Floating in the Cloud!

Wow!  What an opportunity, huh?  I think that this is a great chance for us to put all that mind boggling theory to use.  I wanted to let everyone know where my interests lie, as far as our work with The Cloud Institute is concerned.  I’m thinking that helping them to develop some initial marketing materials for their web tool would be very beneficial for all parties involved, and it’s something tangible that we can do in the span of a few weeks.  If that involves videoing youngsters on the street, asking them about sustainability and whatnot, or developing some motion and still graphics to upload and documenting how easy the process is (I’m thinking of trying to represent some of the stuff that was in their portfolio books in an online format), it sounded to me like they need a way to present their tool to their clients.  Anyhow, just some thoughts.

-Doug

Ambient information + sustainable social networking links

Just archiving a previous email:

Here are a few related articles and sites I’ve stumbled across over the past few months:

http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2007/08/a_couple_of_mon.html
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/08/24/08

These above two links are to an article and an interview with technology journalist Clive Thompson, in which he discusses the cognitive advantages of using ambient information in service to real-time energy usage monitoring, an energy utility’s pilot program that tried this, and linking energy usage up to social networking to create “a social virus type of effect where people would be almost actively reducing even more of their energy usage so they won’t look like a complete energy glutton in front of their friends.”

http://www.diykyoto.com/wattson.html
http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/orb/orborder.html

The two sites above are “product pages” for the ambient devices mentioned in the first set of links.

http://makemesustainable.com/mission

This last link is to a sustainable social networking site designed to track users’ carbon footprints. I’m somewhat skeptical, but it looks like an interesting “text” to analyze for strengths/weaknesses.