Google Places (99 luft balloons) and Google Tags for small businesses.

Have you ever Googled a location and noticed all those cool little red balloons on the map with businesses attached to them? Well now, like a starry-eyed child at the google circus, you can have your own balloon – only this time, no clowns! If you have a small business, restaurant, cafe, bike shop, book shop, any shop, non profit etc.. head to http://www.google.com/places  and follow the instructions there.

While you’re at it, Google has a new offering called tags as well. It’s a little yellow tag that has extra information about your business, lets you add coupons and adds a little flare to your red Google balloon. Head to: http://www.google.com/help/tags/ to get started.

Right now you can try the tag option for free for 30 days to see if you get any interest. Be sure to flag off your tag after 30 days though and assess its success before they whack you with a 25.00/monthly fee. It’s got statistics to help you measure and if you are using any kind of web analytics you can tag your links to see if it is bringing you any business online.

What’s next from Google? The Virtual-people-holding-sandwich-boards-ranting-about-fake-liquidation-sales Balloon. You know the mattress industry is lobbying for that as we type.

A side note to this is that those Google places balloons are tied to a lot of online review systems such as yelp.com. We’ll cover Yelp another time though, but the mystery thickens as you get noticed more.

Happy Googlin!

Middle of the Sea – Ambient Video – Stretched 800% from stacy bias on Vimeo.

This morning on Facebook a few folks had posted a hilarious link from Gawker.Com on how to make Justin Bieber actually sound good by slowing down one of his songs by 800%. Inspired by how lovely you can make something that’s utterly vapid by simply stretching it out to its essence, I researched some Macintosh sound-stretching software (here’s the PC version) and set to work stretching one of my own compositions.

To my surprise, it turned out quite lovely and EPIC (nearly 30 minutes long) — the percussion sounds like crashing waves and the vocals sound haunting and ethereal.  I made a cheezy little ambient light video to go with it by dragging some free stock footage found here into iMovie.  Took all of an hour and it was great fun.

Stretch your favorite artist’s music or your own compositions by downloading the software above. Great way to kill an afternoon.

Before I dive into the list I want to cover some web analytic history, because I’m nerdy like that. In the neolithic era of the web (see: geocities) we had these nifty little hit counters. Remember those? They were rad! You could track people “hitting your site” which was pretty darn cool, and if you were bored on a tuesday afternoon you could inflate the numbers yourself by shotgunning a Jolt Cola and pounding the refresh button like a deranged monkey. Also they usually sparkled. But that’s beside the point.

From there things progressed to the likes of Webalizer or AWstats and other log file tools. These were a little more reliable. They looked on the server at log files and told you how many times your pages and images were requested and could also compare these stats over time. Even better! Now we could get a little closer to measuring the success of things we did like ad campaigns and blog posts.

However, In the past 4 years things have come even further. There are myriad great tools out there such as Google Analytics, Web trends, and Omniture. I’m going to focus on the one I use and know, Google Analytics and here are 5 reasons why I think you might want to as well.

1) ‘Cuz it’s free!

Yep that’s right, “enterprise” level web metrics delivered to you for free. Most of our client’s here at Taproot Green Web Hosting are small businesses, non-profits, bloggers, and hobbyists and paying 6 figures for an “enterprise” level web analysis tool just ain’t in the cards. But wait, how can this be? Google wants you to succeed! They make something like 98% of their money on advertising — namely things like Adwords. Using Analytics and Adwords together will make you more successful, and being more successful means you’ll have more money to spend with them, and the loop continues until Google owns the 37% of the planet they don’t own already. So, see? They benefit from giving you free tools to better yourself. If you fail, that’s one less super-intelligent robot monster they can launch into space to secretly watch you sleep.

2) Stalk your customers:

Let your visitors (customers, readers, clients) tell you what is working and what is not with your site. Google analytics offers many (over one hundred standard reports) creepy insightful views of visitor behavior on your site. And with features like goals that you can create yourself you can get a real sense of where people are dropping off along the path to what you wanted or expected them to follow, woot!

3) Yeah, but is it working?:

You can and should track any marketing campaign you launch with link tagging. Even your advertisements on the side of a bus can be tracked with just a little bit of creativity. Track not only the click through amount on your email campaigns, but see how many of those people actually bought something. This takes the return on investment concept to whole new levels.

4) Adwords:

Anyone using paid advertisement on google? One of the latest features adds insight into adwords campaign tracking and conversions with all sorts of great graphs and views. Pie charts for the win!

5) Referrals, online BFF’s:

Did that link trade work out for you? Did that online article in the SanFran reporter get me any visitors? Is facebook sending me anyone at all? Google analytics can tell you, and did I mention link tagging to make it even more clear? Know who your best friends are out there. I am often surprised by what I see in these reports. You can not only see where they came from, but you can see what the visitors from that site actually did. Holy mother of all things good and geeky, right?

How/more info: www.google.com/analytics setup instructions follow as you signup.

**** Taproot Green Web Hosting customers who want help setting this up should contact us here

In simplest terms, bandwidth is the amount of data that can pass between your website and everyone on the Internet who wishes to see it.

Bandwidth is measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes.  What creates that measurement is both the number of requests (the number of people who request to access your site) and the size (number of bytes) of the files they request.

Each website is made of digital files. Each character of text and its containing file, each image, video and mp3, has a size measurement that accompanies it.  That size varies depending on the complexity of a file. A common rule of thumb is that each character weighs 1byte. So if you had a file that contained 10 letters, that file would probably weigh about 10bytes.  The more intensive the file, the more it weighs.  Images, mp3 and video files weigh the most because their encryption requires thousands of pixels/characters to convey its contents.

So! When you build a website, you create your containing file and then you use HTML code (or your editor uses HTML code) to tell the page what elements you want to be automatically loaded and viewable when a user requests that page.  When that request comes, the weight of all of the main file and all of its relative files (images, video, text and audio) is passed between your web server and their computer so that they can see it in their web browsers. This sharing of information results in the usage of bandwidth.

An example: One user requesting one page on your website seems like minimal traffic, right?  But let’s assume that page contains:

1 large photo that weighs 150KB.
A great deal of text, so that the foundational page itself weighs 10KB.
7 smaller images that weigh approximately 30KB each.
A free MP3 download that weighs 4MB, which the user clicks to download.

That one user has just used 4370KB, or 4.3 MB of bandwidth, viewing one single page of your site.

So if we divide 1000MB (one GB) by 4.3 we find that you can have 232(ish) views of that page before using 1GB of bandwidth.

OK, so how much bandwidth does my site actually need?

Well, that depends on a few things:

1) How much does your average webpage weigh in KB?
2) How many pages does your average user view?
3) How many files are downloaded from your site each month?
4) What’s the average weight of those downloadable files?
5) How many visitors are coming to your site?

If you already have your site built, these numbers should be easy to estimate.  If you haven’t built your site yet, that’ll be a bit harder.

Here’s the formula:

(average user page views X average monthly visitors X average page size) + (average monthly downloads X average download size)

So if your average website = 32KB
your average user’s page views = 5 pages
your average monthly visitors = 300
your average number of monthly downloads = 150
your average download size = 4000KB

Then:

(5 pages x 300 users x 32KB) + (150 downloads x 4000KB) = 648,000KB — which equals out to 0.6GB

So — that’s all well and good if you know all of these averages.  If you have an existing site, you can glean this from your statistics page. Most web hosting providers offer this and if you’re not sure how to access it you can always email them and ask.

If you are in the process of building a new website and haven’t had time yet to build up your web traffic, it’s likely safe to assume that you should be fine with 1 to 3 GB of bandwidth as a start-up, which will give you enough time to build up some steam. Most web hosting companies can move you up to the next plan very quickly if it looks like you’ll exceed your estimations.  Be sure to account, however, for any press/advertising you might be doing in conjunction with your launch and choose a plan that has some flexibility if you can realistically expect to make a big splash. Be aware, however, that big splashes tend to be short-lived, so estimate higher amounts of traffic around the initial blast and then taper it throughout the month in your estimations so you don’t over-spend on your hosting account.  If you’re planning successive bursts of press/advertising, then account for that as well.

One last thing — ask your web hosting company about overage charges in the case of exceeding bandwidth allocations.  Be sure there are no hidden fees, or forced capping that will shut your site down if you exceed your bandwidth.  If there are overage charges or bandwidth caps, you might choose to go with a larger plan at the start and then downgrade if you find you’re not using as much bandwidth as you have allocated.

For the record, Taproot Hosting offers 3 plans with generous bandwidth allocation and has no overage charges. If you appear to be headed towards exceeding your bandwidth allocation for the month we will contact you to negotiate moving you to the next plan. If you have any questions, let us know!

T-shirt image courtesy: http://www.lushtshirts.co.uk/will-work-for-bandwidth-p-359.html

Hello, Taprootians!

In our thinking about how to celebrate Earth Day this year, we knew we wanted to offer incentives to folks who aren’t on green web hosts to move over and further green their projects/organizations. So we made an offer of a 30% discount for new clients today (enter: earthday2010 at sign-up if you’re interested.)

That didn’t feel balanced, however, as it didn’t honor the folks who have already taken action. In reward and thanks for those of you who have already chosen to green your websites, we’ve made a 50 cent donation for every single one of you to the World Forestry Center here in Portland, Oregon. This, of course, is in addition to the tree we planted for you this (and every) year at the Plant a Billion Trees project.

Thank you so much for hosting with us, and for supporting the environment in every way you can think of!

Adoringly,
Your Happy Hosts

Here in the Pacific Northwest where rain falls from the sky with a near-comic regularity, nothing outs you as a n00b faster than using an umbrella. That opening whoosh of nylon inspires a smug Pavlovian eye-roll response from most of us in the great wet North. Here, a ‘light sprinkle’ is shorts weather, soldier — and don’t you forget it!

In a place of such liquid plenty it’s hard to fathom how precious a resource water is, and yet, according to the FAO, by 2025, 1 800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions. Public awareness of this as an environmental issue is about 5 years behind the ‘green’ movement. And while domestic use only accounts for about 8% of water consumption on the planet (the big offenders being industry and irrigation) – every little bit counts. This blog aims to give you an easy head start on saving a great deal of water in your own home each year.

How to collect greywater, and what to do with it once you do.

Your average person (who is privileged enough to live with indoor plumbing and access to fresh water) sends between 15-30 gallons of water down the bathtub drain every day, and another 5-7 gallons are flushed down the toilet. A simple solution to this waste is to use that shower water instead of freshwater to flush your toilet. Each person in your household will save up to 2,555 gallons of water each year, and it’s very easy to do.

What You Need
• A siphon
• A 7 Gallon Bucket
• A pitcher
• A bathtub
• A toilet

I’ve made it even easier for you, as I’ve provided simple links to suggested solutions. I figure ordering supplies online isn’t the most eco-friendly way to do it (you’d be much greener finding a local supplier) but this is the Lazy Person’s Guide to Home Greywater Collection — so let’s be realistic.

The Simple Siphon is the easiest solution I could find for draining bathwater. There are a few different options, one of which is capable of draining 10 gallons per minute (though I suspect you’d need a great deal more pressure than a tubful of water would provide to achieve that velocity.) But it’s easy. Stick the hose in the water, shake it a little and it’ll start draining. $9.95 should be all you need to get started.

Water Container — You won’t want anything less than 7 gallons, and I won’t make personal recommendations here as the shape and structure of this will depend greatly upon your available space and aesthetic. Just remember that you’ll want a spot at the top for the hose to go in and, as each gallon of water weighs around 8lbs, you’ll want to either be able to lift 50+lbs easily, or have a spout to drain or a hole to dip into to get the water out.

The Process

• Take a shower or a bath and make sure you’ve plugged the drain in either case. I figure you’re familiar with this process already.
• Start the siphon to drain the tub into the bucket. If you take a long shower, you’ll want to watch it as you may go over the 7 gallons. (Or get a bigger bucket.) ;)
• When you’re ready to flush the toilet, fill up a portable container and move some greywater from the container to the toilet BOWL. (Do not put greywater in the tank. It’ll gum up the works and nobody likes a gummed-up toilet.) The magic powers of gravity will do the rest and flush the toilet for you!

That’s that. Takes a few extra minutes a day, but you’ll get used to it and the benefits in pride in a greener home more than make up for the effort!

Note: The maximum recommended storage time for untreated greywater is 24 hours. If you’d like to keep it for longer, you can treat it with a couple of spoonfuls of chlorine, but the fewer chemicals the better, so I recommend setting a daily habit and sticking with it.

Other things you can do with greywater:

• Water your flower garden. (Best not to use it on fruits/vegetables.) Avoid use on seedlings. Also apply it directly to the soil – don’t sprinkle on leaves. You can tie a little cloth bag to the end of the hose to help distribute evenly, but wash it every few days as it also acts as a filter. If watering trees or shrubs, spread it away from the trunk or base, as the root system extends out further and closer in could encourage rot.
• Water houseplants, but mix with fresh water to avoid buildup of harmful chemicals. Watch for signs of burning (leaf edges) if your water has a high sodium content.

Questions or comments? Just leave ‘em below!

If you’re anything like me, the last time you actually cracked open a phonebook, “social networking” required leaving your home and the “Blogosphere” was just a twinkle in the eye of the Intarweb. Yet, with the irritating faithfulness reserved only for those things in life you really wished would go away, the Phone Book appears, year after year, plastic-sheathed and anxious to be useless. To illustrate my point, I reference the picture that accompanies this article. This photo is of one of FOUR bins at Chad’s condo today. The blue bins. The tall ones. All full of phone books. All from TODAY. This prompted us to write this blog ‘cuz it made us die a little inside. So here are instructions for opting out of phone book deliveries.

Opting Out

Qwest Dex
To Opt-Out Online:
• Head to SelectYourDex.Com
• Enter your Zip Code in the box to the right of the page.
• Proceed to Select Your Dex.
• Enter your information and choose Zero (0) for the number of directories you want in each category.

To Opt-Out via Phone:

• Call 1-800-422-8793 and ask to speak to a representative.

Yellow Book
To Opt-Out via Phone:
• Call 1-800-YB-Yellow, press 3 and give your address.

How to Recycle Phone Books

Missed your chance to opt-out this year? No worries, there are plenty of ways to recycle.

The first is simply to drop it in your curbside recycling, though check your local regulations to be sure. In Oregon where we live, Phonebooks are fine for curbside recycling.

Or, you know, you could make furniture. Whatevs.

When we say we’re always working, we kinda mean it. ;) Hosting emergencies wait for no sandwich!

As a time traditionally known for its rampant excess, the winter holidays give us several opportunities to make healthier choices for our planet. Below we’ve listed just a few ideas to help you green your holiday!

1) Trim the Tree Responsibly!

We all know the scent of a real tree is one of the best parts of the holiday season, but the amount of energy it takes to grow, harvest and transport real trees each year can be a terrible weight on the environment. As well, faux trees, while re-usable, are non-biodegradable and often end up in the least festive of places: landfills. Unless you plan on making a life-long commitment to a faux tree, it may not be the best option for you. But don’t be discouraged, there are ways to have a real tree responsibly.

• Consider a potted tree that you move indoors each year to decorate. When it gets too large to move, replant and start another.

• Choose a consciously grown tree from a local tree farm.  Carpool with people in your neighborhood to save gas and make the trek to a local farm to choose your own tree. A fun family outing, a way to support your local economy and a responsible choice.

• As well, organizations like TreesByBike.Com (in Portland, Oregon) are offering tree delivery by bicycle. Check your local area for similar projects or start your own!

2) Treecycle!

There are many, many uses for recycled holiday trees. According to Earth911 – “Christmas trees are recycled into mulch and used in landscaping and gardening or chipped and used for playground material, hiking trails, paths and walkways. They can be used for beachfront erosion prevention, lake and river shoreline stabilization and fish and wildlife habitat.”

Remember not to flock your tree, or use tinsel. And check Earth911 to find your nearest treecycling center.

3) Low Energy Lighting

Twinkly lights are part of the holiday high and the prospect of going without them is daunting for the militant merry-maker. If your light must shine, consider the following options:

• Solar Powered Lights:  There are myriad options for solar powered outdoor lighting – strings, nets, charicature lights and more are all available in solar form.  A simple google search on “solar christmas lights” will give you plenty of choices, though we recommend researching and supporting your local economy where you can.

• LED Lights: LEDs use 90% less energy than standard bulbs and offer you just as many beautiful choices. They also last longer, are harder to break and don’t get hot to the touch. Win/Win/Win/Win.

4) Shop Local and/or Handmade!

This one’s a no-brainer.  As you do your holiday shopping this year, consider doing the following:

• Use public transit.  You won’t have to worry about holiday traffic, distracted drivers or finding a parking space.  You’ll save gas, wear and tear on roadways and the fraction of your sanity you have left after shopping.

• Visit independent shops.  Stay away from malls, major chains and anything that ends in ‘mart.’  Keep your eyes open for local craft and artisan fairs, search google for fair trade gifts in your vicinity and check online for local small business coalition listings.

• If you decide to shop online, check out Etsy.com for a mind-boggling collection of handmade arts and crafts. Fair warning: You will lose hours of your life on this site.

5) Wrap it Right!

Most holiday wrapping paper is NOT recycled and, often, it’s not even recyclable due to metal fibers or paper treatments.  There are a few ways to wrap responsibly:

• Special-order recycled giftwrap.  FishLipsPaperDesigns.Com has a great selection for starters. Consider calling around to your local shops as well to see if they stock these papers or other recycled wrapping, or if they’ll order them for you.

• Get creative and decorate recycled paper bags from the store, re-use ribbons and bows from gifts you’ve received, create holiday collage paper from magazines or newspapers or even use artwork from your children’s coloring books.

• Better yet, give virtual gifts — offer to do a public service in the name of your family member or friend, donate in their name to a local non-profit, give an IOU for an eco-friendly outing to spend time together or allow them to humiliate you at the public place of their choosing. ;)  Or hey, if we might be self-serving for a moment, offer them a spot to blog online about their favorite topic for a year. Taproot offers one-click installs of the free and incredibly popular WordPress blogging software on our wind-powered web servers, and who doesn’t want a place to be heard?

These are just a few ways to green your holiday. Submit your own tips in the comments section below and we’ll feature the best in next year’s holiday blog!

If you’re like me and you get a little bit of macabre pleasure from things like picking at scabs or biting at hangnails, you are probably similarly amorous of those little cans of compressed air.  There’s something supremely satisfying about using them to clean your keyboards –waking sleeping dustbunnies with a surprise burst, sending bits of cracker and lint flying at incalculable speeds.  Good times, good times.

BUT, it’s not so much with the eco-friendly. Nor are many of the commercially-available computer cleaning supplies commonly available.  So how can you clean your keyboard, monitor and mouse in an environmentally friendly way?  These green computer cleaning products will give you a head start on a cleaner, greener computer.

Green Keys

Compressed Air cans are often the go-to product for keyboard cleaning, but they’re far from eco-friendly.  Most use some percentage of tetrafluoroethane or difluoroethane-  naughty little greenhouse gasses. You don’t have to miss the satisfied swoosh entirely, though.  There are two products that can help you clear out your system without heating up the planet.

Giotto’s Rocket-Air

Rocket-Air is a hand-squeezed air pump that delivers a strong, You-Powered blast.  No harmful gasses, and it’s good strength-building for those tired little typey-fingers.

ReAir Refillable Duster

ReAir is another DIY air product which also has the benefit of being refillable. It’s a tad less green as you can only refill it 50 times, and you’ll need a bicycle pump to refill and re-pressurize it after each use, but it’s a great option for a little more oompfh, or for those with pain in hands/joints.

Natural Cleaning

Shmutz on your spacebar from too many lunch hours at your desk? A common problem that has an equally common solution. Unplug, power down and get out your distilled white vinegar.  Take a damp white cloth (damp is essential to cut down on static cling) and spray or sprinkle it with vinegar.  Wipe down all surfaces, save for the monitor screen.  Let it dry thoroughly before you plug in!

A Green Clean Screen

Keeping your monitor clean is easier than most folks think.  First, turn them off, dampen a clean, lint-free soft cloth with WATER ONLY (alcohol-based cleaners will eventually dry and crack your screen.) Wipe down the surface gently. Be careful not to press too hard on LCD screens as you can damage them. Don’t spray water directly onto the screen — only onto the cloth. Special cloths are available for cleaning monitors, and may be a good investment. Never use paper towels, as they both leave dust and have elements that can scratch LCD monitors.

And there you have it! Easy, green and clean!