Seattle’s winter 2008 has been too long, too gray, and too cold for this transplanted soul. But one day of sunshine can erase the memories of the drab and dreary days past and induce a euphoric state of optimism.

Saturday was just that sort of day as I left home for a romp in the Washington Arboretum Annual Plant Sale. Gazing across the lawn, I noticed a soft blurry blanket of white dandelion fluff hovering six inches above most of my lawn. As I backed out of the driveway I noticed more dandelion foam cresting over the front slope. I confess I’ve been harboring thoughts of chemical weed killers. The weed mass being so much bigger than my time and energy makes the promise of quick weed eradication tempting.  “Darn, I’ll have to deal with that as soon as I return”, I thought .

Today Nau announced that "due to crisis in the capital markets" the company was unable to obtain enough funds to move forward. They did it with their typical charm, even nabbing the best headline, "Goodbye for Nau" for their press release. Through their 5% donation program, Nau donated $223,000 to non-profits in just under one year of business. That's an admirable achievement for a little company struggling to stay afloat.

I covered Nau twice before they launched, first for Ultra PDX in November 06' and later for Plenty Magazine, so this is the death of one of my pet companies. The offices were buzzing with energy back then, and the people could not have been nicer or more enthusiastic. They were heavy hitters too, coming from years of experience at places like Patagonia and Nike. So, what went wrong? At the risk of kicking Nau while it's down, I saw this coming.

Your iPod has been a faithful travel companion, guardian of your most sacred digital music and status symbol among today’s technorati. So what will you do when it reaches its golden years and the screen begins to flicker or the battery begins to fail? Repair or Upgrade? You have more options than Apple might like you to know.

Thanks to companies like Credo Mobile (formerly Working Assets) and recyclers like CollectiveGood.com, environmentally conscious consumers have long been able to choose a socially responsible cell phone plan and recycle their phones when they’re ready for a new one.

But consider that surpassed 3.3 billion last year (equivalent to about half the world’s population). That’s a lot of cell phone handsets. And when you think about how often people upgrade their phones without recycling that’s a lot of handsets heading to the trash. In fact, more than half a billion cell phones are already in landfills.So it’s a relief to hear that Nokia, the world’s largest maker of cell phone handsets, is trying to create a greener cell phone. At last weeks Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas (nirvana for any tech junkies like me), Nokia debuted a non-working prototype of the Eco Sensor Concept they announced last year. The concept is a hybrid of eco friendly materials, energy efficiency and - get this – “a wearable sensor unit which can sense and analyze your environment, health, and local weather conditions.” Now that’s allotta phone.

This morning the League of American Bicyclists awarded Portland with platinum level recognition as a Bicycle Friendly Community, rising from our previous gold level status. The only other city in the US with platinum level recognition is Davis, California. What better reason to get on your bike? Take a spin to celebrate and stop by Ben and Jerry's for the unrelated -but-perfectly-timed Free Cone Day! Read on for more information including biking maps, details from the city's application for platinum status, and--ok ok--the locations of Ben and Jerry's.

A planet-friendly trend appears to be taking off around some new thinking in how we use energy.

There are many activities from manufacturing steel to storing data on computer servers that require significant electricity or other power and generate heat as a byproduct. Until recently, much of that heat was considered a problem to get rid of. Data centers use air conditioning to cool server rooms and the furnaces of a steel plant are vented after melting the metal. Now, some organizations are recognizing how that heat can be put to additional use.

Here's the concept.

Picture the scene: Saturday, a sunny day in springtime. Birds singing, children laughing and playing. Me, swearing and sweating, pushing as hard as I can, and yet not budging.

Though there may not be a large variety of fruit and veg ready for the picking at this point, we can finally begin to prepare for the coming of summer, and start propagating indoor crops.  One of the more interesting vegetables you can start outdoors is asparagus, Asparagus officinalis.