Webware

If a holiday season free of wrapping paper and ribbons is on your wish list, there are many options for giving presents without touching anything but a computer and credit card. Services that can be ordered and received online also can be more eco-friendly than physical presents. Of course, you could always funnel funds directly into someone's PayPal account, but where's the fun (for you) in that?

Netflix offers gift subscriptions from $9 for one month of movie rentals to $108 for one year. GreenCine's rental certificates for indie film buffs start at $44 for two months.

eMusic ($30 for 3 months and up), Rhapsody (starting at 50 songs for $35), and iTunes ($15 and up) offer gift subscriptions for audiophiles. Want to help a friend move their music collection into this century? The mail-in service Riptopia charges about a dollar for each CD it digitizes.

Bibliophiles can order $50 cards worth of electronic books from Audible that are ready for most MP3 players as well as the new Amazon Kindle (although Sony Reader users must shop at that brand's store).

Residents of virtual worlds including Second Life, Habbo Hotel and Maple Story can purchase virtual gifts for avatars. Console gamers can hook up with each other with an xBox Live subscription.

People who like to go places in the real world might appreciate memberships to nearby museums or gifts in their honor to public radio and television stations. Amateur astronomers can get gift certificates between $15 and $100 to Slooh (review here), which lets you control powerful mountaintop telescopes.

For your touchy-feely friends, SpaFinder certificates starting at $50 can be claimed at one of more than 4,000 spas. In downtown San Francisco, $70 per month buys 60 minutes of chair massage through Zubio, whose reservations are all managed online. Of course, you can always buy gift cards through massage therapists near your gift recipient, or find low-priced package deals through their local massage school. Most yoga centers and gyms sell gift certificates just in time for New Year's resolutions.

People who would rather stuff than tone their bellies may eat up gift certificates to restaurants, or a $49 annual subscription to a site like Rouxbe that includes Web-based cooking classes. (also here).

Family focus

For unlimited online storage of so many holiday snapshots, a one-year Pro subscription to Flickr costs $25, while SmugMug charges $35. For $300, Phanphare pledges to store someone's lifetime of photos and videos. Apple fans might want an annual .Mac subscription for $100, or $180 for five folks.

To bring the genetic profiles of your ancestors into the picture, DNA testing kits through Ancestry.com (more here) Genebase or the Genographic Project (more here) start around $100. The Story of My Life service invites people to upload an autobiography for free, and then charges a dollar per megabyte to safeguard that story, purportedly for the benefit of future generations into eternity.

Getting around

To help somebody who can't afford to jet home for the holidays, many airlines offer gift certificates as well as the option to donate frequent-flier miles. Now that the Zipcar car rental by-the-hour service has merged with archrival Flexcar, there will be more vehicles from which to choose in some two dozen cities. Drivers who want to ditch AAA for its eco-unfriendly reputation may prefer the roadside service of the Better World Club, which even offers help for stranded bicyclists.

The greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere from all that driving and flying can't be taken back. At least carbon credits from Native Energy, Carbonfund and TerraPass, and LiveNeutral offer the opportunity to donate to alternative energy projects.

Each year, some 41 pounds of credit card offers, catalogs and other junk mail arrive in your mailbox, according to 41pounds. This service charges $41 for five years of slaying junk mail before it reaches your door. One-third of that price will be donated to one of 36 nonprofits of your choice. Similarly, GreenDimes' junk-mail-busting gift cards start at $15, including 10 trees planted in honor of the giftee.

News hounds and bookworms who want to save trees will find the New York Times fully free online, with the Wall Street Journal expected to follow, but you'll still need to pay Salon to read its articles without ads (its annual Premium subscription often throws in several printed magazines, like Wired).

If you prefer e-greetings to paper cards, one dollar buys your friend a MokuGift animated e-card of a furry creature planting a tree. Meanwhile, the donation supports the planting of a real-world tree through Sustainable Harvest (also see Tree Nation).

In the name of someone who has everything, you can make charitable contributions to people around the planet. Changing the Present offers gift registries to cover such causes as disaster relief, HIV research or minefield cleanup. Alternative Gifts International, Heifer International, Mercy Corps, and Seva are among the groups offering the chance to pay, say, $20 for a flock of chicks for a far-flung farm. Facebook also offers a bunch of gift-giving apps.

The nonprofit Kiva enables you to support a startup in another country with a loan of as little as $25.The new MicroPlace from eBay is similar, but with a $100 entry loan. ModestNeeds will hook you up with someone in the United States who seeks a hand with some painful bills.

Proceeds for the auctions at Bidding for Good, an eBay alternative, go to charities. Tickets for travel packages, as well as for sports and other shows are among the items that leave no objects behind.

A LinkedIn membership may fit the bill for the job seeker or wedded-to-the-job type who lives and breathes social networking. Options include $20 for a Business account, $50 BusinessPlus, or $200 for Pro. For someone who could use a personal assistant, you could give a gift subscription to Ask Sunday. Whether helping to change a doctor's appointment or find an elephant for a wedding, this concierge service is priced monthly at $29 for 30 requests or $49 for 50 requests. Do My Stuff (more here) connects people with others willing to run all kinds of errands including those that must be done in person, such as picking up dry cleaning. Gift cards start at $10, with prices for services determined by bids made by potential assistants.

Any small business owner should back up their data away from the office, but you probably know some who don't. They may thank you later for your initially snoozeworthy offer to pay for online storage. Popular services include Mozy for $5 per month, Carbonite for $50 per year, or xDrive, which costs $10 monthly per 50GB.

(See also Getting cash for crashed gadgets as well as CNET's green gift guide and holiday guide.)

Who knew tackling global warming could be so fun?

A Boston-area entrepreneur has launched a Web site called Carbonrally that aims to marry online games and social networks with consumers' desire to shrink their carbon footprint.

Carbon reduction mashup--see how is your team doing.

(Credit: Carbonrally)

Here's how it works. The company behind Carbonrally, Carbon Challenge, regularly posts a "challenge" that translates into a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Choosing filtered tap water over bottled water, for example, translates into reducing 3 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a week. (No plastic bottles involved.)

Individuals or teams can take up the challenge. Typically, it's the "dark green" consumers who take on the challenges, says founder Jason Karas, who studied environmental management but took a detour into Internet management for 10 years.

But ganging up to take on other teams, in a friendly competition kind of way, is what gets people really fired up.

A group of 17 "tweenagers" from New Jersey just passed Google's Pittsburgh office in carbon reductions. Google Pittsburgh, meanwhile, is duking it out with Google's Cambridge crew. "We're taking Cambridge down!" the Steel Town Googlers say.

There are already several carbon calculators out there available from carbon offset companies and other sources. Make Me Sustainable is another Web site for managing your carbon diet. Carbon Rally wants to keep it quick and light, while tapping into people's tribal competitive spirit.

"We don't have to get people worked up and bummed out about climate change," Karas said. "We've giving them a place where they have an opportunity to act on that emotion."

The company expects to make revenue by having its challenges sponsored by corporations that offer environmentally oriented products or are looking to green up their image.

Another planned feature is to have "carbon ralliers" themselves offer challenges to others.

Ever fling fast-food wrappers from the window of your speeding Prius? True Green Confessions invites you to tell the tale. Unlike so many other green social networking websites that encourage you to practice bicycling, recycling and other planet-friendly habits, here you can share the shame of not doing enough or not caring enough about your fat carbon footprint.

There are many confessions about driving, like taking the SUV to the organic grocery store, as well as rants against "self-righteous" vegans. Other posts are a bit more twisted. One mother-to-be wrote: "I dont (sic) think I am contributing to overpopulation by having this baby...SOMEBODY has to help to supply the world with smart people."

This site is a fun Friday time-waster, but it should do more, like provide sinners a chance to communicate with each other or maybe do something to assuage their guilt. But the point seems less to atone than to flaunt your eco-flaws. (also see MakeMeSustainable and PostSecret.)

MakeMeSustainable is a new green social networking site. Although entering a crowded field, the service wisely translates how greening your everyday habits saves money. It tallies dollar signs, trees, and carbon emissions to track changes in your usage of electricity, heating, transportation, and travel over many months. I like that it takes you directly to sites where you can achieve a goal instantly, such as by buying CFL bulbs or carbon credits, or downloading a power-saving app for your PC. And you can form and join groups based around your interests.

MakeMeSustainable builds a personal profile based upon your quick setup interview. If I already polluted a lot more, I'd get more tools for setting worthy green goals. I'm far from eco-perfect, but giving up my car last year was painful, so if I can't moan about it, then I at least want to brag a bit. But since I rely on a bike, the site didn't show my eco-progress or suggest how my transportation could get greener. For instance, it didn't ask if I rent cars or take taxis. But this service is only in beta testing and will evolve. I found Yahoo Green's action plan (more here) a bit more intuitive.

I'd also like MakeMeSustainable to show how my carbon footprint measures against national averages, which BeGreenNow, ZeroFootprint, and the Nature Conservancy's carbon calculator display.

MakeMeSustainable keeps tabs on your carbon costs.

Despite those wishes, MakeMeSustainable's efforts are an impressive start, especially for a tiny startup that is only beginning to secure outside funding. I plan to keep using it. Within the next few months, it will roll out a lifestyle section, forums for product reviews, and widgets for Facebook. Blog badges will help you to show off your sustainability. Green sites need to work together rather than reinventing the wheel to add new tools, and the makers of MakeMeSustainable seem to have the right idea. They plan to integrate their service with others, such as by later integrating Yelp business ratings into the embedded Google Maps. They might also add RSS tie-ins, browser add-ons, and a Twitter-like feature.

I also like that MakeMeSustainable pledges not to share your individual details with third parties and lets you register with OpenID. Should you ever tire of the site, its detailed privacy policy even offers an e-mail address where you can ask for your details to be deleted. That offer alone makes this a personally sustainable service.

Carbon footprint, energy use, green tech: some phrases that won't be going away. From gasoline prices to global warming, we're likely to become more aware of what energy we burn up, just as most of us now have some sense of whether we're eating wisely (or not).

Front page of carbon calculator

(Credit: earthlab)

Just today the Live Earth concert folks e-mailed me a link to their carbon calculator. This one walks you through several pages of simple questions about how you live, and especially how you travel. This calculator was built by Earthlab.org. They want to know the size of your dwelling, your car if you own one, energy bills, airplane and daily travel. After going through their process, I can't imagine how bad an airline pilot would look, environmentally speaking.

My score on the Earthlab quiz: 301, and 11 tons of carbon. So I'm clearly doing my bit to warm the planet. Live Earth folks say they'll post overall test scores and more information on 7-7-07.

Then there's this site, which gives you the really bad news--how many planets humanity would need to supply energy if everybody lived as you do. My score: 6.3 planets. I think that translates into a couple more solar systems 'cause I don't get the sense there's a whole lot of oil, coal or biofuels to be had out beyond Venus. I could probably do nicely with a tiny sun, however.

Then the Yahoo folks have built a carbon dioxide emissions calculator. My score was pretty much the same as what I got from Earthlab...until I added in my infrequent air travel. From a few plane trips: 21.8 tons of carbon dioxide. Where are the calls for solar planes? Or goose-powered, or human-paddled balloons, or something? How about those Star Trek transponders that would beam you up? Could they be energy efficient? No crappy airline "food" either.

Altogether these sites are: depressing, educational, geared to getting you to do something about your consumption patterns. Turn off your work computer when you are done for the day (or night). Carry your own shopping bags. Use alternative energy when possible. Use efficient bulbs and appliances. Walk more. Freak out over air travel. All good advice. And aimed at making each of us less of a carbon bigfoot.

Today, Yahoo launched two new sites to get people motivated to be environmentally responsible. The sites complement Yahoo's previous green offering 18seconds.org, which tracks fluorescent light bulb usage in the continental United States. The sites are information tools, and part of a contest to help the greenest city in the U.S. get greener.

The first of the new sites is Yahoo Green, which helps people create their own plans to go green, using a drag-and-drop building tool. Yahoo provides lifestyle actions in four categories, which range from air drying your clothes all the way up to buying and installing solar panels on your house. Users can sort through the various actions using filters, and the builder will automatically let them know how much they're cutting back on their carbon emissions. When done, users can pledge to make those changes, and send off their plans to friends and family.

Yahoo Green gives everyone a baseline of 9.44 tons of CO2 a year, although to find something a little closer to your situation you can use Carbon Counter, which is a free tool that lets you customize your carbon offsets based on your living space and how you travel. It also lets you know how much it would cost to offset the carbon by donating to various environmental organizations.

The other new site is Be a Better Planet, which acts as a landing page for 18seconds, Yahoo Green, and links to green tools on Yahoo Answers and Yahoo's mobile search platform oneSearch. The site is the launch pad for Yahoo's new promotion that tracks and awards the greenest city in the U.S. The winning city gets a fleet of hybrid taxis. Alternately, cities can choose to take the cash equivalent and put it into their own environmental programs.

To keep score, Yahoo is doling out points for interaction with the services listed on the Be a Better Planet page. Results are shown on a map, which will start displaying each city's scores starting tomorrow. Users can improve their city's score by continuing to use Yahoo's green-oriented services, although it's clear that larger cities get an advantage over the smaller ones, assuming their residents are Yahoo users.

Yahoo's Green Plan builder lets you make your own plan to save the planet, or at least start by using recycled paper.

(Credit: CNET Networks)