G-n-L Ganesh and Lauren

Ideas...

Sunday, 4 January 2009

Now that it's the holidays I've had time to look around the web and have discovered to both my delight and regret that some of my ideas have now been implemented by other people, but at least they are now available for me to use!These include:

Community Exchange Basically a barter system managed online where people exchange their goods and services with others on the web who can provide other goods or services. Goods and services are valued in 'yarras' (the same as dollars) but no money is ever exchanged :-)

Teach Street Similar to the above but only for teaching various skills. I guess in the olden days a community centre would have served this purpose but now we have the web to bring us back together. Unfortunately this is only available in the US atm but it's such a great idea I'm sure it will be available in Australia soon... Or I could start it up at the new house!
Rudder Personal Finance A way to manage your finances, feed in your bills and have everything in one place. Also only available in the US but this is a good way to watch your money, pay your mortgage and start saving.

Remember the Milk A to do list that can feed into my gmail... I'm a big lister, I have daily, yearly, and life lists so this is very useful. I would prefer it if you didn't have to specify due dates though but it's getting there.
Planet Eye Digital tours of the world! There are a lot more features that could be added to make this amazing, but it's a good idea and you can pick up good tips for destinations around the world. Still a little light on content though.

And some others that are just interesting:

PostCrossing As a long term post card collector I'm surprised I hadn't come across this site sooner! It's a great way to generate pen friends and collect post cards from all over the world... I've sent my first 5 (all homemade) so I'll sit back and wait for 5 to come my way :-)
Pipes An interesting mashup tool - working towards web 3.0 and a more semantic web environment.
Afrigator News, photos and videos from Africa. Basically a digital taste of Africa and another type of interesting mashup.
Fire Eagle A way for people to locate you at any given moment! While this seems a little weird I really love their website design!
Help Exchange Similar to willing workers on organic farms and others but this one is free! (Plus they have listings in China and Japan)
Easy Home Exchange Similar to all the other home exchange websites but this one is free too!

Fortunately I still have a few more up my sleeve!

I'm starting to think that it would be a whole lot of fun to see the eclipse while couch surfing in Japan, and then spend a few days volunteering on an organic farm (or similar). A very different experience to normal tourists, much cheaper, and may help me with my 'make new friends' resolution :-)

In New Years Resolution progress I finally finished Green to Gold (it was a little heavy going at times). The most interesting point they made was of 'ecoadvantage'. It seems that green attributes rarely stand alone.... the environmental story is the second or third button. I guess this will be useful when marketing trash2treasure.com! I also started another book that I found while packing boxes about architecture in England which has been rather enlightening... You always find the most useful and interesting things when you pack... So far I've found a dremel, the missing piece of my wooden Illusionist necklace project, chocolates and the lovely tea post cards I collected at the flower and garden show last year.

There has been some interesting developments in terms of electric vehicles as well! This article mentions that Australia will play host to 'Better Place' recharging stations. So another possible carbon footprint initiative could include converting the little yellow car to electric!

Labels: ideas, websites

Ideas...

Sunday, 4 January 2009

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