Thanks to Bill, I've recently discovered a wonderful new online booksellter called BetterWorld.com. And since Bill described it so well, I'll just post what he said:

Better World Books. From their own description, they are an online bookseller with over a million titles available, who use their heft to sponsor and support literacy programs, make as little carbon footprint as they can, buy carbon offsets for the rest, provide actual human customer service, and have decent pricing as well.

From a consumer-y perspective, the main thing is that they offer free shipping on any books in the Continental US, and flat rate 2.97 per book anywhere else on the planet.

This is particularly good if you only want one or two books, as the difference in price that say, Amazon offers would be offset by their shipping costs unless you hit their minimum purchase amount for free delivery ($25 US, or $39 in Canada). It's also really good if you live in some godforsaken backwater (IE NOT in North America) and get raked over the coals for shipping.

And it gets to be an even better deal if you are concerned about the social issues.

Another thing that rox is the "Fund Local Literacy" search they have on the front page of their site, which shows you where you can buy local used books in order to support local literacy campaigns and libraries--these books are ALSO under the same shipping fees - free in the US, $2.97 per book anywhere else.

So far, I think this is a very good thing. Does anyone know of something like this that is Canada-local?

Check them out. The prices are just as low as Chapters or Amazon, but the shipping is WAY lower and they appear to at least be trying to do the Right thing.

Because I know that everyone reading this blog is so desperately looking for things to buy me for Christmas, I thought that I would point you to the following cool things for Dan list:

• CarryABigSticker.com: Coexist Tshirt
• CarryABigSticker.com: One Less Car Tshirt
• My Deviantart Wishlist
• My ThinkGeek Wishlist
• My Amazon Wishlist

After much researching and even more disappointment (not to mention literally going around the world to find what I want), I've finally found and purchased my first MP3 player, the Cowon D2.

It's a personal media player, so it not only does MP3, OGG and WMA, but it also does DivX video files, images and text files. It's got 8GB of flash memory (read: if I drop it, it won't break) and also supports additional SD cards so I can have as many auxillary cards as I like with different kinds of tunes and/or videos on them.

But the best part, the part that made me get this particular toy is that it works well with Linux. I can play OGG files (w00t!) and use nifty tools like rsync to put my tunes on the toy and keep them in sync with my library. I can use mencoder to resize any video for my D2 with a simple command... and that'll even work straight from a DVD. I'm super-excited ;-)

On my way home from a climate conference, I stopped at the Green Living show looking for some food and was struck by a small revelation:

The Green Living Show is exactly like every other consumer show: claims by hundreds of vendors that you to can be a better person if only you would buy their stuff.

I don't know how it happened, but somehow, this child of the anti-globalisation movement, the green push, was transformed into yet another way to sell people stuff they don't need.

When will people learn that we can't consume our way out of this hole we've dug ourselves? Buy this compostable cup; it's "good for the environment", just don't mention that it's made in China and shipped/trucked 6000km to help feel good about drinking from a disposable cup. Or better yet, adjust your investment portfolio to target these "green" companies, ignoring the fact that any company, based on the current economic models, is unsustainable because it has to favour growth over environmental stewardship.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see so much interest in doing the Right Thing™, but I just see it all going the wrong way -- it's as if we've learned nothing.

'Course the fact is, we haven't, and that's why we're screwed.

However, one area they've always been very good at has been the low-wattage boards like the hardware in my firewall. While a standard desktop computer drinks down about 60-80W just sitting there doing nothing, my Via box uses ¼ of that.

Via has since come out with a new benchmark for those of us interested in the amounts of carbon we spew into the air as a result of our computer purchases. They call it Tree Mark™:

To underscore the importance of the environmental impact of computing, VIA is introducing a new benchmark, TreeMark™, intended as a useful tool for organisations looking to balance environmental impact in their computing purchase decisions. The methodology behind the calculations, validated by independent consulting firm Best Foot Forward Ltd, take into account average use of a PC and derive the amount of carbon dioxide created as a by-product of the electricity generated to power the processor over its operational lifetime – and, thus, the number of trees required to offset that amount in the environment.

The math works out like this. If you're using an Intel or AMD based machine, the chip in the computer you're reading this site with will put about 26 trees worth of carbon into the air over the course of its lifetime. A Via chip on the other hand needs only 4 trees to make up for the CO2.

I guess I know from where I'm getting my next computer.