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Coca-Cola's green billboard consumes carbon dioxide like so much sugary soda
Sure, we've seen plenty of cool billboard features over the years, from facial recognition to interactive Pong games, but few have managed the dual feat of promoting a popular soft drink and making the world a slightly greener place. All of that fuzzy area you see surrounding the silhouette of the Coke bottle in the above 60 by 60 foot billboard is made up of a number of Fukien tea plants, each of which can soak up around 13 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, for a combined total of 46,800 pounds. The plants are housed in pots made from recycled Coke bottles and are watered via a drip irrigation system. The billboard is the product of a partnership between Coca-Cola Philippines and the World Wildlife Fund. No word on when it might be greening up more skylines around the world. Press release below.
Earth Hour 2011 starts at 8:30PM your local time, wants you to switch off for a bit
In what has become an annual tradition now, the WWF's Earth Hour is presently sweeping across the globe, getting people to switch off non-essential lights and appliances for a sixty-minute kindness to Ma Earth and her finite energy resources. All you'll need to do to participate is power down the old World of Warcraft questing station, turn the TV off, and maybe take a walk outside so your lights don't have to be on, starting at 8:30PM tonight. Half the world's already done its bit and it's now coming around to those in the UK, Portugal and Western African countries to do the same. Will you be part of it?
WWF file format: it's like a PDF that's impossible to print
Have you ever received a PDF in your email, only to find yourself weeping moments later after accidentally printing 349 copies and murdering six or seven endangered trees in the Panamanian rain forest? It's more serious of a problem than you may realize. In order to solve spontaneous bouts of Accident Print Syndrome, the World Wide Fund For Nature has created the WWF file format. We'll let the entity itself explain: The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It's a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here's your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don't need printing out – then simply save them as WWF. For now, it's only readable on a Mac, which means that WWF files also cannot be printed from a PC. We're envisioning a world of college professors using these to prevent printable study guides, but so as long as hackers also exist in that same universe, those who prefer their documents on paper -- and HP's ink department -- will probably figure out their own road to nirvana. Must to the dismay of Ma Earth, of course.
Telltale Games bundles Puzzle Agent, Sam and Max, four more for $20
Starting right now, Telltale Games is offering six adventure games for just $19.95. The initial four are The Whispered World, Jack Keane, King's Quest Collection, and Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode 1, with Telltale's own Puzzle Agent and Sam & Max: Season 2 unlocking as more people buy the bundle. Child's Play and The World Wildlife Fund are among five charities receiving 25 percent of the profits from this promotion. The deal is currently being offered only on PC, and will be available via the Telltale Games store until September 10.
Penguin USB drive is infinitely cute, hilarious
It's not like we haven't seen slightly funny / interesting / unorthodox USB flash drives before, but there's just something about a headless penguin hanging from a USB port that gets us chuckling. Available in 2/4/8/16GB capacities, the simply titled Penguin drive even gives a portion of its proceeds to the World Wildlife Fund, providing you with even more reason to cave to the urge and pick one up. This little fellow's up on Amazon right now for $12.95 to $42.95.
Club Penguin kids turn MMO fun into $1 million for charities
After all the stories about online gaming addiction, we're glad when we see the occasional bit of goodness come out of virtual worlds and MMOs. This time, we're happy to hear that New Horizon Interactive (now owned by Disney), the developers of Club Penguin, encouraged the kids who play its game to donate some of their hard-earned virtual cash to charity.New Horizon assigned a real currency value to each donation, and let kids choose which kind of charity to give to -- children's health, the environment, or kids in the developing world. When the donation period ended, the company donated about $1 million dollars to three charities. Among those, the World Wildlife Fund received about $330,000. Not bad!Let's hope this is the start of a trend. As Kenny Luna over at Treehugger pointed out, this is a win-win scenario; Disney and New Horizon get some positive media attention, and charities get much-needed support. Imagine what kind of results Blizzard could get if it did something like this in World of Warcraft!
