I'M HARDLY a tree-hugger. I use copious paper towels in the kitchen (remember the anal-retentive chef?) and eat plenty of meat, which we all know takes 10x more kilijoules to raise than we chew out of it. But somewhere between An Inconvenient Truth and a meandering article in Harper's about the gazillions of overboard Chinese rubber-duckies that are now disintegrating their way into the food chain, I've slowly gotten religion in this realm.
Again, I'm no envirosaint. I still use an electric heater in the bathroom (and probably always will, since I'm a huge wuss when it drops below, say, 69 in the house). But I have taken a few steps to reduce my greenhouse gaseousness. So, not to tout my eco-righteousness, but in the spirit of sharing some nifty ideas, here are some of the very sexy products I've discovered to clean up my carbon footprint:
I've tried a couple "ecological" product lines--such as Seventh Generation, whose dishwasher detergent leaves griffy detritus atop your glasses--but a brand that actually does work is Ecover. The company is so righteous they have 10,000 feet of grass on their roof. They make all kinds of good stuff, including toilet-bowl cleaner that doesn't smell like you've just fumigated your house. It's probably hard to come by outside of say, socialist countries like California; but we're fortunate to have an awesome locally-owned hardware store that started carrying it.
A brand that's more available in the 'burbs is Method. They sell it at Targét, so you know it's endorsed by upper-middle-America. Their Tub & Tile Spray, is an excellent, non-noxious alternative to the the Scrubbing Bubbles. And their grapefruit-scented dish liquid smells good enough to have with breakfast.
As you've probably read (or heard fukcing Nancy Grace rant about), San Francisco recently banned plastic grocery bags. (They must be corn-based now: go Heartland!). This should have little impact on us, since we were already sick of schlepping our used bags back to Safeway for recycling (walking across town with mounds of them, you look like a homeless person), so we started carrying these nifty fold-up bags from the Container Store. (Disclaimer: we have an "in" there.) You can carry them in your coat pocket or man-purse; they're super-strong but fold up into an itty-bitty pouch. Plus, using them you feel so bloody European, you'll want to don your Ecco sandals and take the tram home.
And of course, being "Transit-First" citizens, we remain members of our local co-op, City CarShare. Although, once you have access to a car 24/7, you discover how infrequently you actually need one. We only use it for the odd trip to the South Bay (rare) or Wine Country (less rare). I also recently joined FlexCar for their daily rate ($65), though haven't tried it yet. ... If you're not a Bay Arean, Flex has cars in D.C., Philly, Seattle, Atlanta--even Pittsburgh!--while ZipCar is in Chicago, Boston, Vancouver, London, and Minneapolis (in case you want to hook up with Sen. Craig).
BUT BY FAR the funnest eco product we've encountered is our home seltzer maker. We drink bubbly water like, um, water; but with our car-free
Step 1. Cut a hole in a box.
Step 2. Put your junk in that...oh wait, wrong device.
Although I could spend lots of time describing how it works, it's more fun to watch their groovy video. But while they refer to the sound it makes as a "loud buzz," in truth it sounds more like a super-loud fart. We've found that 3 farts delivers a delightfully fizzy beverage.
Or is that over-sharing?
MY HESITATION in starting a blog was mainly this: What the heck do I lead with? Doesn't it have to be something profound, insightful, worth chiseling into my epitaph?
But since I accomplished little more than rambling in my first post, the pressure's off. So...since I make a living as a user-experience expert, my second post should have something to do with my Philosophy of Design, or good "UX," or some such buzzword which most of you, dear readers, will neither understand nor care about.
But wait a sec. You do care about good user experiences; you may just not know it yet.
But first, a quick detour into theory. In grad school we were taught that good design is useful, usable, and desirable. But personally, I think you mainly need to focus on the first two, and the third will follow. (YouTube being a notable exception: it's just plain fun and addictive. Like America's Funniest Home Videos.)
ON THE WHOLE, though, I lean toward utility over sexiness. (In design, of course.) Thus, pondering utility of web sites and various inanimate objects around my house, as I am wont to do, I'd lump them into one of three categories:
1. LOVE YOU:
NextBus. If you rely on an unreliable transit system (like ours) where you could be waiting 5 minutes or 55 minutes for a bus, this is the NextBestThing to someone driving you straight home. Why wait in the cold and fog when you have time for another drink?
OpenTable. A city-dwelling foodie's dream. No more calling 10 places to get a reservation or scratching your head trying to remember, "Now where to eat in that neighborhood?" Zagat's meets personal concierge meets GPS (almost).
Farecast. As a freak who searches every travel and airline site to find the very best deal, I think this site just added 3 years to my life. It not only does all that work for me; it's also a crystal ball into the future trends of fare prices. Magic, I tell you.
Wikipedia. A brilliant experiment in self-policing, mosh-pit publishing. OK, so maybe we can't trust everything we read...but when you want a quick summary of a topic without toiling through the first 10 Google hits, why start anywhere else? Plus, a random article link--good times, good times.
Amazon Wish Lists. If you can train your families, as we have, to look here first for gift ideas, you'll never get another leg lamp for Christmas.
RadioParadise. Not strictly a "UX" item; just freakin awesome Internet radio. You know the kind of station you can leave on all day without wanting to change the channel or throw something at the radio? Well it doesn't exist. Until now. Too bad Congress is about to ruin yet another great thing about the '00s. ... On the utility front, I have "one-click" purchased many a song before it's even finished playing.
2. HATE YOU:
Flash sites. Gotta wait for the download; usually over-designed; often so hyper-interactive you want to unplug the monitor and bash the head of the marketing executive who signed off on it. All too often they cough while you're trying to navigate. Or they have a FlashFart. And the site needs a Skip Intro button, well then there's almost no hope of salvation. Have we learned nothing from Craig?
[Update: in the interest of full disclosure I should confess that the Sheraton example above is in fact coded not in Flash but JavaScript. But that's almost as irksome...and I can't bring myself to give up my trademarkable pejorative, FlashFart.]
Our microwave. Every time you have to reset the clock, it forces you to enter the date and year. Does my Boca Burger need to know the year?? Might make sense if it changed itself for Daylight Saving Time, but A) it doesn't; and B) it'd be wrong anyway now that Congress changed the calendar. Just stupid.
Yelp. Started out in Love You, but now it just frustrates. I'm sure direct democracy seemed like a good idea at the time, but when you get 100 wildly divergent opinions (half of them bitchy people to start with), who can you trust? My kingdom for just one competent reviewer to rise above the pack. Remember the old CitySearch? (sigh)
[Update 4/5: OK, the ultimate in hypocrisy--tonight I posted my first Yelp review. But I swear it was only to help lower the rating of a crazy restauranteur who, we just learned, is about to force out my favorite pub in town. Sign the petition!]
Links that don't open in a new tab or window when you're in the middle of reading something. (Ahem, Team Vox...)
3. LOVE TO HATE YOU:
Our bootleg TiVo. For Christmas we finally got a TiVo. Well, not a real TiVo, but a Toshiba knock-off. Love that it has a DVD burner built in, and the TV Guide listings are free (though you get what you don't pay for). But we've learned to use the thing completely in spite of itself. Absolutely the most cryptic, over-engineered consumer product I've ever picked up a remote for. Hoping Panasonic's are better for next time.
The Netflix Queue. The sole reason we keep our underused Netflix account. If I could transfer its (currently 306) titles directly to my brain, then I wouldn't need to stand around the video store like an Alzheimer's victim, and end up bringing home something which I realize, 30 minutes into it, I've already seen. Until that day, Vivat Queue.
Grace Cathedral's webcasts. Being a choirboy since age 5, I used to be a semi-regular churchgoer. But with a top-notch men & boys' choir brought directly into my living room--and the ability to fast-forward through the sermon if circuitous--I now all too often have devolved into an armchair, Internet Episcopalian. This fault I acknowledge and bewail.
The Macintosh. There, I've said it. Yeah, I'm a lifelong loyalist and have owned 3 of them...but it's the tiny, unjustifiable differences that make one want to yank out one's one-button mouse and wrap it around Steve Jobs' neck. They're still sexier; they're still not Microsoft...but come on, not even a true Delete key after all these years? Throw us a frickin' bone here.
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Here endeth today's rant.
I'M ANYTHING BUT an early adopter. I just don't think it pays. I was the last kid on the block with a cell phone. We had a 19" TV for like 12 years (hey, it still worked). I kept using my old email program, on OS9, for years after I got a new PowerBook. It's not that I'm afraid of change per se. I just think you get a better deal--a better widget, a bigger hard drive, faster whatnots--if you wait for things to settle in bit.
But when I finally do make the leap, I go all the way. Overnight I went from dial-up to wireless DSL. (Now we have two AirPorts.) While all our friends were buying houses, we stayed in the same rent-controlled hovel for 7 years; then we jumped in and bought a loft. I'm sort of manic-depressive (or like Dad: cheap) when it comes to things technical or life-changing.
Then everybody, it seems, got a blog. Kyle (he bakes), and Randolph (he travels), and Kevin (he drinks). And Rebecca, and Emily, and Pete (he worked for Crazianna Huffington). And Nicole and Jenny (they knit). Jenny's husband Harold even worked for Vox and gave me this account; but still no motivation. I must have thought: Who wants to hear what I have to say? I don't even have much patience for reading blogs myself--why make friends feel guilty for not keeping up with mine?
Then this morning I had an epiphany: Who cares who cares? Nobody paid $5 for this copy of the Sunday Times and will be irritated if my drivel takes up 1/4 of the Opinion page. Nobody's stuck on hold, forced to listen to my Muzak. No focus groups to keep happy here.
That's the beauty of the Interweb: Take it or leave it.
What'll I write about? Who cares? At least it's here when I want to extol or vilify something. And I do tend to have opinions....
