The basic idea

Time for some information sharing, which has to be at least part of the point of this enterprise. This has been brought home to me particularly strongly recently, when a number of people have told me, with great enthusiasm, about various things that I told them about some time ago, but which they seem only now to have just discovered. At least, I thought I told them about it, but they don't remember, and I don't even remember, so who's to say? Clearly whatever attempts at communication were made failed. So, here's some stuff I think is worth knowing about.

First of all, www.thehungersite.com which gives free food to people who could do with a decent meal, in return for you visiting the site. Yes, it's true. No, it's not a scam. No, you don't have to look at loads of pages or clickthrough ads, you just click one button which goes to a page with usually 8 small ad boxes on it, who pay for the food you donate. I've been visiting it since at least 2000. It is linked to www.thebreastcancersite.com (fund mammograms), www.therainforestsite.com (11.4 square feet of rainforest saved per glance), www.theliteracysite.com (give books), www.childhealthsite.com, www.animalrescuesite.com, you get the idea. It takes maybe 30 seconds to visit them all, even on dialup it's worth it. Not the answer, just perhaps a part of the solutions.

I have to plug my friends and the good work they do at Sustainable Ireland www.sustainable.ie. A great place to start if you're interested in living in a way that's sustainable/ethical/environmentally sound/call it what you will, especially in Ireland. They're upgrading their website at the moment but it already has a lot of useful stuff on it.

Finally, what I think was the first ever website I 'surfed' to (even though I'd been a web designer for about 4 years by then), www.virtual-bubblewrap.com. Name says it all. Enjoy.