Releasing CO2 into the atmosphere is a bad idea, no matter what you think about the causes of global climate change. Even if you don’t agree that the increase in average temperatures around the world is caused solely by man, the science suggests that adding more is a bad idea, if only for the impact it has on the world’s oceans and ignoring any of the larger issues related to climate change.

The most CO2 intensive power generation also relies on fossil fuels. Oil, coal and natural gas are all different versions of what is essentially ancient solar fuel, condensed into chemical form and stored underground. No matter how large the remaining reserves are, and there’s a huge amount of argument over point where fossil fuel resources peak, fossil fuels will eventually run out. Though the exact time frame is uncertain, weaning ourselves of our dependency on a single fuel source seems, at the very least, prudent.

This is where green and renewable energy comes in. Green energy isn’t a single technology that will replace oil in one fell swoop. Instead, it’s a package of different energy sources that will shift the reliance on one source (finite fossil fuels) into a variety of different sources. The most promising sources for cleaner, more long term energy solutions, include a grab bag of technologies like solar, geothermal, tidal and wind power, as well as less obvious sources like modern nuclear power and more hypothetical sources like fusion.

However, changing the source of the power isn’t the only solution.

It may not seem like it at first glance, but fossil fuels are actually a form of solar energy. Fossil fuels were once organic material, plants, animals and bacteria, that lived millions of years ago. All of these organisms got their power from the sun, often through stages. Plants converted solar energy into chemical power, which then was consumed and converted by herbivores, which in turn fed predators, and so on. Fossil fuel deposits are literally solidified solar power, but to get at the solar energy stored in them they need to be burned. We’ve already covered why that’s not a great idea.

One way to make a process more efficient is to cut out the middleman. Modern solar power attempts to do just that by directly converting the sun’s energy into a form we can use to run our societies. On small scales this relies on photovoltaic solar cells. These are what most people think of when they imagine solar power: those black slates on the roof of a car or the little strips that power calculators. These use a special material that changes the incoming solar radiation into electricity.

On a larger scale, solar furnaces focus light into a blazing inferno which is then used to drive a turbine which generates electricity. This is actually fairly similar to the way that a conventional, fossil fuel driven system works, except that the heat is produced by the sun and not the burning of oil, coal or natural gas. As a result, there’s no emission to speak of beside a little steam.

Solar power has a lot going for it, as even the tiny fraction of the sun’s output that reaches the earth is enough to power the world many times over. It’s also the lowest impact source of power we can come up with given current technology, requiring very little displacement of existing ecosystems. However, solar power is not perfect: it works best in hot and dry places far from existing population centers, which makes it more expensive to construct. It’s also the most diffuse source of green power; while it can potentially supply all of our energy needs, that power is spread across, quite literally, every inch of the planet. And there’s the obvious problem: what do you do at night?

By this point, everyone knows that carbon dioxide has some impact on the global climate. There are arguments about the degree, but the scientific data is pretty conclusive: carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will lead to increased temperatures around the world, which will, in turn, lead to a variety of ecological catastrophes. According to the historical record, climate change has consistently been the leading cause of mass extinctions.

Higher global temperatures will lead to increased sea levels, putting billions people living in coastal areas at risk for flooding. It will also drastically change weather patterns, making previously fertile areas little more than dust bowls and radically increase the strength of hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons.

What a lot of people don’t know is that carbon dioxide doesn’t just impact the world’s temperatures. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the ocean, which is, superficially at least, a good thing. Reduced atmospheric CO2 will reduce the temperature rise, but unfortunately, CO2 in the water increases it’s acidity.

Just like a carbonated beverage is more acidic than a flat one, the oceans will grow more acidic the more CO2 they take up. Changes in the water chemistry can drastically impact the oceanic food chains, potentially taking the legs out of one of the most productive food resources when the world’s population is peaking. It’s pretty clear that something has to be done in order to control the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Fortunately, there are a lot of things we can do…

The traditional method of getting energy has been, since the 19th century or so, to burn it. Every energy generation method developed during the Industrial Revolution has relied on burning something to get power, and then moving that power where it was needed. In the very early days of the Industrial Revolution, the goal of all the fire was to boil water. Steam, produced by burning wood, coal or oil, was then used to drive turbines which would do work. Steam power drove everything from factories to trains. However, steam isn’t particularly effective, so it gave way to electricity, which was far easier to transmit over long distances.

Burning your energy supply isn’t a good idea for a number of reasons. When you’re dealing with a limited amount of fuel, that you can’t recreate, and you’re literally burning through it, you have to consider what’ll happen when it runs out. Purely from an economic standpoint you’re asking for a world of trouble. And that’s ignoring the quite serious environmental consequences.

Thanks to the laws of physics, burning something doesn’t get rid of it, just changes its form. Chemically speaking, burning coal, natural gas or oil is fundamentally the same process. It’s inefficient, with only a fraction of the total energy of the fuel being converted into a useful form. It’s dirty, releasing a whole host of chemicals during the combustion process, most of which are harmful to the environment. The biggest problem for emissions is most likely carbon dioxide.

Another problem facing humanity due to its dependency on fossil fuels is how important petroleum is to everything we do. We use oil and its derivatives in every facet of our industry, from power generation and manufacturing to medicine and agriculture. The last Green Revolution was actually agricultural, when a huge increase in the amount of food available thanks to pesticides, fertilizers and other products of industrial farming (all of which use petroleum as a necessary ingredient) lead to huge increase in the world’s population. The current Green Revolution is, in many ways, the necessary result of that population increase.

To a great degree, the shape of a technology defines its use and informs the shape of the society that uses it. If the Stone or Bronze Ages were defined by the materials they use, then the world we live in now is the Oil Age. Changing that reliance will require a complete change in the way that we do everything as a society. So it’s a change that will start with power generation and percolate down through every other element of our lives.

To understand what that shape may look like, and what you can do to contribute, we need to take a closer look at the various technologies poised to alter the current order of things. The best way to do that is to look at the green replacements for fossil fuels.

There’s been a lot of talk about green energy lately, with the development of a ‘green industry’ being part of the various economic initiatives in the United States and elsewhere in the First World. Indeed, ‘green’ is a term being tossed around a lot, so much in fact that the word’s actual meaning is being lost. There are a host of green technologies out there, which refer to everything from making plastic to generating electricity. So what does the word really mean?

‘Green’ best refers to technologies that have a lower impact on the environment. Green technologies are generally those that produce less pollution or focus on renewable resources rather than those, like oil, that are dwindling rapidly. Green technology is most important when it comes to energy production, as energy is the focal point of any civilization, but really being green isn’t quite as simple as putting up solar panels.

No technology works in a vacuum, so it’s important to understand what making clean energy actually entails. The best way to do this is to look at energy in general to contrast how we as a civilization have being doing it so far with how we ought to be doing it. Stay tuned because our next several posts will do just that.

When you browse the web, you may notice that in your tabs next to the site names are small graphical icons. These so-called favicons add a professional finish to a website, and help visitors keep track of sites visually. Although you might think it would be difficult, it’s actually quite simple to add a favicon.ico file, helping to complete the visual look of your site.

The favicon.ico standard was created by Microsoft and rolled out with Internet Explorer 5.0 as a way to keep track of bookmarks. Originally the favicon.ico file had to reside in the root directory of a server, but HTML now has a standard which allows the icon file to reside anywhere. With the advent of tabbed browsing favicons became even more useful to users – with many tabs open it can quickly become difficult to remember what site is open in each, and favicons give an immediate visual reference to help navigate a busy browser.

Creating a favicon is relatively easy, although the limitations of Internet Explorer make it somewhat more difficult to create an icon that is compatible with that browser. First you’ll need to create an image to represent your site, and you’ll have only a 16 pixel by 16 pixel square to do so in. While it may be tempting to take a larger image and shrink it down, you will generally find that any image shrunk to such a small size becomes entirely unrecognizable. Instead, try to create a very simple and iconic symbol, such as a single letter on a color field, or a very basic symbol. For some examples, you may want to look at popular sites, such as Amazon, Google, CNN, or Apple.

You can use virtually any image creation software to make a favicon.ico file, so long as it can export images as a bitmap. In Photoshop, for example, you can create a 16 pixel square file as a bitmap, draw your icon, save it, and then change the name to favicon.ico. You can also download a .ico plugin for Photoshop which will allow you to export your file directly as a .ico file. Technically, a favicon can be nearly any file format, including a JPEG, a GIF, or a PNG. Unfortunately, while many popular browsers, such as Firefox, Safari, and Opera can read all of these formats, Internet Explorer will only recognize the .ico format, effectively reducing your options to that format only.

If you have an existing file that you want to make into a favicon.ico file without exporting it as a bitmap, there are a number of tools to help you. DynamicDrive’s online favicon generator, for example, will take any image file under 150k and convert it into a 16×16 favicon.ico file. Different tools may allow you to choose the square area you want to be converted into an icon, to stretch the icon to fit, and even to highlight certain lines to make it appear crisper at smaller sizes. Generally, however, even when using an automation tool like this, it’s still a good idea to create the image you want first at a smaller size, such as 64×64 pixels, to ensure it will look good when shrunk even further.

If you don’t have a base image to work from, and want to create an icon from scratch, you can use an online creation tool, such as favicon.cc, to do so. These tools generally give you a 16×16 pixel grid and basic drawing tools to help you create the image you want. You can also view community favicons and use these wholecloth or as jumping off points to create your own icon.

Once you’ve created the image and downloaded it your computer, you’re ready to add it to your site. To do this, simply upload it to a directory in your server – most people use the root directory of their server, so that they can find it by going to http://www.myserver.com/favicon.ico. Once uploaded, simply add the line
to the tags of each page on your site, or to a header template if you’re using dynamic site software like WordPress. Even after being added, it can take a while for your favicon to appear, and in certain browsers, such as Internet Explorer, browser bugs may occasionally make the icon disappear, or even be replaced by another random icon. Don’t worry, though, this is a local bug, and not something other visitors to your site will necessarily be seeing.

Creating a favicon.ico file is fast and easy, and adds value to your site. A good favicon can supplement your existing visual identity and lets visitors know you take your web presence seriously. With so many benefits, and so little cost, it’s a wonder every site doesn’t have their own icon!

With 400-million active users ranging from 25 to 85, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, featured on the cover of this month’s Fast Company magazine, insinuates that Facebook is just getting started.

According to Fast Company, Facebook handles more than 30 billion page views per month, is the 6th most trafficked site in the US, and is growing at a rate of 3% per week.

And if you’re a business owner, what is even more important is that because of the nature of Facebook’s registration process, each of those 15 million+ users has freely plugged in a great deal of demographic information to Facebook — critical information such as location, age, gender, education, place of employment, relationship status, interests, and language.

Even more tantalizing for the savvy business owner is that Facebook offers a simple system for you to place your ad right in front of your target market sweet spot — and its not that expensive.

Advertising on Facebook

For as highly targeted and as broad of an audience it reaches, getting started with Facebook advertising is quite simple. A person could technically create a Facebook ad in minutes and serve it to tens of thousands of people by the end of the day.

Before jumping to start creating a Facebook ad, consider these points:

1. Where will you be sending your audience once they click your ad? Does that page deliver on the promise that excited them in the ad and give them an opportunity to take action by either buying a product, filling out a lead form or signing up for your newsletter?

2. Test different ads. Even if you think your ad is performing well, try a few different versions to see what drives the most results. Try a new headline, or a new photo, or new ad copy. Make changes one at a time to find out which single element is making the impact.

3. Be prepared to roll up your sleeves and learn about bidding. Facebook advertising works a lot like Adwords, where you must bid on ads. The more you learn, the more ROI you will likely earn on each dollar spent.

Want $50 in Free Facebook Advertising? 

We’re so excited about the prospect of Facebook advertising for our customers that we are giving every single FatCow customer 50 bucks worth of free Facebook advertising to spend to launch their Facebook advertising campaign. Seriously. The details are all here: http://www.fatcow.com/product/facebook.bml.

Happy marketing!

New media is the latest buzz word and entails all facets of online marketing including social media marketing. Between Twitter and Facebook, everyone has caught the social networking bug. If you aren’t on board with social media, you might as well turn back the clock to 2000.

As 2010 launches forward with new media strategies, social media is the hottest online marketing strategy that companies use on a daily basis. By the end of 2010, it’s estimated that the popular business networking site, LinkedIn, will have over 90,000,000 members.

Social media marketing (SMM) offers companies personalized, real-time communication with their clients. Social media builds strong, lasting relationships that management and employees wouldn’t be able to build otherwise with clients. Social media also opens up a global network which increases the opportunity to create working relationships across the world.

There was a time, many “Internet years” ago, when most websites were designed using HTML tables to give structure to the layout. This made it easier to achieve the desired placement of page elements; but the result was very cluttered page code. Not only was this a development and maintenance nightmare, but it wasn’t very search engine friendly. Then, along came CSS, and everything changed.

CSS, cascading style sheets, is a method for designating the style and placement of page elements without the necessity of table-based layouts. It is based on a simple syntax. It can be applied inline, in the document’s head section, or in a separate file. This has many advantages, not the least of which is search engine friendliness.

Since using CSS separates content from design, the code for each page is much easier to read. In fact, it reads more like a flyer than page code in many cases. That ease of reading also applies to search engines and web crawlers. But perhaps a bigger SEO benefit to using CSS is that it allows you to position your most important content at the top of your page code.

With older layouts, the prime spot on the page was taken up by code for menus and headers, etc. This, of course, meant that search engines and web crawlers, which read page code, not the view that end users experience, often didn’t have an opportunity to crawl and index the really important content, since it was further down the page.

One of the biggest advantages of separating design from content with CSS is the ability to rapidly deploy changes to the design of a site. If your boss comes to you and wants to change the color scheme for a five hundred page website from blue to red, all you have to do, providing that your site is properly architected using best practices for design and layout with CSS, is change your CSS code in one place. The result then “cascades” to the rest of the pages. Compare that to changing five hundred pages manually.

Cascading style sheets also give you the ability to manipulate your layout in ways you wouldn’t dare attempt with table-based layouts. More granular control means you can make your site look better with CSS.

There are many tools available to help you write CSS and incorporate it into your site. Most IDEs for web development, tools like Dreamweaver and Visual Studio, come with CSS authoring and integration built right in. There is also a wealth of information online about CSS.

Cascading style sheets are the professional standard in website design. It is a technology that should definitely be in your toolbox.