Direct2Dell

Earth Day is upon us, and to kick things off, I thought this might be a good time to try our first #hashtag experiment. If you've got a green tip (or links to green articles you find useful) that you think might be useful to other folks, please share it on Twitter. It doesn't have to be Dell-related, or even technology-related. We're just asking you to share your tips for living greener. If you're new to the whole hashtags thing, here's what you need to know to get started:

• Create a Twitter account - It's pretty straightforward... go to this link and Enter a User Name, Password, and e-mail address
• Follow @hashtags - Do this by going to Twitter.com, logging in, and entering "hashtags" in the search window near the top of the Twitter main page, then click the Follow button
• Type your green tip in the Twitter comment box (in 130 characters or less)
• End your tweet with #greentip (no "s" on the end, all one word).
• Press the update button

Essentially, any time you share a green tip and complete it with #greentip at the end of the tweet, you are enabling it to be tracked here http://www.hashtags.org/tag/greentip/, and if you prefer RSS feeds, you can check that out here. For more information on how hashtags work, take a look at this Making the most of hashtags blog post from Chris Messina.

Update: Chris Messina himself just weighed in with an alternate way to track the tips: http://twemes.com/greentip. Looks similar to the Twitter web interface, makes the tweets pretty easy to read. Thanks for the suggestion, Chris!

But, I don't want to get too bogged down in a technology discussion. This is about Earth Day, and it's about sharing green tips that have worked for you. We'll be reading the tips that you share. 

One more quick reminder: if you want to see the complete list of green tips, go here. And if you want to track it via RSS, go here.

Happy Earth Day, folks!