I love the idea behind this program. Efficient toilets, and appliances like it are generally more expensive than the less efficient alternatives. Helping low income families participate efficiently in the green movement should be a priority for every local government.
Personally I think government subsidization of green programs is one of the best ways to spend our tax dollars. The cost to our country (today and in the future) for being grossly inefficient far out paces the cost of helping all members of society be as efficient as possible.
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on Jun 17, 2008 at 6/17/2008 11:06:00 PM.
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Below is an open email I sent to almost everyone I know, this evening. If you didn't get this email, please read it. I'll post how effective it was in about 2 weeks.
********************************* Hi Everyone,
As you hopefully know, I try to keep non-personal emails to a minimum, unless there is a pressing issue you all should hear about.
This weekend I saw a talk given by John Doerr at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/128. His 15 minute discussion was an impassioned plea for us to change how we consume energy - or, as he put it, we're not going to make it. He is one of a handful of people who's opinion on this I'd believe. Watch the video for details. Part of his plea, included asking us all to do whatever we can. Here's where me and my network chips in...
Back in Feb '05 you may have received an email from me about switching to Green Power at home. Converting your home to receive Green Power is the easiest and single most significant step you can take to reduce your impact on global warming. If you know something easier & more impactful, please let me know, as I'd like to do that too. Back in '05, about 30 people converted their power as a result of my email. My network has grown since then; I know that together we can double the number of converts!
Important facts: - You don't need to change anything in your house. The only thing that changes when you buy Green Power is who your power company buys power from (to power your home). - The price difference is roughly the cost of one Starbucks coffee per week. And everyone receiving this email can afford that. - You can read more details about what your options are, and the differences, on my blog...
If you're ready to do it now (and live in NYC), follow these simple steps: 1. Get your last ConEd bill (you'll need your acct #) & come back to this computer 2. Visit http://www.poweryourway.com/pages/greenpower.html#providers to see your selection of Green Power providers 3. Once you've selected an energy provider, follow the link to their site & enroll! 4. Feel good every time you get your bill that every penny you spent on electric didn't cause any more C02 to be emitted.
And if you're ready to switch now, but don't want to read too much, just trust my research skills and use the same Green Power company that I do - go directly to their site at: http://www.conedsolutions.com/residential/greenpowermain.htm and enroll there!
If you don't live in NYC, please visit your power authority's web site for details on how to select a Green Power provider. If your power authority doesn't offer a Green Power option - contact your state and federal representatives, and lobby for them to give you options. If you need help with that last step, contact me, I'd love to help.
If you're one of the conscientious people who already converted to Green Power - please forward this email to your friends & family - or write your own message!
Thanks, - Steve
Summary of John Doerr's talk: "I don't think we're going to make it," John Doerr proclaims, in an emotional talk about climate change and investment. Spurred on by his daughter, who demanded he fix the mess the world is heading for, he and his partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers embarked on a greentech world tour -- surveying the state of the art, from the ethanol revolution in Brazil to Wal-mart's (!) eco-concept store in Bentonville, Arkansas. KPCB is investing $200 million in green technologies to save the planet and make a profit to boot. But, Doerr fears, it may not be enough.
This entry was posted
on Oct 2, 2007 at 10/02/2007 11:33:00 PM.
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I've been working on training my Beta to eat off of my finger tip. He does it regularly now!
Basically I dip my finger in the water, then get a grain of food to stick to my finger, and put it near the surface of the water. He jumps up and grabs it!
This entry was posted
on Sep 28, 2007 at 9/28/2007 12:35:00 AM.
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This article really got me thinking today about the role of government & our relationship (as citizens) with our government. In my mind, the government is us, in the greatest sense of the word. As such, we should inherently trust our government to do the right thing. At least that's what conservative friends of mine think, when it comes to national security.
Then it started to bother me when I realized that I had a serious distrust in my government. That distrust is so strong, that I'm willing to keep inefficient processes in place - which handcuff people at all levels of government. Is part of the problem with our government that people have such a loathing distrust, and expectations are so low (other than in times of crisis) that our government is reaching the level we set for it? (which is quite low IMHO)...
I'll contribute more later when I have more time...
This entry was posted
on Aug 3, 2007 at 8/03/2007 03:06:00 PM.
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"Luck is a bird that flies high in the sky, and every once in a while craps on someone. So go out in the world and take a chance, you just might get crapped on..."
(I'm not sure who originally said it - if you know, pls submit a reference...)
This entry was posted
on Jul 25, 2007 at 7/25/2007 04:25:00 PM.
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My friend Noah Brier recently took advantage of something every Jew between 18 & 26 should take advantage of: Birthright Israel. Some of you may know him as an awesome networker (aka Super-connector), others may know him as a great blogger. While away on Birthright Noah invited several people to be guest bloggers, and luckily I was one of them! You can read my contribution here, as well as the variety of comments people left. I've pasted it below in case you really don't want to navigate away from this page; but I suggest reading it on Noah's site, as you can contribute to the conversation that began there.
******************** A Vision for the Future of Media Distribution
The other day I noticed a sign in Blockbuster's window, announcing an exclusive agreement with The Weinstein Co. I work in the media business and honestly don't know anyone who's compelled to watch a film because The Weinstein Co., or Universal, or any other studio made it. But that's not the main point of this story.
The implications of Blockbuster paying for exclusivity made me think about where the media industry is, and where it “would” go if I were king of the media universe. The first thought was that when Blockbuster gets content creators to sign exclusive agreements, they show a lack of appreciation for who their primary competition is, and worse yet what their customers' expectations are. Customers don't pay Blockbuster for their ability to curate films, they pay HBO for that. Now that Blockbuster is a completely subscription based business, competing on offering may help to fight with Netflix in a winner-takes-all game, but in the big picture, they're only helping their primary competition: free file sharing services on the web.
File sharing services don't care about exclusive agreements, and neither do customers; until it keeps them from accessing media via their chosen distributor. Everything is available on-demand on the web, no matter where you are in the world. So as a customer considering an incomplete offering from both Blockbuster AND Netflix, what would compel me to pay either, or both of them if I can get it all for free, more quickly, online? While I could recommend ways for Blockbuster and Netflix to fix their businesses, they're going to die anyway... so here's what I see coming down the pike once those two (among many others) are out of the way.
I see a future where portals will offer access to every piece of media ever created (and by media I mean everything: from TV shows & films, to video games, music, books, magazines, poems, paintings, etc...). Furthermore, no portal will have exclusive offerings (similar to Internet portals), and there will be minimal barrier to entry (contrasted with the NFL Network's problems). The business model has two fronts, one facing the consumer, and one facing the content creator.
The consumer facing model is based on the fact that every person has “x” number of minutes per day/week/month to spend consuming various forms of media. There is a dollar figure actuaries can determine those minutes are worth both to the portal and to the customer. Quickly a rate plan very similar to tiered cellphone plans will emerge. All the media you can consume in “x” number of minutes per month, for “x” dollars per month.
The content creator facing model will include paying each content creator a fixed amount per unit of time each unique customer spent consuming the media that content creator made available. The kid who took a picture of himself every day for several years & made a film with those pictures deserves the same amount of money per unit of time spent watching his film as did the creators of Spiderman. Why? Because you can't watch both at the same time, and you have a finite amount of time per month to consume anything.
This type of model will take the curating role out of distributors' hands, and leave it in the hands of the artists and their investors. The portals (formerly distributors) will no longer compete on content offering, but on services related to the searching for and interacting with the content. One example is re-inventing the idea of product placement. It won't be about “hoping” your audience noticed everyone in a show only drank Coke. It will be about making a pair of jeans, or a car that's seen on-screen an interactive object that a viewer can click & buy.
Note: I don't assume that the portals will only be accessible on your computer – the computer and the TV will, at this point be minimally different screens to access the same media. But hardware is the final element in this plan: creating tools for consumers to interact with media. Apple is WAY ahead of the curve on this front. With the advent of iTunes, they're not only acting as a portal, but with iPods, and AppleTV they're also offering the hardware and a “whole-product”. Software is relatively easy to develop & roll-out to market, hardware is much more difficult, and anyone who wants into this game had better start partnering with hardware manufacturers, if not buy one or two.
In this altered universe I've imagined, consumers will have ultimate reign, and artists will have way more freedom. The portals will at once offer two-way access from content creators to the smallest niche audiences, and the largest mass-markets. There will no longer be a studio boss, or book publisher who instructs an artist to change their art in order to distribute it. If an artist can afford to make something on their own, they can, and won't need a distributor to reach their desired market. Artists will be free to display their work, and get paid fairly for it. The most successful artists will be picked by mass appeal, rather than by “payola” systems which enable the distribution companies to shove whatever they want down our throats.
This entry was posted
on Jun 15, 2007 at 6/15/2007 04:13:00 PM.
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I think the extent to which NetFlix and Blockbuster will "die" is better expressed as the death of physically trafficking in media using physical objects. The chairman of Sun, over ten years ago, raged about the absurdity of taking bits and bytes, burning them to a disc and putting them in the mail or in CompUSA (or Tower Records for that matter).
Netflix is already playing with the idea of letting you watch movies over the Internet instead of them having to send them to you in the mail. So, I think they do have a shot at surviving.
On a long enough timeline, most media will be electronically delivered. Time Warner Cable has this already with 24-hour rentals. For $3, you can watch the movie as much as you want for 24 hours, will full rewind and fast-forward capabilities. If you've never tried it, it's pretty sweet.
A major potential flaw in your argument is the assumption that a consumer would be satisfied with this all-you-can-eat model. "I pay $X/month and then watch anything ever made." This assumes that this service has gotten ahold of the rights to everything ever made. Once there is non-participating content, consumers would get irritated at having to pay fees to all these balkanized services. Know anyone who uses Rhapsody AND iTunes Music Store? (technical issues therein not withstanding)
Why wouldn't a content producer participate? A system where the consumer pays a fixed amount regardless of how much of the movie they watch benefits the majority of movies because most movies suck. It would screw with content creators because they'd have to make the first 10 minutes of their content really catchy, lest they lose their audience and thus money with 80 minutes of movie left to go.
Not to mention if users can upload content into the system, you have the groundwork for massive fraud management problems. How about I obtain a copy of the new Batman movie and then post it. The people that watch my copy will create revenue for me, which Warner Brothers would then have to try and obtain via assorted filing with the service or courts. Look at it this way: right now people are posting movies and TV shows to the internet in large numbers. Imagine if they had a profit motive!
I think you're definitely onto something with the notion of being able to buy products right out of entertainment programming with a click. There's probably good money there.
Last night I was at the office ~9pm and Atossa called me up. She was on the guest list for Nouvelle Vague's performance at the Guggenheim Museum and asked if I wanted to go!
I quickly finished up my work, and upon arrival at 10pm, with people lined up around the block, Atossa sneaked us in to the party where between the chicks dressed like they're going to the prom, the flowing wine, awesome renditions of "Too Drunk To Fuck", and hipsters not knowing what to do with themselves, it was an awesome night - one Frank Lloyd Wright would be proud of!
This entry was posted
on Jun 2, 2007 at 6/02/2007 03:17:00 PM.
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I haven't written about bias in the media - specifically against Israel - in quite a while. Maybe this is because Israeli politicians have been careful since Lebanon to restrain themselves... leaving the media with nothing to report on.
Maybe it's because Google News has become my main source of news, and I usually read three articles about any given subject to get as well-rounded a view on the subject as possible - letting the various biases cancel each other out - or call attention to each other & letting the facts seep through.
Today though, I came across an article in the New York Times that went too far in exhibiting the Times' persistent bias against Israel.
The headline read, "Fatah Officials' Home Stormed in Gaza Clashes"
The photograph was of destruction & a large crowd of Palestinians.
The photograph's caption read, "Palestinians searching for survivors after an Israeli missile strike on a building in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip today."
The first paragraph mentions that the Israeli air strike is just one aspect of the violence in Gaza, and then briefly mentions some of the factional fighting. Five paragraphs down the NYTimes finally indicate that the air strike was in retaliation for an increase in missiles raining down on the town of Sderot - which have injured many civilians.
The rest of the article basically focuses on the factional fighting between Hamas & Fatah. They even mention that Hamas militants killed five of their own "by accident" and shot at point-blank range seven Fatah police men.
If it's not clear where the bias is, I'll spell it out. The article was a total of 870 words. Except for maybe one paragraph, the article doesn't mention violence coming from Israel - the article focuses on the "factional violence" (which I'd call civil war). But, we all know what people look at first, in order to determine if they'll keep reading: the headline and the caption for the large photo at the top. Those three elements, in this case, point a bloody finger at Israel.
The headline doesn't indicate who stormed the Fatah Official's home (Hamas stormed it). But the image below the headline, and the caption below the image both discuss Israel's bombing of a "building" (a Hamas office).
At quick glance it's easy to assume that the building bombed by Israel in the image that the caption refers to is the home referred to in the title. Yet the bombing by Israel has nothing to do with the war Palestinians are waging on each other. Considering that the article is about Palestinians killing Palestinians, why is there an image and a caption of Israeli force?
This entry was posted
on May 17, 2007 at 5/17/2007 01:38:00 AM.
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The McKinsey Quarterly often publishes great interviews with business leaders. Today I read an interesting interview with Keith Pardy, Nokia’s senior vp of strategic marketing. Below are some lines that struck a particular cord with me:
"It’s not about pushing out messages any more. You have to initiate interesting conversations and build meaningful relationships with consumers."
"If you start playing games with people, they’ll find out and eat you alive."
"...we haven’t figured out how to unleash all the creative potential that lies in people talking about our products in exciting new ways."
"[in North America] the understanding of the price-value equation is confused, since the cost of the [mobile] device is wrapped up in long-term service contracts."
"watch what happens when you give somebody a new device. The first thing they do is put it in their hands, pop it up and down a little bit, and roll it around. Now that, to me, is an insight."
This entry was posted
on May 8, 2007 at 5/08/2007 12:22:00 PM.
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Today I read about Clear Channel starting an interesting experiment in local social networking. Read about it here.
As a big proponent of local networking, I'm really interested in seeing how this pans out for Clear Channel... Although I'm a bit skeptical - maybe it'll be great for kids who haven't gone to college yet (and don't know many people outside of their home city), as well as older folk who haven't really tried out online social networking, and don't have a network outside of their home city.
My skepticism is borne out of the appreciation for the appeal of Facebook, et al... users who aren't currently in the same city, can keep in touch easily no matter where they are in the world. And at the same time, they're able to keep in touch with people who do live near them. Just today on Facebook one friend who lives in DC posted that he'll be in Columbus, OH tomorrow in case anyone else will be there and wants to meet up. Another friend who lives here in NYC posted that she'll be attending the Salute to Israel parade on Sunday, if anyone wants to join her.
This entry was posted
on May 1, 2007 at 5/01/2007 06:27:00 PM.
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1. Radio stations have missed the whole 'web' game years ago, same with local network tv. Newspapers are the only traditional media that made a valuable addition to the web when creating websites. Have you seen a radio station website, they're garbage.
So adding a crappy social network on top of that is bound to go nowhere. Social Networks are a feature, not a product play. They'll understand that soon.
Vin, thanks for the feedback. You're dead on about social networks being a feature, not a product play. It seems as though many old media companies are trying anything that "appears" to work for any random company, without a full appreciation for what they're getting into. I see this as a product of these companies failing to develop a realistic vision for what their role will be in the lives of their customers tomorrow, or even a year from now. Too many simply aren't able to abstract what it is they're good at, and get stuck seeing what they're doing right this minute as the only thing they'll ever be able to do.
There is one tid bit that I learned at a recent conference I attended. Apparently the web sites for local TV news stations get tons of traffic - regardless of how crappy they are. They have good, reliable data that's easy to find (albeit lacking any nifty features). As long as they're able to keep up the traffic, the ad dollars will come in, and they'll fix that (I hope) - considering they've managed to survive this long.
I'm going to put this out there: from the little evidence I have, it appears to me that High Fructose Corn Syrup is connected to the insanely high rate of diabetes in the US, and the high incidence of obesity.
And while I haven't seen much research on the connection HFCS has to poor health- I doubt we'll see a study any time soon, as it's used in almost every American made product.
I don't particularly like conspiracy theories - this one seems plausible. Hopefully I'll be able to find more evidence soon... If you have thoughts or ideas, please share.
This entry was posted
on at 5/01/2007 12:54:00 AM.
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I remember hearing that soda in Europe has real sugar rather than HFCS and that was part of the reason Europeans are less obese . . . again, no idea if there's truth to it.
While I've been thinking about this theory for about 6 months now, just the other day I was at the supermarket and saw two sodas next to each other on the shelf: Orangina, and San Pellegrino (Aranciata flavor).
Orangina used HFCS, San Pellegrino used sugar.
It was the first time it hit me that it really was just US brands that are using HFCS b/c of how much cheaper it is (in no small part due to our government subsidies...
Yes, I agree that HFCS is very bad, I have my copy of omnivore's dilemma reserved at the library that I have to pick up today.
Costco introduced mexican coke recently which has real sugar: http://www.seriouseats.com/required_eating/2007/05/costco-is-selling-mexican-coke.html
And why do we have so much HFCS you ask? Because corn is subsidized by the U.S. gov't. When the plan was initially put in place, it was a good thing for our farmers, nobody thought of these affects. We have more corn in our diet then any other nation and we throw incredibly hight taxes on sugar from our south american friends. It was invited in our liftime 1980, and is very un-natural.
But it's so f'n hard to drink something that doesn't have it...
I've written several posts about my evolving appreciation for how people adopt to new technology. I've also written specifically about the need for communities to get involved in encouraging their citizens to adopt certain technologies like SMS.
Just the other day, a friend was brainstorming with me some ideas to incorporate interactivity and multimedia interfaces for museum goers.
Two technologies came to mind:
1. SMS
2. Bluetooth
How SMS would work:
As a museum visitor walks through the exhibits, the plaque describing each piece in the collection will have a little Google icon (or whichever search service is funding the project) and a unique number to send an SMS to. The visitor can send an SMS to the given number, with any question related to the piece they're looking at.
The unique SMS number will aide the search service to pull more accurate answers because the unique SMS number will indicate to the search service that the inquiry is related to a specific work of art. I envision this working similarly to Google's SMS service which I use all the time, and is generally accurate as long as I include enough information. Most of the time I use it to find stuff in NYC, and I'd love it if there was a unique number for NYC, so I didn't need to type "new york city" each time...
Using SMS promotes the use of an easy to use technology which every phone around the world has pre-installed. It promotes the use of an already adopted interactive technology. Accuracy can be high, and ease of use is already high. Furthermore, there is low overhead to a project like this. Lastly, users can have the answers saved on their phone, for future reference and discussion.
How Bluetooth would work:
When museum visitors enter the museum, there will be a sign (and it will also be on their ticket or receipt for admission) advising them to activate Bluetooth on their phone, and which device to pair it with.
Alternatively, since many people will visit the website of a museum before going, the museum can offer users to pre-set their device to pair with the museum's computers, so that when they arrive, their phone will automatically sync up with the museum's computers and receive pertinent information. There can also be a download right from the site (similar to the already popular downloads of audio-guides to the museum). In addition, if the museum offers ticket sales on their website, users can store their receipt in their phone, and when they arrive they can be validated via Bluetooth at the entrance.
As visitors walk around the museum, each exhibit area can push multimedia data to their phone about the exhibit they've just walked in to, and each piece on exhibit will be feeding information about that specific piece. All of this can include links to the web, for web-enabled phones for further exploration once the visitors leave the museum.
Just some thoughts off the top of my head. Hopefully someone will do something like this soon. I'd use it ;-)
P.S. In the near future, I'll be posting ideas like these to Ideageneration.org - a blog I'm setting up with the specific purpose of posting solutions for various organizations that I simply want to see happen, rather than quit my job to create.
This entry was posted
on Apr 25, 2007 at 4/25/2007 01:46:00 AM.
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"TV networks would get more money than ever. Creative and media agencies will too because while their work might change significantly, the tangible value of that work will become measurable."
This is the most significant line in an article I read today in AdAge about a company called Backchannel Media. What I like most about that line is that it can be applied to almost any sector of the Media industry. So many people in the media business are so scared of changing their daily routine, that change is a fact of life... and that change often brings good things to those who fully accept that reality early on.
As for the article - Backchannel's business is really interesting & worth a read. I have complete faith that the direction they want to take the TV business is the right one it should go in. What I have less faith in is that TV will remain an independent, closed network - separate from the Internet. It simply doesn't make sense to me... Feel free to leave comments and debate points in the article.
This entry was posted
on Apr 23, 2007 at 4/23/2007 05:27:00 PM.
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While I could write a book about how flawed our credit systems in the US are, I'll save that for a later date. Right now I just want to help you check on your credit... You are entitled to a free credit report from each of the credit reporting agencies - once per year.
This entry was posted
on Apr 18, 2007 at 4/18/2007 04:22:00 PM.
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