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Well, really it's not recycling, but it's re-using, which is another one of the "Big-Three" pillars of the sustainability model.

Over the weekend, Ted and I were doing a late-summer cleanup of our cluttered garage, and I came across a few boxes of DVDs, copies of which we both had so one copy (most likely the least pristine one) ended up in this box in the garage.

I have been trading in my old video-games with Amazon.com trade-in for several months, and remembered recently that they started accepting used movies (DVD, HDDVD, and BluRay) for Gift Card bucks.  Uber-convenience factor: Amazon will give you a pre-paid shipping label to ship it to them.  My last shipment was dropped off on Monday, and I got the credit today (Wednesday).  Awesome.

And then, come to find out, there's an online service that will do just about the same thing for your gently used, previously enjoyed, still-working gadgets!  I ran across this article on Greenbiz.com about a company in Boston, started by an entrepreneur and Ebay Exec pair, give you cash for your electronic clunkers (thanks to the author for that fabulous line).

"Our vision is nothing short of redefining consumption, changing the way people buy, sell and recycle electronics," Ganot, who is president and CEO of Gazelle, told me recently by phone. "We own too many products that we don't use. We always buy the latest and greatest. They end up tucked away in your attic. Some get thrown in the garbage. Or recycled improperly."

Brilliant, folks.  Do you have a few gadget that are gathering dust that could use a second or third life in the developing world or in the hands of an erstwhile young person just getting started in their college lives?  For those of you who are somewhat gadget obsessed, take heed!

So what do you do when you're Major Nelson, the voice of the Xbox Live community, and you're covering one of the largest media events for the Electronic Entertainment Industry, and you're stuck with a paltry uplink from your hotel to the internet, and you've got tons of video and content that you've got to push through that pipe up to the Xbox Live Mothership?

How do you go from piddling to 5.5/4.8Mb Up/Down in less than 12 hours?

You call this dude, Mark (links below are from the Original MajorNelson blog post).

From the 1 Gbps feed on the rooftop of an apartment building across the freeway we used a custom 2.4 Ghz mesh radio to get from one part of the roof to another.  One of these devices also acted as the NAT router/firewall.  From the corner of the apartment building roof to you we used Ligowave 5 Ghz point to point radios that are built into the panel antennas.  All of the traffic from the Hotel to the 1 Gbps feed was encrypted by using a VPN which the radios do naturally.  The apartment roof is part of a 1 Gbps ring around downtown Los Angeles using Freespace optics (ie lasers) which terminates in a building which houses the largest carrier hotel/interconnect point in Southern California.  Their normal use is to provide internet and VOIP to tenants in the apartment buildings.

Now that's what I call Guerilla Networking!  Why not recruit this guy to configure the networking for "that really big MBA simulational thingie"?

Awesome.