EchoDitto

In honor of Earth Day today, we at EchoDitto are joining with individuals around the world who are committing to do something to combat climate change. Most of us already walk, bike, or take public transportation to work; we're adamant recyclers; and we use environmentally-friendly cleaning products from Seventh Generation. But today we're especially proud to contribute to the fight against global warming with the relaunch of 1Sky.org.

1Sky was created in 2007 with one primary objective: to harness the power of the millions of Americans who are concerned about climate change in order to pass federal legislation by 2010 that can reverse global warming. Since its founding, 1Sky has built a platform of specific solutions, partnered with organizations and allies around the country, and activated a network of over 50,000 citizens who are actively lobbying for policy change and garnering support for the 1Sky solutions in meetings with their members of Congress.

There's been a lot of talk lately about the demise of the traditional print newspaper, sparked by Eric Alterman's article in the New Yorker called "Out of Print". It's an interesting discussion that made me examine my own news-procuring habits.

Sorry, print newspapers, but for me you're already dead. I most recently touched newsprint this weekend while I was balling up pages of the Washington Post to help get my campfire started. Before that, I can't even remember. I know that there are many of you out there who can't live without your morning paper (or papers), but that ain't me.

After bitterly disappointing elections in 2000 and 2004, I took my leave of politics and decided I was no longer interested—if you'd asked me, I might have told you I was a registered cynic. This year's election, until recently, had largely failed to capture my attention. But as I watched the Iowa caucus results—and some caucuses themselves! How fascinating!!—I felt that political part of myself stirring again.

And after watching last night's primary results, I feel optimistic. What I'm feeling at this moment is the best of politics, that wave of emotion as the candidates remind you that we can make change, and we can make it together.

I have a confession to make.

For the past year or so, I have been merely "going through the motions" of using the newest social networking technologies.

True, I have been dutifully maintaining (ok, "maintaining" may be too generous) my MySpace and Facebook profiles. I signed up with Twitter and I've even twittered more than 20 times (granted, that's over the course of two months; I've already been chided for my lame tweets). I use the EchoDitto del.icio.us feed, and even started a personal one. One thing I'm on top of: I'm a dedicated updater of my Gmail status messages.

But the usefulness of all of this just hadn't clicked for me. Until today.

It's like Christmas in the EchoDitto office in D.C. today. This morning we received a special delivery — our new foosball table! But it didn’t look much like a foosball table when it arrived: it looked like a box with lots and lots of parts.

So that begs the question: how many Dittos does it take to assemble a foosball table? Answer: Five Dittos … plus five cups of coffee (refilled at least once), four screwdrivers, two Allen wrenches, one level, some wood glue, and duct tape. After all, I never heard of a project (an offline one anyway) completed by a bunch of geeks that didn’t involve duct tape.