ReadWriteWeb

Jack Johnson tipped me off to this website. Well, okay, he tipped off a couple of billion other people at the same time. I'm writing this while I watch the web stream of Johnson's set at the Live Earth concert in Sydney, Australia, and right before an energetic rendition of "Staple It Together," he urged the crowd to visit Climate Counts.

Climate Counts, which launched on June 19th, is a non-profit website that rates corporations based on their environmental impact. They use a 22-item scorecard that asks questions like "Is there top-level support for climate change action?" and "Does the company require suppliers to take climate change action or give preference to those that do?" You can read the full list here (PDF). So who's on top? And how do web companies rank?

Yahoo! announced two initiatives today to become, in their words, the "go-to resource for all topics green." That's green as in, environmentally friendly. The first is a competition called Be a Better Planet to find the most eco-friendly city in America. The prize? Carbon credits and a fleet of hybrid taxis. Participants can also earn free compact fluorescent light bulbs for themselves.

More notably, Yahoo! is launching Yahoo! Green, a climate change information portal that includes news, information, and guides to help people cut their carbon emissions and do other things to become more "green."

Yet another social network launched publicly today, but this one called Change.org caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Firstly it's for a great cause - enabling people to form communities around social issues like global warming and Net Neutrality. But it's also a very well designed site that makes excellent use of 'web 2.0' technologies.

The first thing that you notice when you visit the homepage of Change.org is the tagcloud, which draws attention to the top issues in the network. The tagcloud constantly updates, but as of writing 'Empower Women' and 'Recycle' were the top tags. To get a feel for the site I clicked on 'Stop Global Warming', a hot topic currently (pun intended)...