18seconds.org: Yahoo's green CFL mashup

From the good idea department, Yahoo, with some assistance from Wal-Mart, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and others parties, launched 18seconds.org (green.yahoo.com) calling on consumers to replace traditional incandescent light bulbs with Energy Star compliant compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). The Web site tracks nationwide CFL purchases by metropolitan area and state, mashing up Yahoo Maps with data from AC Nielsen data on buying patterns of CFLs in the U.S. Users can download a widget and create city-based trackers.

Lawrence Bender, producer of Al Gore's “An Inconvenient Truth”  who helped inspire Yahoo employees to create the site, blogs about 18seconds.org:

You can do one thing right now and it only takes 18 seconds. That’s how long its takes to switch to an ENERGY STAR compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). That simple action will put money in your pocket and at the same time reduce greenhouse gases and our dependence on energy. If every American swapped just one bulb, it would save more than $8 billion in energy costs, prevent the burning of 30 billion pounds of coal, and keep the equivalent of two million cars worth of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere. We’d save enough energy to light more than 1.5 million homes for an entire year!