The next time you design your site you may want to consider not using an all white design. Why you may ask? Your monitor uses more energy to display an all white site compared to a dark or black site. In fact an all white page uses about 74 watts of power where an all black page uses only 59 watts.

 In the early days of the Internet there were tons of grey and black background sites but today the majority of the sites have lots and lots of white space.

So how much power could you save by switching to black?

Let’s use Google for example. They receive 200 million or more queries per day. If they were to switch to an all black design like in the picture they would 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day. An average household uses about 10,655 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. Therefore,  the energy saved per day could power about as much electricity as 1850 to 2500 households use in a year. 

I am adding a new feature to the blog where each week (on Saturday) we will through out a new web or business discussion topic. You can answer in the comments as to how you feel.

 This week I have been visiting a lot of blogs. Of the 350 I visited I kept tally of those that allow you to comment and those that do not. I also kept track of those that allow you to comment and notify you of a reply.

The stats are in and 56% of the blogs did allow for comments but of those 56% only 10% of them allowed you to be notified of a reply. I was a little shocked by both stats personally and though it would be closer to 90% allowing comments and 50% or more for a notify of reply. Personally I think this is a missed opportunity by bloggers to build there communities.

For example, I was reading Seth Godin’s blog and wanted to comment on one of his topics. I didn’t see the ability to do so,  so I email him. Amazingly enough he replied as to why he does not allow comments…

 ”I think comments are terrific, and they are the key attraction for some blogs and some bloggers. Not for me, though. First, I feel compelled to clarify or to answer every objection or to point out every flaw in reasoning. Second, it takes way too much of my time to even think about them, never mind curate them. And finally, and most important for you, it permanently changes the way I write. Instead of writing for everyone, I find myself writing in anticipation of the commenters. I’m already itching to rewrite my traffic post below. So, given a choice between a blog with comments or no blog at all, I think I’d have to choose the latter.”

This got me to think why those 44% don’t allow comments.

So I through this out to you the readers. Should commenting be allowed on blogs? and why?

I found a new plugin while surfing that was created by Richard Miller. It is called What Would Seth Godin Do WordPress plugin.

Seth Godin is a marketing Guru and has written many great books. You can read our review of on of his books here.

The new plugin allows you to set  a cookie which will greet new members with a welcome message an urge them to join your RSS feed. You can set the message and number of times to show the message.

The plugin is very easy to use and I would suggest you give it a try.

The Massive Technology Show, the largest show of its kind in Canada, is being held March 28, 2007 at the Vancouver Exhibition & Convention Centre. Massive connects you with new technologies that can benefit your company in an inviting, jargon-free environment.

If you live in the Greater Vancouver area and you are a techie (or maybe a wanna be techie) you should come down to the Massive Technology Show. Due the looming re-branding we did not have time to get everything ready for the show this year but we will be there walking about.

You can sign up free for the trade show portion.

Due to the success of John Chow’s Review and our BlueFur.com Review contests we are holding a new contest.

Post a review of the Massive Technology Show on your blog and post a link a back to it in the comments. We will pick 2 winners to receive the full access passes which means you can listen to all the speakers who are presenting at the show. The winner will be picked on March 14, 2007.  This is valued at $149 for each ticket. Please note that if you do win that the trade show is in Vancouver, BC Canada.

Our affiliate program is now updated to work with the new domain with new banners and text links. These are available through BlueFurAffiliate.com.

 If you are currently an affiliate please take a second to login and update your link or banner.

If you are not an affiliate you can sign-up and get paid for referring customers to us. That’s right get paid 10-20% for each referral you pass to us. We have 2 affiliate programs to choose from so choose the right one for you.

As we continue to blog we are seeking out more resources for you. I thought it would be nice if there was a software that would convert your blog to a podcast so that you can kill 2 birds with one stone?

I have heard of services that will convert your podcast to a blog which is fine. So far I have only found a few places where you can convert your actual written blog into a podcast using software.

Odiogo
This software allows you to automatically convert blogs to podcasts on the fly. The software extracts your blog posts and converts them to MP3 format in seconds. The other nice thing is that the service is free. You can try the service at Odiogo.com.