Huddler is a new product and review community website. As described from the beta site, Huddler will be a vibrant group of connected communities, or “Huddles”, each with a unique focus. Huddles will be centered on Home Theater products, Digital Photography, Skiing, Parenting and any other interests that you suggest to us. We plan to have more than a dozen by the end of the year. In each of these Huddles, users can:

• Write product reviews
• Track what they own and want to easily find others with similar interests
• Participate in our custom built discussion forums
• Create/edit wikis on a myriad of topics
• And a variety of other features all tightly integrated like no other site online

The first focus of Huddlers is on green products for the home and is encouraging people to submit reviews of things such as appliances, lighting, plumbing fixtures, cleaning products, to cars, paint, and anything else that you would want to have a review for. You can leave a feedback as well as rate the products and add a new one if it does not exist yet. The interface of the reviews and products look pretty friendly and easy to navigate. There is also a discussion forum section for green products that has been fairly active for a beta testing site. There is also a wiki section, which may not be as useful.

There are quite a few other websites for reviews. For green products there are a couple others and I will name two others. Sustainlane is a website specifically for green reviews not just for products but also have reviews for businesses, local restaurants, clothing, and more. GreenGuide is a site that has green product reviews, but it is not allow for customer reviews. GreenGuide also have a blog, tips, and articles, so reviews is not the main focus of the website. The good thing about Huddler is that the website is focused on products and is not locally focused. A bad thing may be that there are so many products that exist and to be useful, there have to be a decent amount of reviews for a product and that may be hard to fulfill. Currently, it does the job of listing all the products in each specific category.

If you are interested in getting a beta testing account, you can send an email to Cristina Foung at cristina@huddler.com.

Here is a pretty good article in The New York Times Freakonomics blog by Stephen J. Dubner. It is a Quorum where several smart people are asked “What should the U.S. government be doing about global warming, and what should individuals be doing?” It is a pretty interesting read and can be insightful when you hear about what intelligent people have to say about the topic. If you want to read about Global warming, there is an endless amount of information on the web, news, magazines, etc. I have also had numerous conversations with people from different industries, places, ages, etc. Every so often, I will have a good conversation, but a lot of the times, some people that I talk to or that I read about will always complain, bitch, and moan about what we should, what the government should do, why aren’t we doing this, why aren’t we doing that, etc. The good thing about what the people talk about in this article, is that they actually talk about what the government should do as well as mention the pros and cons of the actions. A lot of the times people talk a lot about what should be done but don’t really realize the consequences. Newton’s third law applies to everything in life and it definitely applies to this question. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Freakonomics

via Treehugger

October 15th is officially Blog Action Day. Many popular blogs such as Lifehacker, Copyblogger, Web Worker Daily, ChrisG, Problogger, ZenHabits, GigaOM and 2,466 other blogs and website will be participating. Every blog will have a post about the environment. It is an event organized by a team of bloggers and supported by Eden Creative Communities.  Lighter Footstep is also promoting people to start their own green blog in a program called the Green Blog Incubator. Since my blog is a green blog, I blog about the environment every day so every day is a blog action day for me. This is a pretty neat idea though and the impact will definitely be seen by people who visit the many different types of blogs that exist on the world wide web.

Reuse, Reduce, and Recycle for a Profit. That is the message that this blog promotes as it covers how people and companies make money from recycled and reused items. The blog has articles about how others have made money as well as ideas that you can do to make some money from recycling items. The site also provides helpful resources and downloads that can get you started on doing more. Many people may not be aware that recycling or reusing products can actually save you money as well as even make money. For example, bringing your own bags to the grocery store may seem like it is a hassle but do you know that a lot of grocery stores such as Safeway and Mollie Stones will give you 5 cents of credit for each bag you bring in to reuse? So not only are you saving money, you are also helping the environment!

LivePath

Treehugger, Instructables, and Popular Science have teamed up for a contest that promotes creating your own eco-friendly projects. Hopefully most people know what Treehugger and Popular Science is might not know what Instructables is all about. It is a website where users submit their own DIY and how-to guides for pretty much anything that you can think of. The prizes for the contest are:

Grand Prize
The grand prize winner will receive a Breezer Liberty hybrid commuter bicycle with pedal-powered lights, a brief write-up in a future issue of Popular Science, and a 1-year subscription to Popular Science magazine.

First Prize
5 first prize winners will each receive a Solio Universal Hybrid Solar Charger (TreeHugger review here), an Instructables robot t-shirt, and a 1-year subscription to Popular Science magazine.

Second Prize
10 second prize winners will each receive an Instructables robot t-shirt and a 1-year subscription to Popular Science Magazine.

via TreeHugger