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• Green Gifts
  You can always find a fresh crop of eclectic gift ideas from Treehugger. Among them this year is a pair of buy one, give one free shoes (you take home one pair, and another goes to a child in Argentina); and a whale conservation calendar featuring bikini-clad models. Co-op America’s Green Pages listings will help you shop for safe, PVC-free toys for kids. For more green gift ideas, check out what NRDC staffers are giving -- and hoping to get -- this year in NRDC’s annual Great Green Gift Giving Guide; and there are even more holiday ideas in the November 2006 issue of This Green Life.



• Green Un-Gifts
  Wouldn’t you appreciate a truly useful gift that would never run out of batteries, break or clutter up your house? An NRDC gift membership promises all this, plus a chance to help defend the wild things and wild places you care about. And don’t forget there are plenty of other deserving organizations out there. Universal Giving helps you find a group that’s doing great work almost anywhere in the world -- and then tells you how you can help them. You can volunteer at a chimpanzee sanctuary in Cameroon, donate solar cookers to firewood-dependent families, or create your own wish list for a special occasion.



• Green Holiday Parties
  If you’re throwing a party this holiday season, check out eco-stylist Danny Seo’s blog for some truly creative entertaining and decorating tips. Seo manages to be fun, sophisticated and eco-friendly all at the same time. Kids might enjoy making his snowy village diorama out of used holiday cards and the stuffing from an old pillow. And don’t throw away those wine corks after the party’s over -- Seo will show you how to turn them into trivets. If you’re serious about a zero-waste holiday party, this start-to-finish green holiday hosting guide from Greenfeet makes it easy.



• Happy Holidays from the Environmental Protection Agency
  Who says the EPA doesn’t know how to have fun? Check out their tips on how to enjoy an ecologically friendly holiday season.



• Happy Holidays to All
  Across the country and around the world, people will be celebrating in many different ways in the coming weeks. The History Channel is showcasing three popular American holiday traditions this month, featuring detailed histories of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Kids can spin a virtual dreidel and learn about Chinese New Year on Scholastic’s Holiday Fun pages. And for the rest of us, ‘tis the season for a viewing of the grand Seinfeld tradition of Festivus. (Read a scholarly account of Festivus here.)

• Hurricane Katrina continued to make headlines in 2006. Websites such as the Center for Public Integrity's Katrina Watch helped us stay on top of the latest developments, posting daily updates on news related to Hurricane Katrina cleanup and reconstruction projects. A more artful, but no less important resource is the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank. An astonishing collective memory of disaster, this archive presents photos, emails, blogs, podcasts and first-hand accounts of three major hurricanes -- Katrina, Rita and Wilma -- that battered the Gulf Coast in 2005. Some of the content is keyed to a Google map.



• This summer high oil prices had American drivers in a tizzy -- sites like the Department of Energy's Alternative Fuel Station Locator helped drivers of flex-fuel vehicles find out where they could fill up on E85. And the Chicago Tribune produced a revealing report called Oil: A Travelogue of Addiction, which traces the origin of gas from a suburban Chicago station back to its roots in some of the most troubled regions of the world. The multimedia presentation includes the full text of the story as well as a Flash "oil safari," extensive video footage, a photo gallery, and a terrifying ticker that tracks, at blazing speed, the number of barrels of oil used in the United States since your arrival at the feature's main page.



• Global warming seemed to be on everyone's radar, perhaps this year more than ever. Among those spreading the word about the need for urgent action were the photographers behind The Canary Project. The Canary Project traveled to Belize, Venice, New Orleans and the American West (and will eventually reach at least 16 locations around the world) to document landscapes that are transforming as a result of global warming. Even if you don't need to be convinced that global warming is here, the photos are dramatic and moving.



• Ocean adventures made a splash on the web this year, including a 5-part virtual voyage from indie magazine Mother Jones. Through Ocean Voyager, you visit ocean trouble spots around the globe, chasing seafood pirates off the African coast and following a mother polar bear's dangerous journey in the Arctic, among other adventures. Videos, audio interviews, webcams and links tell the story of what's troubling our oceans, and what you can do about it. More pelagic fun came from Jean-Michel Cousteau Ocean Adventures, the companion website to Cousteau's PBS series. The site positively overflows with inside info about the team's spectacular journeys, including previews, expedition diaries, games and more.



• Finally, in the realm of just plain fun, we enjoyed getting lost in the ripples of Phylotaxis, an interactive piece of cyberart that turns the news of the day into an ever-changing composition based on repetitive patterns found in nature. We also spent more time than we should have on Ecorazzi, a celebrity gossip site that reports on the environmentally conscious -- or in some cases, unconscious -- activities of the A-list. Most of the reports are culled from other news sources and enlivened by snarky commentary. The celebrity tag cloud in the sidebar is a fascinating examination of the nature of the gossip beast -- when we last checked, Paris Hilton was second only to Al Gore.

Looking for links on a specific subject? Find our complete list, organized by topic, on the Reference/Links page.