November 11, 2008 at 11:23 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged add a site, add site, add website, add your site, ecocho
Hey guys,
It’s a been a while, things have been pretty busy here! You’ve probably all seen the new feature, but just in case – now you can add your own website to Ecocho, to appear on the search results. It’s a cool way for people to get their sites out there!
Obviously the sites are vetted to filter out scams and spams (so don’t bother posting any dodgy get rich quick ventures!), but if you have a great green site or hobby site or cool shop or music site, add it here: http://www.ecocho.com/add_a_website.php
Enjoy!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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July 15, 2008 at 12:40 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ecocho, ecocho translation, translate, translation
Hey everyone,
This is a big shout out thank you to all the Ecochosters who have willingly given their time to improve Ecocho. We really love it when people want to get involved and I’ve always said that Ecocho would work best if users become a part of the team and help us make Ecocho the best it can be (due to us being a really small team of people).
A big way that you guys have helped is by offering translation, or corrections to existing translation. After all, Ecocho has always been a global site – a way for everyone in the world to do some good in a very simple way, so we want to make it the best experience possible for all nations and all languages (in time!). Your translation is a big part of this goal.
Therefore, huge thanks to:
Morten Skovvang (Danish)
Anne (German)
Alessandro Cavazza (Italian)
Valentina Aiosa (Italian)
Diego Monti (Italian)
And especially to the following people who have given a great deal of time to provide us with large sections of text:
David Gorr (for big changes to the German version)
Alexandre Vidal Pinheiro (Portuguese)
Mohammed Al-Foulad (huge thanks for helping to create the Arabic version and offering continuous assistance)
Davood Mirzabagherian (big, big thanks for dedicated help towards creating the Persian – Farsi – version from scratch)
Ole Miebach (for perfecting the German version and big pledges of support!)
Carola Markwitz (German FAQ assistance [and interesting stories!])
We really appreciate all your help, everyone. Please don’t hesitate to contribute whenever you see something that may not be quite right, or if you can help with new language versions of Ecocho!
Thanks! Danke! Grazie! Obrigado! Bedankt! Tak! شكرا لك!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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July 15, 2008 at 12:27 am · Filed under Uncategorized
¡Hola friends!
A few of you have asked about a problem with the European Ecocho sites last week (which is recurring from time to time). Unfortunately it has been out of our control and is a direct problem with the server provider. We’re doing all we can to correct the problem as fast as possible but the main issue is out of our hands alas. We are presently looking into alternative servers for Ecocho as we can’t rely on the current one. Frustratingly, you guys may still experience a few minor problems (hopefully not too major) until we are able to make the move. Please let us know if you find anything not working properly and we will do our best to fix it (if it’s within our control). We really appreciate your patience with this matter guys.
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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June 18, 2008 at 1:26 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged anthrazit, ecocho, ecosearch, green search
Hey there, hej, ciao, bonjour, hola (and olá!), and hallo Ecochosters!
It’s been a while and some of you have requested a little news update on Ecocho, and why not indeed! I’m sorry for the lack of blog posts recently, we have been working very hard to improve the speed of the site. In the past couple of weeks you should have noticed a quite significant improvement to the speed of Ecocho. Our designer Summer has worked her magic to help the site download faster to your computer. Hopefully eco-searching should be nice and easy for you all!
Ecocho is moving along healthily and happily, with so many of you using our search to get your results, which we are very pleased about. We love being able to interact with you all so easily and actually respond to your feedback directly too. I personally really enjoy hearing your comments and have had nice conversations (via email!) with so many of you about how the site can be improved and what you’d like to see. It really does make Ecocho a people’s project, which I think is very cool.
Hey! Before I forget, there’s an interview I did for Anthrazit online magazine here, which gives an overview of the Ecocho project and some of the developments that have occurred so far. Thanks to Bruno for taking an interest in our website!!
Keep eco-searching & telling your friends – and sending us your feedback!
Thanks!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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May 19, 2008 at 2:07 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ecocho, ecocho add-on, ecocho toolbar, firefox 3, image search, news search, toolbar, toolbar search, web search
Hi guys,
You should see an update available today for the Ecocho toolbar – you can now search for websites, images and news directly from the toolbar. You’ll see links on the toolbar for your favourite email account, the Ecocho game and the Tell a Friend page. It’s worth noting too that Ecocho’s toolbar is one of the first to be compatible with Firefox 3 (well done, Thomas!). We hope you’re happy to see this update, please give us feedback – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Cheers!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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May 12, 2008 at 1:53 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged add-on, add-ons, browser search, ecocho, ecocho opera, ecocho search, opera, opera browser, toolbar
Hi everyone,
We’ve been getting a few requests for the Ecocho tools and add-ons on the Opera browser so I thought I’d write a bit about it here. We are trying our best to cater for all users, however we’re only a very small team so we have to do things very gradually – bit by bit!
Unfortunately the toolbar won’t work on Opera, we will try to make it work as soon as we can. However, good news! The add-on search function will work in Opera. Here’s how to do it:
1) When on the Ecocho home page using the Opera browser, right-click on the actual search box field and select “Create search…”
2) You will see Ecocho’s description in the “Name” field. In the “keyword” field, type “keyword”.
3) Select “OK”
4) In the drop down browser search menu, at the top right hand corner of your Opera browser, you will now see Ecocho search! Select Ecocho search and start eco-searching!
I hope that’s helped. We’re sorry that the toolbar isn’t available for Opera users yet, but in the meantime you can still search straight from your Opera browser. Let us know if you have any problems.
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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May 12, 2008 at 1:08 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged add site, bookmark, ecocho, floxtar, recommend site, search, social network
For those of you familiar with Floxtar, the Dutch social network (also available in English), you can now recommend Ecocho to your friends directly from the Ecocho website here: http://www.ecocho.com/lang_en/share_it.php.
So what is Floxtar? Floxtar is free and is “for everyone who wants to stay in touch with friends and family, share photos & videos, find the love of their life, (re)connect with classmates/colleagues, discuss shared interests and hobbies, plan events and make our world a little bit better.” So, much like Facebook really, except for a charitable addition. Floxtar supports charities that fight problems at the root and not the consequences, aiming to contribute to a sustainable solution. All this without the Floxtar user needing “pay a single dime”. Floxtar funds this mainly from advertising income and voluntary donations. In Floxtar’s own words “Friends + Love + Charity = Floxtar”.
If you’re new to Floxtar, why not check it out? You can find the Ecocho’s Floxtar page at: http://ecocho.floxtar.com.
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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May 1, 2008 at 9:11 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ecocho, ecocho image search, ecocho images, ecocho search, image search, search function
Hi guys,
A lot of you asked about the image search and whether it could feature on the home page (to make for much easier eco-searching). Well, ask and you shall receive! The feature is now live. Please let us know what you think of it and whether it is easy to see and easy to use. We’d love to hear your feedback, as always!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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April 30, 2008 at 2:50 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged email friends about ecocho, spread ecocho, spread the word, tell a friend, tell friends about ecocho
You’ll all notice that the “Tell a Friend” [ Envoyer à un ami | Dillo ad un amico | Cuéntele a un amigo | An Freunde weitersagen | Contar para um amigo | Vertel het een vriend | 告诉朋友 | Tipsa en vän | Kerro kaverille | Fortæl en ven om Ecocho ] page has been updated. Now you can securely log in to your email account (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or MSN Hotmail) and easily select the friends you want to tell about Ecocho!
You may be wary about logging in to your email account via a website other than your email hosting site, but rest assured that we never see your password and only your log in email address is visible to us. We never store any email addresses or any of your information. Your password is encrypted immediately and transmitted directly to your host email provider’s site (Google, Yahoo, MSN Hotmail). We use very secure SSL technology by Digicert and their Digital Certificate Authentication system ensures that your personal information is protected and confidential.
You can add a maximum of 50 friends each time you log in.
Please let us know how the function works for you. We love to get feedback!
Thanks!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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April 29, 2008 at 6:33 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ecocho, ecocho image search, image, image search, images search, picture search, yahoo image search
Hi guys,
A few of you have been asking about the “image search” function and how to find it. I thought I’d write to explain.
When you perform a search, you are transported to the “search results” page. At the top of this page you will see the search box along with your chosen search term. Above this search box are two links like this: “Web | Images“.
Simply select the function you wish to perform from these two links. So, click on “Images” to see the images for your chosen search term.
We are looking to put a direct link to the image search function on the home page, but we are not sure where to place it yet. We don’t want the home page looking too untidy – there is a lot on there already! Please send in your suggestions for where the “image search” link should be on the Ecocho home page. We’d appreciate it!
Please contact us if you have any problems too! Hope that’s helped.
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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April 24, 2008 at 6:27 am · Filed under Uncategorized
By now, most of you will have seen that Google has withdrawn their service on the site. Because there is an element of contention, we thought we’d simply give Ecocho users a summary of the dates that we met with Google.
Executives at Google have been aware about our intention to launch Ecocho since January 2008. Approval was given in early February 2008.
18/01/08: We had lunch with a senior Google executive during which we outlined the Ecocho project in detail.The Google executive asked us to email a Powerpoint presentation of the project so that it could be passed on to the relevant people.
21/01/08: We emailed the Powerpoint outlining the project to the Google executive.
23/01/08: We receive an email from the Google executive suggesting that we catch up with another senior Google executive better suited to discussing Adsense implementations. In the same email the Google exec suggested that there might be an opportunity to discuss this project with their green team.
23/01/08: We sent an email to the Google exec better suited to discussing Adsense implementations, asking when would be a good time to meet to discuss Ecocho in more detail.
23/01/08: Google exec replies that they are free to discuss this ‘tomorrow’ (24 jan) at 2pm.
24/01/08: We have a meeting with Google in their Sydney office and discuss Ecocho in detail.
04/02/08: We email Google exec to find out if we can go ahead with Ecocho.
05/02/08: Email from Google exec saying that they are still traveling and will call tomorrow.
06/02/08: Google exec calls and says that we can’t get Adsense premium, but recommends we use standard Adsense coupled with Google’s Custom Search Engine product on Ecocho.
06/02/08: We ring Google exec to ask if Google can provide technical assistance if we have problems customising the “look and feel” of Ecocho.
06/02/08: Google exec rings back to confirm Google can provide technical assistance if implementation problems occur.
For Google to say that we had no approval to use Adsense on Ecocho is inaccurate.
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April 23, 2008 at 6:23 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ecocho, ecocho search, ecocho top ten, nsw, nsw ggas, web search, web searches
Hello, howdy, bonjour, ciao, hallo, hola, hej, g’day Ecochosters!
A whopping 70,000 of you came to Ecocho yesterday and numbers are still growing. This is great news, and so we thought we’d start a little top 10 of world Ecocho users.
The current Ecocho top ten is:
1. Italy
2. Germany
3. United States
4. Netherlands
5. Sweden
6. France
7. Belgium
8. Australia
9. Spain
10. Austria
Italia is holding on to the top spot, with Germany a close second. Ecocho began in Australia and yet the Aussies have slipped down to 8th! Come on Australia – we can do better than 8th!
Quite a few of you have still been asking about how Ecocho is verified and how we’re accountable with regards to our carbon credits and how we make sure the trees are grown! For details, this page explains our verification process in detail.
As you’ll see, we buy credits from official, Government schemes; the first scheme we are investing in is the New South Wales government GGAS (Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme). They grow the trees, which we fund.
This is all very well, and you may be pleased to know that the planting of trees (in relation to credits) is being handled by a government department. However, how can you be sure that we are buying the credits that we say we are, and retiring them in a fair and honest way? Well, you can log in to the government’s own GGAS website here: https://www.ggas-registry.nsw.gov.au/ and using our organisation name (Ecocho), username (Guest) and our password (guestecocho01), you can see the exact amount of credits we have bought and retired.
We hope this helps to alleviate any concerns, but if not please get in touch with any questions.
Once again, thank you all for visiting Ecocho and helping us to grow trees!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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April 22, 2008 at 1:46 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ecocho, ecocho search, google, google search, google stops, yahoo search
Guys,
You may’ve noticed that your Google searches are suddently not working on the site. Unfortunately, Google has decided to stop Ecocho from using its search technology.
We’ve had phenomenal results over the first week and really hope that this can continue. We are speaking to Google right now to try to resolve this problem, but we could probably use your help.
If you love using Ecocho to perform your Google searches, feel free to express how unhappy you are about this decision here: adsense-support@google.com
We are very sorry for the inconvenience. It is certainly an ominous move by the search giant, especially as only a couple of days ago Yahoo expressed further positive support for the project, even offering to host it for us (in fairness, Yahoo showed great excitement for the project from day one when we spoke with them). Thank you all for your fantastic support of Ecocho!
We’d appreciate you guys discussing the issue with us on this blog – we’d really love to hear from all of you who’ve expressed such inspiring support for the project.
In the meantime, we encourage you to use Ecocho’s Yahoo function for all your searches.
Cheers,
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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April 21, 2008 at 9:34 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ecocho, ecocho links, green links, links, related links, tree planting, trees
We constantly get emails through from people wanting us to add links to the site, but we are such a tiny team of people that we don’t (yet!) have time to regularly update the links section. We’re still trying our best to answer every message sent through to the site as top priority, or at least make changes/improvements based on them.
However, there have been a couple of particularly interesting sources who’ve got in touch mentioning links. Firstly, veteran journalist and eco-authority Ken Hickson has been in touch to say how much he loves the Ecocho site and mentioned his interesting carbon consultant site ABC Carbon: abccarbon.com.
Secondly, Ingo from Germany wrote to us to tell all about WikiWoods, an initiative that “helps forests and woods to grow and flourish in a natural way – worldwide”. The project uses the internet platform (in a similar way to Wikipedia) to help make it possible for volunteers, experts and sponsors to meet on the web and work together on local area forest-projects. We thought it was pretty cool. The project started in 2007 and so far has planted 2500 trees. There’s an english article here: wikiwoods.org/doku.php/plant_the_world_s_biggest_forest
We thought we’d share those with you!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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April 21, 2008 at 2:16 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged add-on, ecocho, ecocho add-on, ecocho engine, ecocho toolbar, firefox, mozilla, toolbar
Hi ecochosters,
Hopefully you all had a good weekend.
I’ve been getting a bunch of messages about a Firefox Add-on for Ecocho that allows you to add our search to the search engine browser list. You can already install this feature from the “Toolbar & add-ons” page (link on the top of each page thoughout the website!). If you scroll down the “Toolbar & add-ons” page you’ll see “Add the Ecocho search engine to Firefox or IE7”. The instructions provided should guide you from here.
Hope this helps!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
P.S. Summer and Thomas are working very hard on the black version of Ecocho right now, which I like to call “Ecocho Lo”. Check back very soon to see it!!
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April 18, 2008 at 4:38 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged blackle, ecocho, energy saving, lcd screen, power saving
Quite a few of you have been asking why ecocho is not on a black background to save energy (like Blackle). It’s a valid question, but one that we weighed up and decided against. In actuality a black screen saves very, very, very, very little for a search engine type site, where visitors stay for only a minute or two.
Here’s some science:
energy use on google.com (1 hour) = 49.0W
energy use on blackle.com (1 hour) = 46.6W
You can find this information here: http://ozlabs.org/~jk/diary/misc/blackle-lcd.diary/. You’d have to stay on ecocho for 1 full hour to save 3 watts. White is still a lot easier on the eyes to read, plus we feared that making ecocho on a black background would be too much of a change from Yahoo and Google for most of our users. We figured that getting more users, to grow more trees, was ultimately the greater good.
Having said all that, we are working on a black version of ecocho for those who want to squeeze the extra power savings. This should be available from the preferences section of ecocho (once it launches) very, very soon!!
Hope that helps!
Alex
Ecocho
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April 18, 2008 at 4:09 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged brand ecocho, cho, eco, ecocho, name ecocho
Hi guys,
I thought it was about time I chatted a bit about the name “ecocho” – I constantly get asked about how I came up with it, so I think I should explain!
I wanted the name to be short and universal (i.e. not English), but at the same time I wanted to get the word “eco” into it. When I stumbled across the Japanese word “cho” I thought that it meant gift, i.e. ecocho = “gift to the earth”, but instead I realised it was only part of the word that makes up “special gift”. So discovered that “cho” actually means “very”/”ultra”/”extremely”. Therefore, “ecocho” = “extrememly eco”!!
We have an international group of guys here (Max & Thomas are French, I’m Welsh Italian, Summer is Chinese & Amit is Indian), and when all the guys had no problem getting their tongues around the word – even liking the sound of it right away! – I knew it was the one.
So, to clear it up any complications, the word is pronounced : ee – coh – choh.
In Italian the “cho” part of the word is pronounced similar to the “c followed by a vowel” sound, such as “cesare”, “citta” or “cento”.
In German, the “cho” part of “ecocho” is more like the German “tsch”, i.e. “ecotscho”!
I really hope that makes sense – please email me at the searchecocho gmail address or through the site if you need help!
It’s insane to see this silly name I doodled spread like wildfire across the internet, let me tell you! A bizarre feeling – but a good one!
Ciao amici!
Alex
Ecocho’s Web Producer
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April 18, 2008 at 3:39 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged eco friendly, ecocho, toolbar, toolbars
Due to the huge Ecocho buzz in Europe, we’re developing some new toolbars that will allow you to eco-search right from your browser and make Ecocho the default search engine. I’ve been put in charge of this, and I’d love to hear any ideas, suggestions and feedback (big and small).
The toolbar will allow you to search in your native language. Here are two possible solutions:
- We create a new toolbar for each language. This could be hard for us to manage; OR
- We detect the language that you’ll be able to set in your preferences (Max is working on it) and we give you the results. This would be easier to maintain.
So, we need to know what you think. Can you guys come up with a better idea for a multi-lingual toolbar? If so, please send an email to thomas at ecocho.com or publish a comment on the blog, too easy!
Thomas
The Ecocho toolbar guru 😉
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April 17, 2008 at 3:39 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged dns, ecocho, servers, traffic
Yesterday, you may have noticed that we had an issue with the server because so many people were connected at the same time! (We had 3 times the traffic we had expected!!)
So what have we done? For a short time, we had to redirect the European stream to the US server. That was slow because the search results needed to swim across the Atlantic 😉
That was the first step. The second one was to buy a new server, and a strong one (!), to handle all the European traffic. All our Euro friends have been really enthusiastic about Ecocho!
The new server has been setup by Max and is now working. The only thing to do now is wait for a bit! In the meantime though I can give you a brief technical [geeky!! – Alex, ed] explanation!
When you visit Ecocho.it (for example), your computer requests the IP address of the computer behind the name Ecocho.it from the DNS server. If this DNS knows the address, it answers directly to your computer, if not, it asks its DNS until it reaches the “root DNS” (TLD), which always has the answer.
So when you move the server behind Ecocho.it, changes take up to 24h to take effect.
This is why you might be redirected (or not) to Ecocho.com when you type Ecocho.it – even if your new “neighbour” server is available! We call that “propagation”.
Hope that’s helped! Please contact us if you have any questions.
Thomas
Ecocho tech guru
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April 17, 2008 at 10:34 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged carbon neutral tree planting, carbon offset, eco friendly, search engine
Just wanted to say a big thank you for all your comments and feedback – the response to the site has been massive!
We want to let you guys know that we’re doing all we can to fix the speed of the site. Max and Thomas (Ecocho tech gurus) have been frantically fixing the site, moving it to a server that can handle all the traffic!
Summer (Ecocho’s creative wonder) has been working hard to ensure that the design is light as a feather to not weigh down your searching! You should already notice that the site is faster than Tuesday – much faster – but please let us know if it’s not, and don’t forget to include your browser type (firefox/internet explorer/safari, etc), the site you were using (ecocho.com, ecocho.it, ecocho.com/de, ecocho.nl, etc, etc), your screen resolution (800 x 600, 1280 x 1024, etc) and your operating system (XP, Vista, OSX, etc).
Please be patient if possible, guys. We’re doing our best to speed the site up. We’ve been totally overwhelmed by the response so far. Thank you!
Please, please, please keep the comments and feedback coming. It is our aim to respond to every single message!!
Thanks!! Merci!! Grazie!! Danke!! Dank u!! Gracias!! Obrigado!!
Alex
Ecocho’s web producer
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April 17, 2008 at 5:13 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged carbon neutral tree planting, carbon offset, eco friendly, search engine
Welcome to Ecocho!
you will all notice that ecocho has gone live. you guys search, we’ll grow the trees!
use yahoo or google through our site and for every 1000 searches we’ll offset a ton of carbon emissions.
ecocho is a step in the right direction and we’re looking at various other “search engine does good” phases in the future.
thanks for your interest – please give us your feedback, it helps us to improve the site!
stop by and say hi,
Alex
Ecocho’s web producer
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Ecocho's Weblog 