Mike’s Digital Laboratory

Nova Spivak writes about his sneak preview of Wolfram Alpha:

Stephen Wolfram is building something new — and it is really impressive and significant. In fact it may be as important for the Web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose. It’s not a “Google killer” — it does something different. It’s an “answer engine” rather than a search engine…

Check it out this May: www.wolframalpha.com

The tag line for GoodGuide suggests they provide ratings of Natural Products, Green Products, and Healthy Products…  Well not necessarily…  What they actually do is aggregate multiple product ratings roughly divided into three categories, Health performance, Environmental performance, and Social performance.  You might chuck the shampoo you are using in  the dumpster recycle bin after learning more about what you are buying.

GoodGuide goes a long way to fulfilling an idea I’ve been kicking around with some of my friends lately.  The idea is that we need to become more conscious of the “Global cost of Ownership” or GCO of the stuff we make, buy and consume. The idea is not “what does it cost me?”, the consumer, but “what does it cost the planet?”  What is the total toll on our environment, health and social well being as the product moves from cradle to grave.

There have been many efforts to rate products over the years but they have often been focused on a singular or narrow concern for example  child safety, carbon footprint, health and toxicity, etc..  But a product strong in one area might be weak in another.   By exposing all the data, or as much as we can, we can encourage manufacturers to improve there products in all the columns  as we educate consumers about what a particular product is doing to their local and global body.   GoodGuide also follows through and reveals the sources of it’s ratings.  Verifiability is very important if we are going to be able to trust rating systems like this. Try it out.  look at a product on GoodGuide and click on the link to “See all data”.  Sources for ratings are revealed, sometimes accompanied by a direct link to the source.

Here are some other characteristics of GoodGuide as summarized in a recent post by Wikinomics blogger Paul Artiuch:

Easy to understand 10-point based rating for the health, environmental and social performance of the product

Aggregate 10-point product rating based on 600 criteria derived from 71 product facts

Scientific approach to calculating scores using information from government, not-for-profit and private databases

Comparison ratings in various product categories

Ability for users to add their own ratings and reviews with links to reviews by Amazon

iPhone application for mobile browsing

Tips on reducing environmental impact

Intuitive interface which greatly speeds up browsing

Hey, this works for me.  So in my opinion the upshot is that GoodGuide is indeed a good guide and one I think I’ll use., but more importantly it may be a model for how we can make guides good.