Going “green” is tough. We receive junk mail, use diapers that have a half-life of maybe a 20 years (speculating here), drive our cars half a block to pick up a gallon of milk that is in a plastic container we just toss back into the garbage.

Yuck!

Well, with another kid on the way, I have been thinking of doing a whole lot more recycling. But there is something else that I spend a great deal of time doing – staring at a screen and especially Google.com. According to Justine Ungaro, a fellow photographer, “If Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved.”

So, check out Blackle. No jokes here. This is still the same old Google search engine doing its thang in the background. Pretty cool.

Blackle is finally the new black.

UPDATE: Apparently there is also another website called Ninja (all black and “deadly accurate” – get it) that does the same thing as Blackle. [Thanks to Tim Sanders for this tip in his latest blog post]

Worried someone is swiping your images from your website? Well, logic dictates that if your images are online and someone wants to “borrow” them, they can and probably will.

To an extent I don't have a problem with that. What? Stop the insanity, you say. I did say “to an extent” didn't I?

So here is the caveat: you can borrow my images and even use them on your site as long as my name or brand is prominently displayed on the image and never cropped or erased. If you want to spread some Seshu Spice, I am all for it.

The flip side of this is of course taking it off my site and calling them your own, promoting any product or defaming or libeling anyone present in the image. Tsk, tsk … as I read in one other visual artist's site, “It's tacky and illegal.” And, yeah, I will come after you like a ruffled bull elephant.

So, if you don't see a credit on the image, please don't take, swipe, steal, use, hijack, usurp any of my or anyone else's images. Just because it is available doesn't make it ethical for you to download them. Ask, if you are interested in the images. A short note to the artist will open doors faster than pissing her or him off.

Photographer David Riecks has this page showing a slew of image security options for people like you and me. Some can be easily implemented and some others require a monthly cash outflow. In the end, you have to decide whether to risk it or protect your investment, or in my case make it a win-win situation as long as the guidelines are adhered to by the user/borrower.

So, what do you do with your images? Do you register them with the copyright office? Or do you just don't care? Comment.

I have been tracking my various websites using Clicky, an online stats program that is easy to set up and easy to use. The user interface, unlike Google Analytics (which I also use, but now more sparingly), is easy on the eyes and my limited capacity to focus on numbers. Check it out here.

I have a Facebook page. I also use LinkedIn.

Check them both out and let's connect one way or another.