Mike’s Digital Laboratory

Earth Hour approaches.

“On Earth Hour hundreds of millions of people around the world will come together to call for action on climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour. The movement symbolizes that by working together, each of us can make a positive impact in this fight, protecting our future and that of future generations. Learn more about how Earth Hour began, what we’ve accomplished, and what is in store for 2010.

Participation is easy. By flipping off your lights on March 27th at 8:30 p.m. local time you will be making the switch to a cleaner, more secure nation and prosperous America.”

At Pictometry we have created a video of the images of Haiti that we donated to the GIS Corp in order to support the relief effort.

“Within days of the earthquake in Haiti, Pictometry captured more than 45,000 aerial oblique images of the damage in the capital city of Port au Prince and its surrounding area. The imagery was then donated to URISA’s volunteer GIS Corps to assist with the recovery efforts.”

ZipcodeZoo is big, really big. But with ZipcodeZoo you can also get local. By entering your zip code you learn about species of plants and animals that live near you.  After I entered my zip code I was qucik to learn to learn that At least 374 species that live near my home in Fairport NY are declining in population.  Zipcode Zoo is also a good exampe of how we can combine ecological data with online mapping tools.  Clicking on the “distribution tab” of a species specific page in Zipcode Zoo reveals numourous maps including in some cases embedded Google Earth renederings of actual sigthings. Virtual Globes such as Google Earth and tools like Google Maps are great because they provide a common browsing experience for the expert and novice alike, and can be repurposed to support almost any kind of geographically related data.

Here’s how big Zipcode Zoo was today:

“This site is big. As of Tuesday, April 28, 2009, this site is home to 2,607,667 web pages describing 1,295,353 animals, 1,067,966 plants, 193,843 fungi, 17,577 chromista, 16,063 protozoa, 16,113 bacteria, and 459 viruses. Pages contain 277,365 photos taken by 1,447 photographers, 1,471 sound recordings, and definitions of 223,189 terms. 85,429 Large photos can be zoomed and panned.

We have gathered a total of 127,715,647 field observations from 28,481 data sets and 1,547 data providers which show latitude and longitude, from which we have generated 254,338 State Maps, 1,430,347 Country Maps, 450,700 Google maps showing up to 200 sightings each, and 450,700 Google Earth maps showing all sightings. Click on a pinpoint on one of these maps, and you’ll learn more about that observation.”

Being  affiliated with RIT I applaud  president Destlers (and many other university presidents) commitment to improving our global climate. You can catch the signing  at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow in the Al Davis Room, Student Alumni Union.  Kudos to the RIT Student Environmental Action League for sponsoring the event. The thing I like about this commitment is that it proposes real action. Just take a look at the list. (follow the link) 

“We, the undersigned presidents and chancellors of colleges and universities, are deeply concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of global warming and its potential for large-scale, adverse health, social, economic and ecological effects. We recognize the scientific consensus that global warming is real and is largely being caused by humans. We further recognize the need to reduce the global emission of greenhouse gases by 80% by mid-century at the latest, in order to avert the worst impacts of global warming and to reestablish the more stable climatic conditions that have made human progress over the last 10,000 years possible.”  more…

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.