A few facts and details about the 24th October:

• likely to be the biggest environmental action on the planet to date
• events are being held across the world (see our side menu to find your closest events) and images will be posted online to a common gallery
• the aim is show everyone and especially those involved in the Copenhagen discussions, the importance of 359.  “350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for parts per million carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. 350 is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. (Watch this animation - scroll down the page). “
• reducing global carbon emissions is really our only hope to get below 350 and slow climate change. We can all do a bit towards that and our leaders in Copenhagen need to do more

As you join in events, let us know so we can continue the discussion about affecting climate change.

We like the fact that menu planning also saves you time - going shopping with a list makes the trip much quicker and planning meals in advance stops the need for last minute runs to the supermarket for forgotten ingredients.

Reusing leftovers (as well as suiting our green hearts by not wasting!) also appeals to us because it saves time in buying new ingredients and means you don’t need to clean the fridge (to empty the growing food scraps) as often

Win win really - save energy worrying about what to cook every night, save food wastage, save money and save time. And all of it saves the planet (fewer drives to shops is a good thing as well as reducing your food footprint.)

Do you have other tips on using leftovers?

SO how many blog posts have you read about climate change in the last 24 or so hours? Has anything jumped out at you as new or helpful, perhpa s agreat idea you can grab to make a difference?

As per yesterday, we will list a few more related posts to make it easier for you to get into the event… and you’re welcome to add comments about other blog posts (including your own) on climate change.

If We All Just Do Two Things We Can Prevent Climate Change by TreeHugger

Reading the world on Blog Action Day by Global Voices

Blog Action Day: Your chance to leave a legacy by Oxfam International

A Green Tour of the Google Campus by The Official Google Blog (maybe you can get some tips for your home or workplace)

Fix the Climate, or the Kid Gets It by Mother Jones

Climate Change by Classical Bookworm

5 ways to reduce your global warming contribution | Zible by Zible

help eliminate poverty

Food and climate change by Emma

Australian climate change resources

Global warming is so uncool

Resources on climate change

Public relations: helping the environment

Blog Action Day for Climate Change

Conserving water

Climate Change is a business concern too

Aussie songs for climate change

Compassionate Climate Action

Technology in our classroom

BLog action day to fight global warming

Climate code red

Top 20 ways web developers can reduce their carbon footprint (and these tips mostly apply to us all - check out number 17 if you run any sort fo website.)

The Mr Science Show

Marketing for climate change

Life is better barefoot

Focus on nature (assuming you can ignore the flashing header which is very annoying, they have some beautiful photos)

VCE Environmental Science

Food from afar

The squiggly line

(note in order to get this list going, we haven’t read all these posts properly so can’t promise they are great, lol! However, we didn’t list the ones we didn’t like at all, and only reviewed a sample anyway.)

As you come across more blog posts about climate change, share them as comemnts. And please add your comments on any of the issues raised by Blog Action Day for Climate Change. The more we talk about it and share ideas, the better chance our planet has…

You could win a 12 month subscription to this informative magazine simply by telling us how many categories there are in the articles archive - there are two subscriptions to win, valued at $30 each.

Note: Save Time Online Competition Terms are available here. This competition will be open for one month. Winners drawn 9th Sept and announced in the following newsletter. Giving your answer as a comment will not enter you in the competition and it will be deleted rather than published.

Kit’s Law

by Donna Morrissey Viking
Penguin Book Canada Ltd

The bargain table out the front of a bookshop is impossible to resist, I just have to have a look for that special book to appear there. Recently, the book Kit’s Law, caught my eye from such a table and at $2.50 I thought it worth a read.

Kit is a young girl living on the outskirts of a remote fishing town in Canada. She is the illegitimate child of a mentally handicapped woman who is treated as an unpaid whore by many townsmen. Lizzie is Kit’s Grandmother and she cares for her daughter and granddaughter in her cliff top cottage. Lizzie is a determined, hard old woman without a lot of friends in the town, but she does her best to ensure Kit fits in as best she can.

Lizzie tries to let Kit see that she has nothing to be ashamed of and has the right to hold her head high. The morning after such a conversation, Kit finds her grandmother dead in her bed and feels her world fall down around her. Sprouting good intentions, a group of townspeople attempt to take Kit to an orphanage and away from her Mother. The town Doctor, however, steps in and enables Kit to remain in her precious gully home.

Some time later, the same group again try to separate the pair when both are ill. This results in the minister’s son being sent out to regularly cut wood for the women’s stove. The young man, Sid, quickly befriends the mother and tried getting to know Kit as well. Gradually, a relationship builds and they fall in love.

Tragedy strikes in the form of the local rapist attacking the gully cottage and Sid’s defence. Surprisingly, the young lovers are then separated for over a year before their spontaneous elopement. After the wedding, they visit Sid’s parents in time for a second tragedy to hit them. I must admit that I had guessed at this twist a little earlier, but it was hidden by other potential twists, so the story wasn’t too predictable. At this, Sid disappears and Kit again struggles to survive in a hostile township.

The ending is not exactly a happy one, but it does leave Kit reconciled with her life and loving her Mother. No further twists were introduced, and Morrissey openly discounted other predictable endings.

Let us know your answer and wait for the announcement of a winner in our August newsletter. Remember you must be subscirbed to our newsletter to enter and providing your answer as a comment in this blog is not a valid entry.

Full terms and conditions are available here. Competition closes 5pm on 9 August 2009 and winners will be announced here and in our following newsletter.

A beautiful picture book that uses poetry, images and questions to introduce children to the wonderful array of nocturnal animals found in Australia.

Most of the book is black with white text and detailed illustrations. Pictures are colourful, but only include minimal background details which adds to the overall charm and the representation of nighttime visions.

Each double page is dedicated to a particular animal or bird. On the left, three verses describe the animal and on the right is an illustration of the animal’s eye(s). The right hand page actually opens out to reveal a full image of the creature underneath, complete with its name.

Older children will enjoy guessing the creatures, whilst younger ones will purely enjoy listening to the poetry and watching the pictures unfold.

A double page at the end of the book provides more details about each of the sixteen animals featured in the book. A map of Australia illustrates where the creature is naturally found, and three paragraphs of facts include the scientific name, the animals’ diet, breeding facts and other information.

This fun and educational book was shortlisted by the Children’s Book Council of Australia in 2002 and was shortlisted by young readers for the Young Australian Readers’ Awards.

As well as the survey, we’d love to read your comments here - why did you start an online business (or part of your business)? Do you think it is good or bad, or something in between, that is is so relatively easy to start a business now the Internet is readily available to many of us?

We came across a blog post that lists some SEO gamesto play - we haven’t tried them yet, but thought we’d share them anyway. We figure if you’re going to spend some time playing a computer game, why not make it on a topic that is useful and may teach you something? And the whole point of us saving you some time online is so you can choose to play games if that’s what you enjoy doing.

We’d like to congratulate Karen (Time Well Spent) and Simone (Wellness, Fertility & Balance) on winning a door prize of a feature listing on Save Time Online for a year - we’ll post links to their pages once they have provided the information to go on their pages.

There were many great presentations over the weekend, including a session on web 2.0 and social media, and Tash’s presentation on promotional articles. Ally also shared her story in a forum, along with the Founders Award winner, Amanda Cox, Glenys Gijsbers and Bernadette Huysing.

We’d like to thank Melissa and her team for a great weekend, and highly recommend you diarise it for next year! And we may just offer another advertising deal if you mention us when booking (and we hope those people who took advantage of it this year benefit from their upcoming newsletter ads.)

Run a business as a sole trader? Then you need to be at THE small business conference of the year! Covering many topics relevant for running a small business, the Business Mums Conference (and Dads are welcome, too!) is in Melbourne on 20 - 21 June. We’ll both be there, and Tash is presenting on promotional articles, so make sure you say hello! Unlike most business events, this one costs  less than $500 - and if you mention Save Time Online when you book, we’ll throw in a newsletter ad for you (half day bookings excluded.)

If you would like to hear about deals like this first, plus see what’s new on our site and enter our competitions, why not subscribe? It doesn’t cost anything and you never know what it could save or win you!

It is a huge time waster when you’re online, even with spam filters that stop the majority of it reaching our inboxes. So you can really save yourself some time by reducing the chances of being spammed.

Here are some tips to help you:

• if you don’t trust a website, don’t give them your email address
• have a secondary email address to use for subscribing to newsletters and websites you aren’t sure of. That way, if you get spammed by them, you can stop that address without having to change yor main email. It can also save you time by having your newsletters separate to your important emails
• if you have a website, don’t put your email address on the site as text - spammers have software that can scan the net for email addresses (called harvesting.) Use a contact form or show your email address as a graphic or in a way only humans understand (e.g. myname @ savetimeonline.com.au or myname@NOTTHISBITsavetimeonline.com.au)
• don’t respond to any spam as that tells them your email address is real - and that even includes not clicking on links in their email
• choose a complex email address that is not so easy to guess - for example, susan.brown@ and sbrown@ are harder to guess than susan@ or sue@

The Word Constructions blog gave more tips on reduing your spam and tips on keeping your emails away from spam filters.

Support the RSL Art Union and help our Veteran Community for just $10. Closes on 16 June 2009…

More listings will be added throughout the month so keep checking for bargains! And if you run a business, you can join the madness*, too, as the more we offer, the more fun it is for everyone!

* Want to join May Madness? All family-friendly Australian businesses and websites are welcome to participate if they meet the following criteria:

• make a genuine offer to people throughout the month of May

• promote the May Madness promotion by linking to this page as often as possible 

by Bryce Courtney
Penguin Books, Australia, 2007

A very different book on World War II in the Pacific, The Persimmon Tree is interesting look at relationships and standards.

Seventeen year old Nick falls in love with Anna in a matter of days and then is separated from her by the war. Nick narrates the story for us, starting with his point of view then giving us Anna’s story (based on what she has told him) and finishing with his own point of view again.

There are a number of relationships developed through the book, beyond the love between Nick and Anna. Courtney shows that stereotypes may exist but within each group people are individuals. For instance Anna has very different relationships with the two Japanese commanders of her town, and with her father and father figure.

The book shows different standards between the japanese and western army comamnds, and between the genders. While Nick has a number of lovers while in Australia, Anna however risks her life to let Nick be her first. Although Anna sets herself this standard, and women around her suggest she gives in, there is an unstated agreement from Nick that she should act that way.

Nick is a likable young bloke, but he becomes a bit too good to be true - he can speak English and Japanese and Pidgin, he undertsands life in the west, Japan and the islands, he is a perfect shot and a top cadet, he’s a loner who gets long well with people, and so on. Courtney stop short of Nick being sickly perfect, but he was less enjoyable as his character developed - Anna became more endearing throughout her story under Japanese rule.

Overall, it is a light and enjoyable read (although not a small or light book!) that gives a number of perspectives on WWII and on Indonesia’s Dutch history. It is very  human and has moments of greatness and suspense, and forms a pleasant way to spend a few winter hours in front of a cracklin fire.

Every year, Save Time Online bring you offers from a collection of businesses so you can save money and time from one place.

To find out about the offers and specials, just visit our May Madness page. Find the specials that will save you time and money, and follow the link to that site to start saving.

Keep coming back as we add offers throughout May as more and more businesses join in the madness.

If you run a business, you can join in, too. Simply make a genuine offer to people during May, add it to your website with a link back to our May Madness feature, then we’ll add your offer to the collection.

Enjoy May!

Every year, Save Time Online bring you offers from a collection of businesses so you can save money and time from one place.

To find out about the offers and specials, just visit our May Madness page. Find the specials that will save you time and money, and follow the link to that site to start saving.

Keep coming back as we add offers throughout May as more and more businesses join in the madness.

If you run a business, you can join in, too. Simply make a genuine offer to people during May, add it to your website with a link back to our May Madness feature, then we’ll add your offer to the collection.

Enjoy May!

As always, we have a mothers day page brimming with ideas  for you, but thought we’d give you a few extras here as well…

• send Mum out on the town with other Mums so she can relax and be herself for a few hours.
• buy her some bulbs to plant for Spring colour, or some roses she can treasure for years, or a fruit tree she can appreciate with every bite - Garden express has over 2000 products apaprently so you should be able to find something Mum likes! And this is an environmentally responsible gift, too
• a book suits most Mums, as long as you choose the title with her in mind - don’t just think of novels when you can get a gardening book, some mouth watering cookbooks, herb books, business mum guides, money saving books, health/spirit books and language books.
• subscribe Mum to webflicks so she can catch up on those movies she missed
• send her a personlised card - you can be sure she doesn’t have one of those already!
• invest in her future with an investment account so she can trade and build a nest egg as markets improve over time
• comfort her with some dermatolgist-tested skincare products or some cosmetics/perfumes
• give her a mini-you! Mydolls will turn a photo of you (or your kids) into a unique sculpture so Mum can have a quiet, tidy version of her family at home all the tiem!

Note entries close 30 April so get in fast!