• Did you know? Four square metres of rainforest are destroyed for every gram of cocaine snorted in the UK, a conference of senior police officers as told yesterday.
• 300,000 hectares of rainforest were destroyed each year in Colombia to clear land for coca plant cultivation, predominantly controlled by illegal groups, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as Farc.
• If you can’t afford solar panels (there’s the tech relevance), this is a sure way to do your part in the green coalition.

• DogChannel launches their health section in hopes to be the most comprehensive canine medical diagnostic content on the web.
• The list of symptoms, which can be found here, was compiled by Dog Fancy’s “Ask the Vet” expert Karla Rugh
• Good luck trying to find out what happened to the dog pictured above.

• Fitbit, produces a little device (looks like a blue-tooth) that clips onto your clothing and tracks your movement throughout the day and night with its internal motion detecto
• The device is gathering information about how much exercise you’ve been getting by counting your steps and calculating how many calroeis you have burnt.
• It even tracks how well you slept by gathering how often you move, and auto syncs wirelessly with your computer to view stats.
• They have raised $2 million from True Ventures, SoftTech VC and several angels in what appears to be the company’s first round of institutional funding.
• The device launches early 2009 for $99 each. This is a cool idea, and I imagine buying it at a ‘Brookstone’

TC

• Family tree building site, Familybuilder, has quickly grown into a gigantic network of over 20 million people.
• They’ve just announced that starting on the 15th of October, DNA testing will be available for it’s users.
• The tests are mail-in based and cost $59.99, a low price compared to competitors like Ancestry.com’s $149 charge.
• Users will receive maternal (maDNA) and paternal (yDNA) information as well as a finite look back in time.

Mashable

• ZocDoc allows users to book their doctor appointments online, and let’s doctors manage visits. 
• Mark Benioff and Jeff Bezoz have joined last months $3m series A led by Khosla Ventures.
• Doctors and patients using the site has grown 50% a month since launching at the TC 50

• WatchMeMelt is a social network dedicated to helping users chronicle their weight-loss efforts
• Users can post updates on their current progress, exercise regiments, and motivational clips for encouragement in the community.

Made tiny from: TechCrunch.com original post