***Crosspost from my Employee Blog (also on Vox). Please comment there. ***

Blackle

Companies around the world are taking steps big and small to go green and reduce their carbon footprint.  Among some of the most enterprising of these is Blackle.  (If you're a Geek like me you will find that Blackle is Very Similar to the new beta visual search engine SearchMe without the page by page bells n whistles).   

Blackle is essentially a Blackscreen Overlay on Google and the principle behind Blackle is based on the fact that the display of different colors consumes different amounts of energy on computer monitors.  The creators of Blackle cite a 2002 study entitled Energy Use and Power Levels in New Monitors and Personal Computers where a variety of CRT and LCD monitors were tested and researchers found that an all black screen consumed less energy than an all white screen on all of them.  The creators of Blackle state that a black Google would save 750 megawatt-hours a year (a megawatt-hour is the equivalent of ten thousand 100 watt light bulbs burning continuously for 1 hour) and on the Blackle homepage, the creators provide a count of the number of watt-hours that the users of Blackle have collectively saved.

In an age where enterprising employees are looking for ways to go green in both their personal and professional lives, Blackle is a great tool to effectively research the web while making an environmentally conscious little step in the right direction. 

Even if your company is not making a concerted effort to go green (gasp!) there are many ways that you can individually make a difference in your office.  You can start by:

• Starting a Recycling Program
• Requesting to telecommute a few days out of the month
• Turning off your computer and any other electrical devices when not in use

Visit the Grist Website for more Ideas on How to Green Your Day Job.

In the meantime, here's a short clip from the folks at the Opus Hotel in Montreal showing us how the Luxury Hospitality Industry is taking steps to go green including offering free hotel parking for drivers of Hybrid vehicles

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Mark your calendars – the DailyMe Official Launch Party is right around the corner. Come enjoy a night of cocktails, hors d‘oeuvres, and maybe even a little dancing.

Saturday, August 2, 2008, 7:00 PM
Opium Garden
136 Collins Ave
Miami Beach, Florida

Tickets are limited and have just been released on Eventbrite.

We are looking forward to meeting everyone & toasting this milestone!

- Lisa
http://DailyMe.com

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We’ve just thrown the switch on the next step in the evolution of DailyMe – our DailyMe.com news destination.

This user-centric web destination brings the DailyMe experience to an even broader audience through three distinct editions:

• DailyMe, our original, personalized service;
• DailyWe, where stories are ranked by the community; and
• Top News, selected by our DailyMe editorial team.

All three editions include the robust content, both licensed and user-generated, that users of our DailyMe service have enjoyed for some time. They also bring together many of the technology components we’ve built: our personalization application, delivery platform, advanced news search, rules and processes for importing and classifying content, and RSS feeds. And, of course, users can continue to read licensed news stories without ever leaving DailyMe.

The three editions can be selected via tabs on the DailyMe homepage, where Top News will be the default. (Of course, existing users will continue to receive their DailyMe personalized edition without interruption across all delivery options.)

We’ve been working on this launch for some time and are very excited about the new site. So please test out our new editions and do let us know how you like them.

- Eduardo Hauser

CEO, DailyMe, Inc.

http://DailyMe.com

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We think it's high time we celebrated the launch of DailyMe's public Beta.

So, DailyMe is teaming with Mashable’s US Summer Tour 2008 to put on the official DailyMe Launch Party. The event will held on Saturday, Aug. 2 from 7-10 pm at the Opium Garden at 136 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, FL. We'll be at South Beach’s hottest club with drinks, appetizers, models and, of course, what would a Miami party be without the beach!

If you're going to be in South Florida that week, please join us. You'll have an opportunity to meet with the DailyMe team -- including Eduardo, Neil & me - as well as others whose names you might not know yet but whose efforts have been critical to the successful launch and development of DailyMe.

So stop by and celebrate with us! Information on how to get tickets will be made available over the next several weeks.

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It was great to catch up with so many people last week at the Interactive Media conference in Las Vegas. Panels on the need for better metrics and “are we bold enough?” were among those I found energizing, and seeing the quality work showcased in the Eppy awards was inspiring. But, as usual, it was the hallway and exhibit floor conversations that were most interesting, especially because it gave me the chance to share with many editors and publishers what DailyMe is doing and how we work with news sites.

One topic that arose occasionally is how we license content for DailyMe. It’s a question we’re happy to discuss with news producers, because we believe the approach we take at DailyMe benefits both the creators of content as well as the users of DailyMe, and in the process increases the audience for good journalism.

Unlike the numerous aggregator sites that scrape original news sites and offer their publishers little in return except the occasional click back, DailyMe pays for content it licenses through consolidators and wire services. Much of the license fee we pay flows back to the original publishers, providing them with an additional revenue stream from their content. In most cases, the user reading a story on DailyMe would not have gone to the publisher’s site and found that story, so the publisher is not losing traffic that might otherwise have gone to its own site.

DailyMe users benefit because they can discover and consume some of the best news reporting available all in one easy-to-use interface that can be personalized to their interests. Our users can even have their DailyMe digest printed in a convenient format.

I’m looking forward to finding even more ways to work with top news publishers as DailyMe expands.

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 Spotted on Trendcentral

SearchMe

With visual search being predicted as where the search category will be heading in the future, the SearchMe site is one to watch. The functionality gives users actual web pages to digitally page through (as if browsing an online magazine), instead of just a list of links, and will likely be employed by more websites going forward. The Searchme site is still in beta   Try it out at:  http://beta.searchme.com

View a demo below

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Children Cheering Carpet

This morning the boys and I headed to Kennicott Park to experience the magical "Children's Cheering Carpet" performed by Italy’s acclaimed children’s visual theater group Teatro di Piazza D’Occasione as part of the week long Children's Humanties Festival here in Chicago.  It was an incredible experience for me and the boys...we've never seen anything like it before. 

When we arrived, we were instructed to remove our shoes and walk quietly into a dark room where kids and their parents sat around, what appeared to be, a big white carpet. As the performance began, a company member sitting in a light at the corner of the stage starts to tell a story about the Japanese Garden, where a boy goes on a journey to the sea and when he returns, he cannot tell his story using words so he builds it with sticks, leaves, flowers and stones. First a narrator tells us this story, then, a dancer enters the space and starts to animate areas of the surface of the carpet with brightly-coloured, active scenes from the story and bonsai trees, stones, dancing waters, and lost footprints come alive in digital images and sounds that respond to the pressure of her feet and body.  Then children in the audience are invited to explore and animate the gardens themselves, experiencing the reconstructed natural environment through their own senses.  We loved it and it was incredibly moving experience.

You can view a performance at: http://www.teatrofabbrichino.it/video/ccc3/ccc3.htm

The Children's Cheering Carpet will be peformed again Sunday and Wednesday and the Festival runs through May10th.  The programs of the Children's Humanities Festival aren't just "kid stuff". They have been designed to be as engaging for adults as they are for young people. Children 17 and under are admitted free and adult tickets are $5.  However, when you order your tickets online you can use promo code "CCM" for a $5 discount.

Find out more about the Children's Humanities Festival including schedules and ticket information at: http://www.chfestival.org

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CNA_Looptopia

On Friday, May 2 Chicago's Loop will be illuminated and transformed into a sensory playground celebrating arts, culture, architecture and insomniacs alike in the nation's first dusk until dawn artistic celebration.

Looptopia is an all-night extravaganza painting the Loop as an urban wonderland, with 300 artists, 100 venues, 14 hours, and more than 100,000 people. Highlights include: green sculptures made from trash by the American Institute of Architecture; performances by Le Vorris and Vox Circus, Midnight Circus and Cirque du Soleil; dance performances and classes; live blues, jazz and Latin music; and Olympic and Paralympic sports demos.  There are of course Family Friendly Events , Food Specials, and even a Giant Game of Hide and Go Seek at Sunrise in Millenium Park

Find out more at:  http://www.looptopia.com

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Eduardo and I are here at Yahoo’s headquarters in Silicon Valley at the NewsTools conference, which brings journalists, journalism students and professors together with the technology companies – like DailyMe – that bring news and content to end users. We’re a day into the conference and already we’ve engaged in many discussions and panels about the role of journalism both today and in the future. Lots of food for thought and lots of interesting points of view.

The very concept of DailyMe always brings about it’s own discussion. The crux of the issue is this: Individuals choosing their own content and the sources it comes from shifts power and control away from editors and publishers and into the hands of their audiences. Not everyone likes this approach. We, of course, think it is essential and represents the future of news.

Eduardo spoke after today’s conference lunch about DailyMe – what it is, why we created it and how it works. We also gave a sneak preview of some of the new features we’ll be incorporating in the upcoming weeks. The NewsTools group was very engaged and interested in our business model, and there was an active Q&A following Eduardo’s presentation. (And after lunch there was a DailyMe birthday-ish cake for dessert.)

Immediately following the presentation, we spent time meeting with Guy Kawasaki to continue the discussion of news aggregation and where it is headed. I’m not sure we resolved that issue but the conversation and company were good.

And now, we are headed back tonight after a whirlwind day with much accomplished.

http://DailyMe.com

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Over at his blog, Seth Godin asks that those of us who have a copy of his book, The Dip, to share it with a friend.

I loved it so much, it's already making the rounds with my mates.

Read it, it's worth it.

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