What is Blog Action Day? BAD started in 2007 by Collis and Cyan from the Envato network. This year they turned over their efforts to something bigger with Change.org.
BAD is the day for bloggers all over the world to discuss the year’s topic: Climate Change. How YOU can help? Write about climate change and how it affects you, your community, and even your environment. Do you have ideas to share or even eco friendly products to promote? Do it now! Tell everyone why you think this a huge issue.
Later today Iwearyourshirt will post a video about BAD and WHS so we hope you come by later!

What is this great WordPress plugin you ask? It shows statistics of what your hosting server is doing. You can find out if your host is really as great as it should be. This WordPress plugin is light and versatile and can be fitted to a sidebar on the homepage only or just on one page you choose. The Server Info Plugin, or as I call it Great Geek Plugin, is also user friendly because it fits in nicely with well built themes and is not bulky. Features can be adjusted in your WordPress control panel, under Settings.

Oh, we should mention that after you upload the plugin, you will have to activate BOTH plugin types on the control panel of WordPress. It is weird, but do that and everything will work fine.

Here is some of the information you can find out about your server:
System Vital Information:
Kernel Version
Distribution name
Uptime

Hardware Information:
Processors
CPU speed
BUS speed

Memory usage:
Physical Memory
Free
Used
Total

You can pick and choose what fields you want to show to visitors and where you want to place it on your blog or website. Check out the Server Info Plugin out and if you have comments or questions, post a comment here.

More info on System Information Plugin and you can download it there.

WordPress Page info and also where you can download the plugin: here

As a result, we will be giving away three (3) FREE shared hosting packages! This will help anyone to jump start a blog, website, or even sell something online. These free accounts will cover one year shared hosting and a domain name.

If you want to participate in the contest, please post a comment below with a short, 140 character poem about web hosting. So be funny, silly, insightful! You can also twitter it to us @hostingsearch.

There are a couple of drawbacks to the hard drive donation program. Once every two months a maintenance person will come and check the hard drive. But this is a small price to pay. You are earning money for doing nothing. Awesome, isn’t it? With any program, there’s always that tricky agreement termination. Timing is crucial; if someone signed up for hosting that uses a part of your hard drive you will have to wait until the end of the hosting plan period to get your property back. If you need the hard drive back right away, you can terminate the agreement after compensating the remaining period back to the hosting company.

The bigger the hard drive the more you earn. Simple as that. Plan sizes from mediatemple (mt) are as follows:
Tiny drive- 100GB- $10/month
Little drive- 200GB- $20/month
Big hard drive- 1000GB-

Think ahead if you want to buy a new PC and order one with extra disc space. I bet you already want to sign up as a “hosting donor” so here is the link. Don’t give away too much though and think before throwing out your old good for nothing PC, it may be worth something now.

• Sparrow- $5/month, 145 character limit
• Dove- $15/month, 160 character limit
• Owl- $50/month, 250 character limit
• Eagle- $250/month, 500 character limit

Rumors are also circulating that super accounts, in line with the American Express Black, called Black will also be available.

but it may just all be a joke

Different from other top level domains (TLD), the .eco domain name registrants will be paying part of the domain costs to charities. There will a set of environmental and ecological non profit organizations that will receive the fund to support green viable initiatives.

Mr. Gore said:

We fully support Dot Eco LLC in its efforts to secure the .eco top level domain through the ICANN application process and look forward to working with Dot Eco LLC to promote .eco. This is a truly exciting opportunity for the environmental movement and for the internet as a whole.

The approval by ICANN (the governing body of domain registrars) must still pass but chances are high for Dot Eco LLC to receive the new domain extension.

What remains to be seen is how the .eco domain will be regulated. It is intended for green companies, environmental non profits, wildlife and ecological communities, and people supporting the green revolution. But, will people abuse it and create crazy domain names just as everyone else has done with .mp, .us, .sg? Regulation and information will be set up to guide the process once it is cleared.

Apple unveiled a new iPod Shuffle this week. It is smaller, sleeker, smaller, buttonless, speaks to you, and comes with headphones. Wait, did you say the Shuffle has no buttons? Yes sir, it just has the hold button that serves as a hold/off/on. I have a feeling people are going to mistake these miniature mp3 music players for sticks of gum. I still do not who Apple is trying to market with their Shuffle; kids, toddlers, small pets? They already have a special sports one so no point in reinventing the wheel. Oh, and there is only one color to this ipod: silver.

Facebook revamps its homepage. Luckily it is only the front page that got a makeover. For me, it won’t do. It’s more confusing, more crowded, and more visually stupid looking. I love FB and have been using it for a few years now, but come’on, is this what the team thought as better? Whatever happened to usability and web design? Besides the fact that loading times are terrible and links don’t always work, Facebook has failed on the user interface. I hope next time they have a bigger test group telling them what makes sense.

Officially putting Sweden on the map, the TPB trial will establish precedent whether their website and services facilitated illegal music file distribution or their service cannot be held liable for what people do with it. Because The Pirate Bay never hosted any music, the defense claims they have not violated any copyright laws. The prosecution is convinced, along with the movie and music industries, TPB is the next living kin of satan. Hyperboles and exaggerations ran amuck at the trial.

Pirate Bay Trial Famous and sometimes, Stupid Quotes:

“Songwriters and publishers all over the world are dependent on having their rights protected by law. The Pirate Bay is disregarding those rights and abusing the creativity of the people who own them.” – Ger Hatton, ICMF

“You are welcome to send some flowers to my wife.” – Roger Wallis, professor at KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) in Stockholm
(his wife received over $4000 dollars worth of flowers in a day)

“It is common sense, if they couldn’t get it for free they would buy it and when we ask them, they confirm that.” – John Kennedy, CEO of IFPI

“Big companies from foreign nations trying to affect the outcome in a Swedish Court of Justice with straightforward bribes. Now the copyright lobby is showing its true face” – Rickard Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party

“It’s a trial regarding four individuals that have conducted a big commercial business making money out of others file-sharing … copyright protected works.” – Monique Wadsted, Prosecutor

If found guilty:
Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström could face two years in prison and a $12.7 million fine.

Well, the verdict will come out April 17th, till then we hope for more mudslinging.

Have you ever wanted to change to homepage to Google.com? And you just didn’t know how? Well the folks who created Firebug must be the smartest people around. Sammy decided it was time to revamp the google page. We rather like it now; the guys especially love the Hooters addition.

(click to enlarge)

The article states ” Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.”

True?  No, not even.  No one knows where this figure came from, not even the physicist, Alex Wissner-Gross.  He admitted to making statements that Google, as well as other data centers, leave an environmental footprint.  As to how much this impact is on a personal level, such as visiting a website or doing a google search, remains to be quantified.

So 7 grams / search isn’t the right but maybe we will find out the environmental cost of a search one of these days.