look forward to sharing more on this soon.
December 10th is Human Rights Day.
Back on December 10th, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the 1st global definition of human rights.
More from Worldchanging on the subject:
“The document was written to promote the universal human right: to live and to do so peacefully. With versions available in more than 337 languages, the UDHR holds the record for the world’s most translated document.”
Feel free to share any stories or thoughts you might have to help off-set this bitter-sweet day as millions continue to suffer globally.
We’re currently looking into the possibility of selling our company Green Gurus, LLC, so if you know of someone that might be interest, please let us know.
We have literally hundreds of prime, green-themed domain names, featuring GreenGurus.net, with beautiful, natural page ranking (with Google), our Co-op America seal of approval, a few hundred followers on our Twitter account, Bank of America business checking and savings accounts, a CA wholesale sellers permit, state id, corporate id, and of course - our solar powered web host account for this site.
Other useful facts:
We’re interested in discussing opportunities for either investment, outright acquisition or any other offer you might have in mind.
As mentioned previously, we’ve been assembling a Green-themed domain name bank.
We’ve sold a few here and there but nothing serious enough to really mention, so far. We’re working to change this and have recently posted a “for lease or sale” notice on most of them. Should you come across any of our domains listed or otherwise, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We can probably work something out…and if not the first time ’round, can always add you to our call list should our prices on a specific domain name you inquire about change.
We’ve got a number of other plans in the works regarding domain registration and much more so be sure to check back to see what else is happening with our services and products.
Finally, after months of screening questions and some minor adjustments to our services description, Green Gurus has been approved by Co-op America.
We’re very thankful to join the ranks of approved businesses, non-profits and other entities enrolled in their ranks of Do Green Gooders 
and look forward to our first appearance in their National Green Pages, coming soon to the online version and in the Fall for their print version.
We’ve added their seal of approval throughout our site (and will be adding it here to our blog soon).
Again, we’d like to extend our thanks publicly to Co-op America for approving us and look forward to the changes this process has inspired us to take.
Our friends over at Recycled Minds recently put up a very cool, new logo on their blog.
In case you don’t make it over there for a look, here’s a snapshot of it. But either way, we definitely recommend that you stop by and read some of their posts, it’s some of the best reporting on world indigenous rights and the like, that we’ve come across.
We’ve launched our new website design today.
If you catch any bugs or glitches, please let us know about them.
Also, Brent and I will be out of town for the next week working at Coachella with The Do LaB. We will not be able to respond to any emails until the 28th. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Marlene Martinez from Public Affairs with Caltrans approached us this week about doing a table at their Earth Day event roughly two weeks from now.
So, we’ll be doing a table, hosted by Ryan Wartena, along with Freya Bardell of GreenMeme. Come on out and say hi if your in the neighborhood! Details on the event below…
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California Department of Transportation
District 7 – Los Angeles & Ventura Counties
100 South Main Street
Los Angeles, California 90012
http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist07
EARTH DAY EVENT
WHO: California Department of Transportation
WHAT: Earth Day - “A Day of Information”
WHAT: Come share information concerning one or multiple ways your company is environmentally improving your practices and/or emissions
WHEN: April 22, 2008, 10:00 a.m.
WHERE: Caltrans Building Plaza at 100 South Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
BACKGROUND: The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is celebrating Earth Day by planting trees in our plaza and inviting other environmentally conscious businesses and departments to share information and ideas
COST: No charge to participants or the public
PHONE: 213-897-3656
Craigslist recently launched their official blog.
One of their first posts offered some transparency into their energy consciousness:
“Serving 10 billion page views on a few hundred servers, craigslist leads the internet industry by orders of magnitude when it comes to efficient use of electricity. The last time I checked we were clocking something like 175,000 page views per kilowatt-hour.
Compare this to single digit thousands of pages-per-kwhr for most large sites, which typically run tens to hundreds of thousands of servers.”
We think it’s great to see them not only doing a great job in conserving their energy use but also in making it common knowledge and hopefully resulting in some friendly, competition to raise the bar on this issue all around in the Internet industry.
Electronics in the United States should have a UL (Underwriters Laboratory) tag on them somewhere, in Europe, it’s the CE tag.
Guess how much electricity your computer uses and then take a look at the tag and see what the maximum power consumption is.
Power is measured in Watts, W (Watts, Volts and Amperes are always capitalized since they are named after people). Sometimes, on battery-powered devices, the power is not stated, but the current (in Amperes or Amps) and the potential (in Volts) will be. In this case, you multiply the current (in Amperes or Amps) with the potential to get the maximum amount of instantaneous power your device uses (in Watts). Typically, cell phones use 3 to 5 Watts and laptops use 35 to 50 Watts. Coffee makers are typically 900 Watts. Wow.
When you use power for a duration of time, you can determine how much energy has been used. If you use your cell phone at a power level of 5 Watts for 1 hour then you have used 5 Watthours (Wh) of energy. A battery’s capacity is how much energy it holds.
Take a quick gander and count up the amount of power you are using right now. You may have to catch the refridgerator if its running. You can also split that up between your housemates. Honestly, it will take some real effort to determine how much power you use at any moment, there is a lot of power that was put into making the products in front of you. This is okay, as long as we are aware that our power and energy usage and continue to clarify where it comes from and educate our selves to the direct and embedded energies that fuel our lifes.
Right now, my direct power use is about 100 Watts (two computers and a cell phone) and its daytime so I don’t need to worry about lighting and the alarm clock by the bed is on but I don’t see it. I’m sure Im not counting everything, but I’m getting closer.
In 1998 the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology issued its vision for each person to live under 2000-Watts, the current average in the United States is 12,000 Watts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Watt_society
There is a new design paradigm emerging, one that replaced the brute-force method of getting it done. In the past, adding more power or energy meant getting more functionality (more gas give more speed). Now, the elegant design challenge is to get more functionality with less energy (go farther with a hybrid-electric car with regeneative charging from breaking). Where does this lead? All the functionality with no to minimal energy. This is beauty.
And, this is enegy awareness and it spreads. Electrical power is political power. Know your power and energy.
