Be active to win big (in more ways than one)!  This month, Skimble will be giving away Skimble Action Packs including your choice of Skimble t-shirt and a $50 Gift Card from REI or MEC:

What do you have to do to get the goods?  Just be active with Skimble.  Each day in February that you track at least one activity on Skimble, you earn one contest entry.  At the end of the month, winners are randomly chosen from these entries.  That's pretty much it so get on it and be active!

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Need some motivation?  Invite your friends and follow some people who got their 'action' on last month!  Congrats to the Skimble Leaders of January 2010:

• Sebastien V is an advanced ashtanga yoga instructor with a pretty impressive video on his profile...just saying.
• Matt Y is an all arounder who likes running, biking, rock climbing, yoga, and gym fitness.
• Tony M swims like a dolphin but prefers ninja-fighting pandas (refer to profile pic)!
• Inuk S - In oder Aus in Switzerland: pilates & aerobics indoors, biking & hockey outdoors.
• Sean N is enjoying his personal-best triathlon w/ his favorite activities: hiking, cardio and yoga.
• Cedric M keeps fit in the city by playing basketball and lifting weights.
• Dan C tracks his urban and adventure hikes all around Taipei, Taiwan.
• Katie J spends her time learning yoga and hiking around New Mexico.
• Gian F is a trooper road bike riding long distances on cold mornings in Florida.
• Chris B achieved his personal best while mountain biking pretty damn hard.

Let's 'green up' our active lives!  We all love being in the wild outdoors and sometimes we find our adventure-seeking selves traveling to faraway places to get our thrills.  But we can't hide the fact that we're impacting our environment and it makes us sad when we hear about facts like 85% of the ice on Mt. Kilimanjaro is gone.

The SF Green Festival just took place with over 400 green businesses and non-profits!  At this conference, 97% of all show waste was recovered, which means only 3% of the waste went to landfills.  It gently reminded us that we should all be making efforts to reduce our carbon footprints and actively 'go green' and eco-friendly.

Here are five themed tips to make our active lives greener:

1. Getting There Green

If you're going on a roadtrip:

• Carpool, it's fun!
• Rent or drive a hybrid car
• Make sure your tires are properly inflated and improve your gas mileage by 3.3%

If you're going to fly:

• Buy non-stop flights, which use less fuel so there are fewer carbon offsets
• Use electronic tickets on your PDA/Smart phone and simply get rid of all paper waste
• Let go of brands and take advantage of last-minute and unfilled flights, hotels, etc. with services like Hotwire:

Then, offset your carbon by using services like Atmosfair (available in English/UK and German).  It will reduce one ton of CO2 for about $17.30USD (the best we've seen), which goes to environmentally friendly projects and provides new job opportunities in third world countries.  A Canadian alternative would be zerofootprint's One Minute Calculator.

2. Do It with Eco-Friendly Style (& BYOB)

Wearing sustainable apparel and bookmark the 'green' sections of your favorite retailer:

For some more specific ideas, bring-your-own bag!  Anything from the Patagonia Carry Y'all Bag, REI Organic Canvas Tote Bag, Hugger Mugger Recycled Paper Yoga Mat Bag, to a GoLite Backpack constructed with recycled ripstop nylon.

It's not just what's on you but what you put in you.  When you're back from being 'out there', slap on some organic Badger Sore Muscle Rub. Feel good putting it on because 10% of Badger Balm sales goes to healthcare & welfare of children charities (including environmental education).

3. When You Can, Reduce & Rent

Reduce and reuse by renting equipment for your adventures. We can help save natural resources, energy and water!  Plus, you really can't have everything in your sports closet.  Demoing is also a great way to reduce the impulse buy & ditch gear syndrome.  You can rent almost anything outdoorsy from:

Here are a couple of great new startups (high five!) that are helping to us go green by providing online tools for us to rent directly from friends and local businesses:

NeighborhoodGoods help you do good by sharing and renting stuff with friends.

RentCycle helps rental business owners go online by offering an online interface for them to track and rent things out.

4. Keep Your Activities Clean!

Remember to leave no trace and 'take only photos, leave only foot prints'.

If you're camping:

• Pack your trash and carry it out for disposal
• Use reusable cutlery and kitchen tools, such as the GSI Bugaboo Camper Cookset:

• Avoid soap or use eco-friendly soap, such as Dr. Bronners Organic Liquid Soap:

When outdoors:

• When hiking and approach trails exist, use them!
• Backcountrying?  Step lightly, avoid breaking branches, and stepping on plants.

Are you a pet owner?  Consider this interesting (and perhaps controversial) article, How green is your pet?  We can't live without these furry guys but we should be conscious about their outdoor whareabouts, remember to properly dispose of their faeces, and train them not to attack wild animals.

5. Educate the Little (& Big) Ones

On that note, it's not only you who can make a difference.  Educating people about the values of environmental sustainabilty and heathy lifestyles goes a long way.  Get kids started early with an Idbids Starter Kit, which include colorful storybook, field guide, backpack, plush toy, and reward certificate.  Adorable!

You can lead by example, such as joingin forces with the Sierra Club campaign to end mountaintop removal coal mining.  This distructive practice damages and destroys nearly 2,000 miles of streams and threatens to destroy 1.4 million acres of land by 2020.  Learn more about this initiative and write a letter in support!

Last but definitely not least, watch the movie 'Home', a beautiful carbon offset movie directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand:

That definitely inspired us to be more senstive about our environment.  A few other sites offering great tips include TheGreenAthlete, GreenDiscovery, and Goodlife.

Team Skimble realizes going green doesn't happen over night but we've consciously made startup efforts to be startup eco-friendly:

• we run in the cloud and rent virtual datacenters
• when we can, we'll web conference to reduce travel impact and costs
• our snacks are mostly all organic and contained in eco-friendly packaging
• we're pretty paperless, opting instead for massive whiteboards
• we bought some of our work furniture off craigslist
• we do not (yet) have an office, but we do have a portledge :)
• we remind ourselves constantly with a green logo!

Seriously, we're always looking for more ways to actively go green - please let us know your tips.  Keep it green & active!

Meet Skimble: the online tool to help you plan, track and discover your active life.  We want to help you get inspired to be active with local workouts and far away travel adventures!

Who are we?  Gabe and Maria are the adventure seekers behind Skimble.  Gabe was born in Boulder, CO, grew up near Boston, and enjoys rock climbing, hiking, and skiing.  Maria is from Canada, was a former gymnast, and enjoys yoga, pilates, and rock climbing.  We love being active and creating meaningful technology.  This passion of ours led us to develop Skimble.  You can find out more about us here.

It's been about a month since we've beta launched and we wanted to share with you a few summer highlights.

For starters, it's been whirlwind of startup activity at Skimble HQ.  We participated in the inaugural semester of TheFunded Founder Institute and there was never was a dull moment.
TechCrunch helped announce our beta launch in September, where they included a fun video of co-founder Maria Ly demonstrating one of her silly human tricks:

You may have also seen us on Thrillist, Examiner, TheFunded, and GigaOM!

Of course, we've been really active too and have shared news updates and photos on our Skimble Facebook page and Skimble Twitter page.
We also made activity-based trips out to Yosemite National Park, North and South Lake Tahoe, Malibu Creek State Park CA, Smith Rock State Park OR, Boulder CO, NYC, and even Toronto Canada.

We're really excited about sharing Skimble with the active world and love getting feedback from our users.

So what are you waiting for?  Be nimble with Skimble!