Yummy Wakame

So this may be ancient news, but I just found out about it today. If you’re a fan of iGoogle, the personalized homepage by the makers of the Internet, then you’ll undoubtedly know a little bit about the whole themes aspect of that page.

Apparently, if you check out your iGoogle page at 3:14am (Pi) you can see some nifty secret stuffs.

I have been hoping for awhile that Google would allow designers and developers to create some of their own themes.

Earth Class Mail is a service that basically allows you to have your snail mail sent to them so that you can view it online instead of in your own mail box. They show you scanned copies of all of your mail, and then you can choose which bits you’ll read and what will get shredded.

From their website:

With an online PO Box you’ll manage your postal mail as easily as your email.

View scanned images of your sealed envelopes online, then choose to have your mail securely scanned into a PDF document, recycled, shredded or forwarded to you or someone else.

I like the recycling bit so much, we get pound after pound of SPAM in our mailbox, plus the price is right starting as low as $10/month. This service seems exceptionally cool save for the fact that it seems like it might take 1 - 2 extra days to receive mail (one for them to scan it, one for them to open it after you’ve said you want to read a particular piece of mail?) though I can’t be sure of that.

Rafael Morgan’s Once Was comb is a poignantly nifty little design intended to remind you that what you’re using now used to be something else. A helpful little way to remind us that everything has a history…

Branch boasts “Sustainable Design for Living” and offer everything from children’s backpacks to end tables to candles to cutlery, with a very IKEA-meets-1000 Villages feel. From their website:

As a social activity, shopping gets us out into the various neighborhoods in our city, allowing us to connect with other people along the way. As a cultural excursion, it gives us a chance to discover what’s new and interesting in the world. And, of course, we derive some joy from finding just the right gift for someone, or for ourselves.

At the same time, there’s an element to shopping that we find quite troubling. We buy things that appeal to us—we love a product’s styling, for example—though we may have little idea of where a product comes from. What materials went into its manufacture? Did the wood used to make that chair contribute to deforestation in Asia? Were toxic chemicals used to create the lustrous finish? The people who actually fabricated the product—were they paid a fair wage and provided a safe, comfortable environment in which to do so? How far did the product have to come in order to get to the store, and how much fuel was used in that process? And what of the lifespan of the products we buy? Eventually—sooner or later, but eventually—a product will outlive its useful life. What then? Does it get thrown away? Is it made such that it’ll sit in the landfill for hundreds (or even thousands) of years before it degrades? And in going through that process, will it release toxins into the environment?

Courtesy of Bsti »

Someone in our own back yard is selling a “Be a Ninja Kit” - I’m almost afraid to post this in fear that someone might buy the kit before I can get around to it, or worse, use it to assassinate me.

The kit includes:

• An “authentic reproduction of a real ninja boot“, which is, as you can tell, hilarious
• Ninja Claws (”not for amateur use”)
• Ninja Foot Spikes
• Throwing Stars and Knives, all “Ninja”

Blackle is a way to combine Google’s wonderful search algorithm with some good ol’ environmental responsibility. Based on the idea that a black background uses less energy than a white background, they’ve essentially created the black version of Google.

According to Blackle’s website, “Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year” due to the search engine’s popularity. That sounds like a lot of Megawatts, doesn’t it?

Try Blackle for yourself »