SchoolPulse is an event management system for parents, teachers, coaches, PTO/PTA leaders, and anyone else involved with kids. The keys to the service are the calendars and group management tools. The site was created by John Boynton, a frustrated father of four who got fed up with the lack of tools available for parents and teachers when it came to the kids. He also wanted a way for all parents and teachers to communicate with one another so he launched his site.

The most important part of the service appears to be the groups feature. Parents, teacher and other people responsible for watching and managing children can either join an existing group or create one. The key is to enter your zipcode first to see if the group you need already exists or not. If it doesn’t then they can establish one and invite others to join. If the group is a class room then all teachers and all of the parents of the children in the class will join. From there, everyone will be able to communicate with one another and be on the same page, literally and figuratively.

The Calendar is the central focal point to the group and the entire site for that matter. It’s where all of the events and festivities are entered and schedules managed. The other elements to the group area that are very useful are the discussions area where everyone communicates, the Picture gallery where photos are shared, Wish List which gives everyone a head’s up on what’s needed and the Documents library which can contain important forms and other things that they can download or print.

Obviously, this group is geared for school but they can be customized for many other types of groups involving adults supervising children. Other types of group are Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, soccer teams, Little League teams, Chess clubs, and so on.

There’s another area dedicated to each member’s calendar of events for all of the groups they belong to. For example, if you’re a parent of three children then you could have a calendar of events for each one of their classes in addition to calendars for their recreational activities such as chess club, Sax lessons, soccer, T-Ball and Ballet. That’s a tremendous amount of activities to manage. Well, SchoolBuz will let you add all of those events to your calendar and provides a handy filtering system that will change the view of your master calendar to show what’s going in that group. It also presents all of these scheduled events to reveal any conflicting times and dates.

SchoolPulse provides a much needed service for adults that need to manage so many activities for kids. Using the tools available online these days is a great idea. However, there are things that could be done to improve the usefulness of the service. For example, they need to provide the ability to synchronize all of the appointments and events from all of these calendars with your primary calendar such as Google Calendar or Outlook which might mean supporting the iCal standard. This is important because that would allow adults to then sync that valuable information with their mobile devices which is what they depend on so much while on the run desparately trying to make it from one appointment to another. Still, SchoolPulse offers a great deal of tools.

Source:Mashable!

Last year we did a post on 80+ Green Living Sites. This is an update on that, with more than 100 new and/or improved sites for everything from decreasing your carbon footprint to finding green jobs, environmentally-friendly shopping, and more.

Green everything is hot right now, and there’s no sign that it’s going to slow down any time in the near future. What are your favorite sites for green living? Tell us more in the comments.

Carbon Footprint Calculators, Other Tools and Carbon Offsets

The Carbon Account - Reduce your carbon footprint and share tips with others.

RoofRay - An online tool that uses satellite photos to help you design and compare photovoltaic arrays.

GreenIQ - Measures your carbon emissions and overall environmental footprint. Also includes a blog and other helpful information.

Carbonrally - Lets you compete in challenges to reduce your environmental impact with others in your area or worldwide.

COzero - A site that calculates your carbon emissions and then shows you ways to reduce and offset them.

CO2Stats - Automatically purchases renewable energy for your website based on your site’s environmental footprint.

3Degrees - Find out your carbon footprint and then support climate change fighting projects.

Carma - Online carbon monitoring of power plants and power companies.

Charitable Giving

ImprovingYourWorld - Vote for your preferred charity or cause on this site, and they’ll get a portion of donations based on the number of votes they receive.

MicroGiving - Choose a cause to donate to and then see the results that your donation brings.

TimeBank - Volunteer your time based on who you are and your schedule to worthy causes.

Pledgie - Raise money for a cause or start your own cause.

Giveo - Donate to a cause or start your own.

nabuur.com - Online volunteering platform that links volunteers with local communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America to find solutions to local problems.

JustGive.org - Tools to make charitable giving part of every day life by connecting donors with causes they care most about.

Firstgiving - Online fund raising pages you can share that let you raise money for any US nonprofit.

BringLight - Connects donors with charities who describe specific funding needs, so you know exactly where your money is going.

CareBadges - Create website badges for causes you believe in.

Six Degrees - Create online badges and become a celebrity for your cause.

GivingPal - Shop through this site and a portion of your spending is donated to a charity of your choosing.

ChangingThePresent - You can sponsor a pig, help a deaf child, provide clean water, or any number of other tangible charitable gifts through this site.

CharityNavigator - Independent charity evaluations of over 5,300 American charities.

MissionFish - Fund raising tools for raising money on ebay.

CrowdFunder - Tools for raising money for whatever your cause is.

Noza - Helps charities find donors.

MicroPlace - Find people all over the world who are looking for someone to invest in them to help them work their way out of poverty.

Stuff Your Rucksack - Volunteer to transport items when you travel to people who need them (such as bringing a school some books or bringing clothes to an orphanage).

ripple - Fight poverty by searching through this site, or donate directly.

Rainfall of Envelopes - Makes it easy to receive or give money gifts for any event, including charitable fundraisers.

DonorsChoose.org - Provide students in need with materials and resources that public schools are often lacking.

good2gether - A platform that helps distribute relevant charitable information across media sites all over the Internet.

The Point - Get people to pledge to give money or take action, wait for enough people to pledge (reach the “tipping point”) and then have members follow through on their pledge, sure that they will actually make a difference.

Communities, Networking and Dating

Edenbee - An online community dedicated to reducing your carbon footprint.

EthicalSingles - An online dating site for environmentally and socially responsible singles.

Eco Treadsetters - An online green community sponsored by the Yokohama tire company.

EcoSpace - An online community of people who want to create positive change.

2People - A community aimed at building the public mandate for solutions to global warming.

Hugg - User-submitted green news from all over the Web.

Gaia Community - A social network of individuals committed to changing the world.

Veggie Community - Social networking for vegans, vegetarians, and raw foodists.

Green-Passions - Online dating and social networking for green singles.

Care2 - Green social networking site that includes news, groups, ecards, and more.

Creative Citizen - An online community dedicated to finding creative solutions for green living.

Greenopolis - Collaborative and interactive education website that brings together communities, organizations, foundations, corporations and universities to reward people for making positive environmental changes in their lives.

Segway Social - A social network for Segway users.

Out For A Ride - Social networking for bicycle riders.

AlternativeEnergy.com - Social networking, news and more for the alternative energy industry.

traxtuff - Network for loaning and borrowing things, as well as tracking the things you’ve borrowed or loaned out.

Razoo - Social network for promoting social responsibility.

EMwomen - Social networking dedicated to empowering women to make a difference in their world.

OffsetX - Social action network that allows you to “offset” (vote against) anything you want, whether it’s a politician, business, disease, or whatever.

Ladder to Heaven - Promotes the sharing of good deeds performed by users or others.

Changemakers - A platform for open source social innovation that produces global action frameworks that draw on the work of social entrepreneurs and seed collaborative action.

Just Cause - Read stories about people making positive change, learn about creative solutions to problems in the world and share your own ideas.

Green Business, Money and Careers

do the right thing.com - Online business ratings based on environmental and social impact.

EnvironmentalCareer.com - An online job search engine for environmental jobs.

SustainableBusiness.com - News and networking for green businesses to help them grow.

justmeans - Sustainable and socially responsible business and stock information.

Local Information

Earth 911 - A site that provides local recycling and product stewardship information.

Greenopia - A local green living guide.

Green Map - Maps of green living, cultural, natural and civic resources for communities around the world.

Ecovian - A local green living directory.

Projects & Action-Based Sites

1Sky - An online political action site that is focused on getting the federal government to act on climate change by 2010.

Catalog Choice - Opt-out of catalog mailing lists to reduce your junk mail.

ProQuo - Opt-out of junk mail lists (you can also opt-in to offers you actually want to receive).

GreenDimes - Another service that guarantees to stop up to 90% of your junk mail.

41Pounds.org - Stop 80-95% of unwanted catalogs and junk mail. The name comes from the approximately 41 pounds of junk mail the average American adult receives each year.

stopthejunkmail.com - Fully automated service for opting out of junk mail lists.

RoadSharing - A carpooling coordination site.

PickupPal - Connecting drivers and passengers to save money and reduce environmental impact by carpooling.

Recycling

RecycleBank - An online rewards points program to encourage recycling.

Scoodi - Trading, buying and selling locally to keep things out of landfills.

Throwplace.com - Find a good home for your unwanted stuff instead of throwing it away.

Search Engines, Directories & Guides

Forestle - A search engine that saves .1 square yard of rainforest for every search you do.

Greenseng - A search engine that helps offset your carbon emissions through CO2Stats.

Green Planet Search - A green search engine that also includes recent news, events, and more.

Twitoosearch.com - An environmentally conscious search engine with a black search background.

Eco-find - A green search engine that displays eco-friendly living tips on the homepage.

GreenRenter - A directory of green residential and commercial buildings and rental vacancies.

EcoTrotters.com - An online guide for ecologically friendly travel.

Ecocho - A green search engine that plants two trees (offsetting a ton of greenhouse gases) for every 1,000 searches performed.

Greensie - Another green search engine.

Green Link Central - A human edited green search engine.

Greenona - Another green search engine that shows the top 500 searches, top 100 clicked results, and more.

Low Impact Living - Provides information to reduce your environmental impact, including information on green products and practices.

Fivelimes - Green living directory, including green products, green news and discussion boards.

CDM Bazaar - A platform for exchanging information on Clean Development Mechanism projects from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

blue egg - Eco information directory.

Shopping & Products

Guide Me Green - An online directory of green companies and brands that includes forums and a newsletter.

EVO - A site that includes green product ratings, services and information.

TheFindGreen.com - A green products search engine.

Greenzer - Green shopping directory.

Eco Monkey - Eco-friendly shopping directory.

Rate It Green - A green products directory that features community ratings.

Greener One - Green ratings for mainstream products.

VegBay.com - Online green auctions.

GreenDeals Daily - Online shopping deals on green products.

GoodGuide - Find environmentally friendly products that are safe and healthy.

Video & User-Generated Content

Protect The Human - Site for sharing videos, pictures and links to promote human rights.

ViroPOP - A video network just for green videos.

Other Resources

love earth - The BBC’s site for environmental topics, including their environmental programming.

Pixily - Save paper and trees by organizing your documents online.

folia - Garden organization app that lets you track sprouting, blooming, and harvests in your garden.

Green Thing - Sends a monthly email that includes a green thing to do for the month.

askCHARITY - An online charity contact directory for media professionals.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Green Thing Gives You a Reason to Do GoodRiverWired Launches Green CommunityYahoo Holding Bix Contest to Find Green IconGreenvoice Launches Activism Community for Living GreenAlternativeEnergy is a Network About Just ThatGoogle Maps Provided for International Clean Up WeekendJobs’ Green Apple for Blog Action Day

Company Name

ecomii

20-Word Description

ecomii is the first and only comprehensive and trusted resource designed to clarify the confusion of “green living” and offer millions of Conscious Consumers the information and tools necessary for making informed, practical, positive green lifestyle choices. It’s like WebMD but for the environment.

CEO’s Pitch

Most consumers are aware of global warming, but they don’t get the urgency of it and that it’s largely solvable. The missing ingredient is the force of public opinion. So what does spark change towards a greener lifestyle? For one thing, many are prompted to take green actions if they think others like them are doing it. This ‘everybody’s doing it’ pitch is almost never used around energy conservation. If people hear their neighbors are changing their habits, they’ll reduce their impact further. It was with these principles in mind that ecomii ™ (pronounced e-koh-mee) was founded.

One of the most exciting areas of ecomii.com will be ecomii Action (www.ecomii.com/action) which provides simple steps to begin maintaining a “green lifestyle.” ecomii Action cultivates all the key areas for success offering a unique interactive community linked by social ties and common perspectives about the environment to act together collectively contributing to the health of our communities, our nation and our planet – one concrete goal at a time. ecomii Action’s fun and accessible tools for enrolling friends and family in making simple strides towards greener living, enables friends and family to work together on common causes, compare their progress to their social circle as well as to the greater ecomii population.

Mashable’s Take

ecomii has established a service centered around green living and the environment. There’s a tremendous amount of data out there about this topic, so aggregating the best of this information in one centralized location online makes a great deal of sense.

There are a lot of useful tips on a variety of topics from green parenting to being healthier by eating organic food or walking instead of driving, which also helps the environment by reducing pollution. There’s also a good amount of information on ways to save on expenses by making purchases in bulk, how to clean your house without purchasing cleaning products loaded with dangerous chemicals, etc. There are tips on making your life less stressful and more productive as well. So, besides learning new ways of saving the planet, you could also find ways to save your health, finance and stress.

One of the nicest features is the goals section. This is a great place to go to find inspiration for accomplishing something. If you’re not sure what goals you want to tackle, this area could help you make the right decision for your lifestyle. It’s an excellent way to motivate and challenge yourself and others. Examples of current goals are “BYOB: Bring your own bag to the store,” “Eat Organic Foods,” and “Choose Earth-friendly diapers.”

ecomii has other features aimed to inform and engage its community. For example, the Debatables area is an interesting feature. It’s sort of like a game where you are presented with controversial topics and you get to vote on them and see the results of the poll. It’s a good way to see where your personal views fall in line within the community.

The ecomii Action part of the service strives to help members get in gear and put what they’ve learned into use. In essense, it’s a social network where you work on common goals with other like-minded individuals. You can help and encourage each other to find ways to live greener, healthier and hopefully happier lives.

There’s a lot to digest on ecomii and it could be overwhelming the first time you visit the site, but that’s really a good thing. There’s plenty of food for thought and tons of inspiration for changing your life as well as contributing to making the world a better place. As the old saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem. ecomii seems like the place to go to find the answers we need for greener living.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has unveiled a new community for sharing knowledge about environmental topics: Wikia Green. It is hosted on his for-profit wiki hosting service Wikia, and it currently has over 600 articles.

In an interview with CNET, Wales explains that the purpose of the site is not so much to bring day to day news about green topics, but rather a central knowledge hub for all things green.

“What we’re doing is actually complementary to blogs in the sense that what blogs do is update you on a day-to-day basis. Also, blogs are engaged in political or other types of analysis, whereas a wiki becomes a touchpoint for the community, a place where people meet up and work on whatever the consensus is about a certain topic,” he says.

It’s also not just a green Wikipedia. The site itself describes three ways in which it is different to the regular wikipedia: the content is written from a green point of view; it is focused on what you can actually do, and it is more accessible and relevant to an average reader (see some comparisons here).

The question “do we really need another green site?” is asked in the interview, but it doesn’t really apply here. I’m sure that Wales will be able to leverage his influence and the influence of Wikipedia’s community to turn Wikia Green into an important resource for learning about the environment.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Wikia Search Actually Launches Private BetaThe Daily Poll: Your Impressions of WikiaNew Wikia Communities LaunchWikia & Playxpert Offer In-Game Wiki WidgetWikia Gets New Look and New FeaturesWikia Adds Four More Open Source MagazinesWikia Brings on Jabber Founder

There’s a reason a lot of us would rather take a few trips to the dumpster or the end of the driveway in order to get rid of our stuff–sometimes selling it online can be a hassle. But if you knew that you were also encouraging a green lifestyle by participating in a consignment system, would you put in a bit of extra effort? Gazelle, a site that lets you resell your electronics, aims to simplify the classifieds system by creating an environment that doesn’t require person-to-person sales.

Instead of just throwing away your electronics, you can resell them and earn some cash, in turn recycling by allowing someone else to reuse your items. Gazelle actually buys your items, and acts something like a pawn shop for your electronic gadgets. The service includes an online calculator which will estimate the value of your products based on the information you provide. For those items that no longer have market value, they can merely be recycled instead of resold.

Part of Second Rotation Inc., Gazelle features a few new upgrades that will hopefully make the overall process of selling and recycling electronic items simpler. New navigation capabilities have been layered into the Gazelle site so users can easily find the items they’d like to sell and begin the process from there. The estimate calculator has also been improved, displaying the value of items over time. Now you’ll be able to better determine when an optimal time to sell your used products will be. The Gazelle upgrades also feature more Web 2.0 aspects, which merely introduce more transparency into the selling process, giving users more control by offering more insight to the data it collects for the purpose of determining things like product value, etc.

Whether you’d like to become more active in the reuse and recycle process, or you’d just like to offload your stuff for a fixed price, Web-based consignment service, Gazelle is hoping to lure you in one way or another. Through its partnerships with other companies and electronic goods stores, Gazelle turns a profit from the gadgets and items you sold for cash, but its upgrades really seek to better utilize its existing Web presence for the purpose of gaining a broader user base through simplified mechanisms.

If you used the SecondRotation site in the past year or so, you’ll recall that its bare bones appearance did little to steal market share from alternative sites on looks alone, though the service itself has proven to be quite useful. The new look and improved process will certainly make Gazelle more attractive to the average consumer and will allow Second Rotation Inc. to further its reach.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Social News: MingleNow, iBloks, FanNationShare the Joy and Cheers of the World iPhone 3G Release via Qik EventsDigg V3 Leaves BetaYouTube Launches Valentines Day PromoYouTube Germany LaunchesFamster Launches Famster IMMomJunction, Another “MySpace for Moms”, Raises $1.5 Million

• 
  DEALS
  
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  YOUR PRIVACY IS AN ILLUSION
  
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Today’s most discussed stories are

Yahoo cans female finance columnist, tells her to try “lifestyles” (12 comments), Wear tinfoil hats when using Adobe products (6) and Digg CEO says selling out would be easier than an IPO (3).

Source:Valleywag

I should include end-of-year lists. But there are three even more annoying artifacts you’ll be stuck with every freaking day of the coming year.

“Green” technology I live next to Whole Foods, so I overhear the most ridiculous self-serving pseudoscience while in line for my organic espresso. People think they’re saving the Earth from Republicans by buying the right dishwasher soap to drive home in a Lexus hybrid that spews as much greenhouse gas per mile as the gasoline-engine version. You want to clean the planet? Demand that Al Gore stop India and China from becoming the world’s new pollution supersource.

The semantic Web Tim Berners-Lee ask that you please stop having so much fun on the Internet. It’s time to return control of the whole thing to a bunch of postdoctoral researchers who publish long tomes titled “Thoughts on a metamodeling architecture of Web ontology languages.” You can read about it in this month’s Scientific American, but — wait for it — the article’s not published on the Web.

Facebook I use Facebook daily and truth is, there’s not much there to write about. So I’m not sure why the entire mainstream media suddenly replaced “MySpace” with “Facebook” in the exact same overreaching misreportage they’ve been writing for three years. My theory goes like this: Every time some kid makes a few billion on paper, editors who know in their hearts they’ll be juggling spreadsheets to make the mortgage payments for the rest of their lives get a little crazy. At the rate Web 2.0 is minting rich kids it’s going to be a long, long year.

No matter how you flaunt it in public, an iPhone will not get you laid. Worse yet, now come’s word Steve Jobs’s Jesusphone could ruin user procreation long-term. Hazardous chemicals found inside iPhones “interfere with sexual development in mammals,” according to Greenpeace. More bad news after the jump.

After testing the iPhone in U.K. laboratories, Greenpeace researchers said they found it contains toxic brominated compounds, indicating the prescence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and hazardous PVC. Sounds unpleasant. Greenpeace published a full report here. In reaction to the news, The U.S. National Center for Environmental Health said it will file suit against Apple for breaking a Californian law which requires products containing certain chemicals to carry a warning label, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The takeaway? However much you love your iPhone, please, for the love of Jobs, do not pry open the case and rub its innards up and down your crotch. It’s tempting, we realize. But don’t.