Web ecology. New concept and few best practices
Octombrie 28th, 2009 | Published in ecology, trend
(post published on the climate change blogging platform thinkaboutit)
The Internet is, we all agree, full of noise: the ubiquitous information, its relentless speed. There is the pollution we have to manage each day on our inboxes, created by spam messages. Apparently inoffensive broken links, abandoned Facebook or Twitter accounts, or even those evil viruses and malware, all are in the same category. Some are confronted because they do harm, others are simply ignored, often considered not very dangerous. And yet they are producing a great amount of unpleasant noise for the average users and are polluting the web itself.
The Internet will probably not die because of the terrible amount of info it has to store, as many voices try to warn us. Still, we should do more to keep it clean. There are two examples of best practices on web ecology I would like to share with you.
Here’s one first lesson coming from GetTRASHED.org on how to save the planet and cyberspace one tweet at a time. Their advice: recycle your boring tweets with Re:cycled Tweets. For every tweet you recycle, a penny will be donated to getTRASHED.org. Here’s what you have to do: 1. @reply to someone who posted a lame tweet. 2. Copy and paste their lame tweet, and add #recyclethis. 3. Click reply. Simple, isn’t it?
Another lesson comes from Ecofont. What is it all about? You can literally save the environment one letter at a time with a new environmentally-friendly font. Ecofont can be downloaded for free and could reduce printer ink by up to 20 percent. The type looks similar to basic Arial. But each eco-letter is pierced with teensy holes, meaning it takes less ink to print out.
Do you know other examples of web ecology?
