Wondering if turning your Twitter photo green or adding Hussein as your Facebook middle name actually does anything?

>> Rob Walker’s foreword to Ad Nauseam: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture pokes fun at marketers’ and consumers’ overhyped love for “interactive” social media:

Thanks to interactive-ness, you can, for instance, respond directly to an online opinion you disagree with: Type “Your an idiot” into the comments field, and you have just participated; you have interacted; you have been not-passive.

In the realm of consumer culture it means, say, complaining via Twitter that you have lately received a very poor latte from a famous coffee chain. If that coffee chain has employed someone to monitor brand-specific tweets, then perhaps you’ll be contacted, and score a compensatory coupon. (And maybe you’ll tweet about that, thereby completing the transformation of your interactivity into word-of-mouth marketing.)

Or maybe you don’t have a complaint, you have an idea for a whole new style of caffeinated beverage you wish this coffee chain would sell. No problem. Stop by the new Web site the chain has set up where you can log on and share your profitable idea. Big ups: you’ve interacted with a brand.

Above: One of my not-passive tweets. Not everyone agrees with Rob’s view of social media engagement, however. In fact –

>> Greenpeace supporters made and gave out mock copies of the International Herald Tribune, featuring an article about Exxon’s decision to go all renewable energy and a recall warning — for all cars. (via grist). In it, Greenpeace gives a big thumbs up to social media engagement in an article headlined “Mass activism just clicks for more people than ever“:

“It got to the point where I started doing my government business at a wi-fi café,” said Sir Nicholas Winterton, a Conservative MP. “But then someone would spot me, they’d ‘Twitter’ or whatever, and soon I’d be surrounded by a horde of activists telling me about icebergs and refugees. They were fairly polite, but I got precious little work done.”

Earlier: The Yes Men’s version of the New York Times.

>> Still convinced of the power of eco-tweetups? Join the live Twitter chat with Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner on Fri., June 19, from 10 -11 am.

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Your turn to help me –

My Verizon DSL frustrates me to no end — not because there’s anything actually technically wrong, but because it’s always so damn slow.

Is cable better?

I’m hoping to hear from people who’ve tried both and decided on one’s superiority –

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Your turn to help me –

green LA girl commenters are generally awesome — and this post isn’t precipitated by any specific mean comment here. But because mean comments, even when rare, suck a lot of happiness and fun out of blogging, I was thinking about writing a “How to deal with mean comments” post, both as a guide for myself and hopefully for others.

I’m by no means saying I’m a perfect commenter — There are some comments I regret leaving, and many more comments I wish I’d worded in a more kindly fashion. I’m sure many of you are in a similar boat — and since mean comments tend to beget more mean comments, I wondered if maybe we could collectively crowdsource a solution — or at least a list of mitigation measures.

So — I’m interested in your tips! How do you deal with negative comments? What do you do to pre-emptively discourage mean comments from being left in the first place?

If you’ve blogged about this topic before, leave the link to your post in the comments and I may link to it in the final post.

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Your Daily Thread — self-described as “L.A.’s hub for all things green, sustainable & local” — has been live for quite a while now, but finally threw its official launch party with the help of Pink Cloud Events last Saturday.

Festivities — with organic nibbles from Le Pain Quotidien and Real Food Daily and VeeV cocktails — happened at BP’s Helios House, an eco-controversial location, since it’s a gas station — that’s LEED-certified.

What is Your Daily Thread? Founded by Tracy Hepler and Lauren Johanson (below), YDT’s a website / e-newsletter that sends you a free local green tip a day — quite a bit like the L.A. edition of Ideal Bite. YDT also has a local calendar of events (not yet as robust as Go to Green LA) and a reader forum (not very active as of yet).

Perhaps the launch party will kick off a new flurry of action at YDT. At the event, YDT gave away a $630 fixed gear Schwinn Road Bike to the people with the best eco-transit story for getting to the event. The winners: A couple from the westside that had broken up — but decided to carpool to the event together out of eco-guilt associated with solo driving — and got back together.

YDT also auctioned off — half of itself, sort of. $200 was the highest bid for an eco-date with Lauren Johanson; proceeds will go to local eco-nonprofit TreePeople.

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Take a break from the Monday workday to plant some trees — by playing an online game!

The Legend of Peapod’s rather simple — You basically shoot at things that shoot at you and hope you last longer than the things you’re shooting at. But the game has an eco theme — “You” are Peapod the Polar Bear and Little Gary Greenman, while the things you’re shooting at are a junk mail company, a disposable cutlery maker, and an SUV factory.

To actually plant a tree, however, you’ll need to play a whole lot of games. My highest score didn’t quite reach 50 thousand points — and to plant a tree, you need 50 million points! On the upside, you don’t have to go it alone; just submit your score to the high score board and your points’ll be counted toward the 50 million total.

The Legend of Peapod’s the brainchild of Neon Sumo, an eco-conscious design firm that hopes to plant at least 1000 trees via the game.

Earlier: My fave eco-socio-political online games

Image via Neon Sumo

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>>The Complete Guide to Speeding Up Your PC’s Startup. From the basic steps for cleaning up your computer to speed up performance — to “myths and misconceptions and misguided “secrets” to speeding up your PC published out there.”

>> Dust, delete, de-frag: 8 ways to spring-clean computers. This post covers a few more cleanup ideas — though I strongly suggest you modify the last suggestion to clean the external surfaces of your computer with 409! Replace the 409 with your favorite green cleaner.

>> Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Web Browsing, starting from the basics you may already know — like using Google to read documents in HTML instead of waiting for big PDFs to load — to others you’ve likely never considered — like setting up OpenDNS on your router. If 10 tips aren’t enough for you, read through the comments on the post. Those have additional great ideas, from using ad blocking software to blocking Google analytics.

>> 8 WordPress Spring Cleaning Tips: Backups and More. Kim Woodbridge at (Anti) Social Development has measures to speed up your computer, directions for preventing time-consuming blog catastrophes, and ideas for increasing page views.

>> Top 10 Computing Energy Savers.

Photo by Pablo Ruiz Múzquiz

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Yesterday I finally made my way through Greg Rutter’s Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something. I’d like to think that I’m now the younger for it.

Almost all of the 99 things are videos — many focused on accidental physical pain. One guy actually shoots himself; seriously painful looking falls are more common. The weird antics of babies and animals — the two seem to be about equivalent in the YouTube world — are also popular. Also, Star Wars.

My fave: David after Dentist (below). David actually describes how I feel most of the time, most days. My fave part’s when he asks, “Why is this happening to me?!” I dunno, Dave — I’m asking the same questions. Is this real life? Is this going to be forever?

Most of the 99 things were new to me. Because I’m a v. impatient person, I tend not to watch a lot of video because I can’t control the time I spend on it — whereas I’m v. good at skimming text. Some of my faves from the list: Lazy Sunday, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, look at that horse.

Ready to check out the 99 Things yourself? Bye bye — See you tomorrow –

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Mainstream media news seems to be all about two things these days. One: Print media’s dying. Two: Twitter!!!

LA Times published a buncha tweety articles today — and quite a few others did too. What these articles don’t cover, however, is how tweeting helps get the one thing I tweet most frequently about: Good food.

Some examples:

>> At Tender Greens tonight, you can get peach cobbler for $4.
>> Locali’s serving veg chili and cabbage soups.
>> Kogi BBQ’s at SMC right now — and I might bike over soon for kimchi quesadillas.
>> Whole Foods wants me to drop by for some new fair trade wines.

Haven’t you often wished for a constant, up to date stream of eco dining dealios in your ‘hood interrupting you at work? Start tweeting — and follow me. BTW — I just realized I joined Twitter on March 15, 2007. Has it really been 2 years? My twitterversary’s coming up!

Also: Jon Stewart shakes his fist at Twitter. Perhaps relatedly, his embed code isn’t quite working right — I don’t know why the header ad thing’s skewed off to the right –

Earlier:
>> You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter
>> 14 ways to use Twitter politely
>> Greening Twitter

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Unclutterer has a great tip that’ll help unclutter your home, save you money, and get you exercising — all while reducing your carbon footprint: Replace exercise DVDs with video podcasts.

Instead of buying up those plasticky exercise DVDs that you’ll likely get tired of after a few months anyway, just search on iTunes for free video podcasts of your fave exercise routine, whether that’s yoga, pilates, or a bootcamp class.

To find fitness video podcasts, do a power search for “fitness” in the iTunes store, taking care to check the box labeled “Search Video Podcasts only.” You’ll get over 100 podcasts to pick from!

I’ve picked out Ford Model Fitness and Yoga Today — though I’m not sure I’ll actually DO one of these today….

Image via Ford Models Fitness / iTunes

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Your turn to help me –

Once upon a time, Wordpress’ incoming links box would give me a list of the latest posts in the blogosphere that linked back to green LA girl’s pages. Those were good times.

But since a few months ago, Wordpress’ incoming links box started filling up mostly with links to posts that don’t actually link back to me. Instead, they’ll link to the latest posts from blogs that have me on their sidebar blogroll.

Take this example from last night. Racked LA and Eater LA are indeed linking to me in those posts, but California in Texas and Bikes in the City are not — they just happen to link to me in their sidebar.

Why is this happening to me, and how can I make Wordpress revert back to the way it used to populate my “Incoming Links” box way back when?

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