Go to our new survey – we’ve only got six questions for you, and they’re easy. In return, we’ll show you an estimate of how the climate would change if everyone consumed as you did.
You’ll fill this out:
Then you’ll get something like this:
Answer six questions, and see how the climate changes
Looking to get a quick sense of the size of your global warming contribution?
Go to our new survey – we’ve only got six questions for you, and they’re easy. In return, we’ll show you an estimate of how the climate would change if everyone consumed as you did.
You’ll fill this out:
Then you’ll get something like this:
Go to our new survey – we’ve only got six questions for you, and they’re easy. In return, we’ll show you an estimate of how the climate would change if everyone consumed as you did.
You’ll fill this out:
Then you’ll get something like this:
The Almanac’s “Intern Roundup”
We’ve had the pleasure of working with some fantastic interns here at The Almanac, and we thought that it was high time to check in on everyone and see how they’re doing.
In the fall of 2009, Gershon, after devoting the whole summer to working with us, started graduate studies at the MIT Media Lab. He’s in the Responsive Environments Group working on sensor networks and computer vision, among other things. He told us all about one class called how to make almost anything, which speaks for itself in how ridiculously neat it is.
After working with us for the summer of 2009 as well, Zeke went back to Oberlin College to finish up his last year of school. He’s working on his honors thesis in computer science, creating a system for using machine learning to identify similarities between songs in a large library of music. He’s graduating in the spring, and just got his first job offer for the summer: Zeke will be joining Apple to work in the OS X updates department! Congratulations, Zeke!
Glass isn’t an intern (he worked full-time from April to September of 2009), but he’s just about done with his final year at Columbia University! He’ll be returning to The Almanac full time in the summer; we’re excited to get Glassed again.
We’d also like to have a “shout-out” to our latest intern Sari! She’s an environmental engineering student helping us out with the research and implementation of our climate projector. She’s great, and we’re going to keep her forever. Until she breaks our hearts.
And all you interns, keep doing amazing things for us to write about!
<3 The Almanac
In the fall of 2009, Gershon, after devoting the whole summer to working with us, started graduate studies at the MIT Media Lab. He’s in the Responsive Environments Group working on sensor networks and computer vision, among other things. He told us all about one class called how to make almost anything, which speaks for itself in how ridiculously neat it is.
After working with us for the summer of 2009 as well, Zeke went back to Oberlin College to finish up his last year of school. He’s working on his honors thesis in computer science, creating a system for using machine learning to identify similarities between songs in a large library of music. He’s graduating in the spring, and just got his first job offer for the summer: Zeke will be joining Apple to work in the OS X updates department! Congratulations, Zeke!
Glass isn’t an intern (he worked full-time from April to September of 2009), but he’s just about done with his final year at Columbia University! He’ll be returning to The Almanac full time in the summer; we’re excited to get Glassed again.
We’d also like to have a “shout-out” to our latest intern Sari! She’s an environmental engineering student helping us out with the research and implementation of our climate projector. She’s great, and we’re going to keep her forever. Until she breaks our hearts.
And all you interns, keep doing amazing things for us to write about!
<3 The Almanac
Tags: people
Gotham Redesign
Well hello there!
We just finished rolling out (what we modestly think is) a pretty snazzy redesign of the Gotham Energy App, our application for helping New Yorkers keep track of their energy consumption! Here it is in all of its radiant, rounded corner, electric cable glory:
In addition to making things shiny, we’ve added some new features to help you make educated decisions about how you consume energy.
All New Yorkers know that they get their energy through Con Edison, but many don’t know that they can buy their energy from a number of different energy service companies (ESCOs). There are about 7 different ESCOs that offer their services through ConEd (who will always be delivering your electricity), offering a number of plans, including low- and no-emissions plans. The table at the bottom of the screenshot shows you how much you would have spent and emitted over the last year had you purchased your energy through one of these companies.
At this point, we only have enough data to calculate this information for fixed-rate plans (ones in which the cents/kilowatt-hour does not change), and these plans often will not save you money. But we are going to be adding the ability to give you information about the variable-rate plans, which will give you a financial (as well as ecological) reason to switch plans!
We’d love to hear what you think about Gotham, so if you’re feeling frisky, send us an email!
We just finished rolling out (what we modestly think is) a pretty snazzy redesign of the Gotham Energy App, our application for helping New Yorkers keep track of their energy consumption! Here it is in all of its radiant, rounded corner, electric cable glory:
In addition to making things shiny, we’ve added some new features to help you make educated decisions about how you consume energy.
All New Yorkers know that they get their energy through Con Edison, but many don’t know that they can buy their energy from a number of different energy service companies (ESCOs). There are about 7 different ESCOs that offer their services through ConEd (who will always be delivering your electricity), offering a number of plans, including low- and no-emissions plans. The table at the bottom of the screenshot shows you how much you would have spent and emitted over the last year had you purchased your energy through one of these companies.
At this point, we only have enough data to calculate this information for fixed-rate plans (ones in which the cents/kilowatt-hour does not change), and these plans often will not save you money. But we are going to be adding the ability to give you information about the variable-rate plans, which will give you a financial (as well as ecological) reason to switch plans!
We’d love to hear what you think about Gotham, so if you’re feeling frisky, send us an email!
Tags: design, gotham energy app
Introducing… The Gotham Energy App
Greetings, Almanauts!
We are very excited today to announce that we’ve released a new web application as part of The Almanac. It’s called theGotham Energy App, and it helps New Yorkers track their energy consumption.
Once you sign up, we automatically grab the data from your Con Edison account (New York’s energy provider), and show you your last year’s energy use, spending, and emissions.
It rocks. Go forth and enjoy it!
We are very excited today to announce that we’ve released a new web application as part of The Almanac. It’s called the
Once you sign up, we automatically grab the data from your Con Edison account (New York’s energy provider), and show you your last year’s energy use, spending, and emissions.
It rocks. Go forth and enjoy it!
Tags: feature, gotham energy app
A Progression of Features
Today, we added the first of a series of features to help you understand your consumption better. The ‘your progress’ page shows you a breakdown of your footprint by category over the course of your time here with The Almanac. It gives you a great idea of where you are emitting the most and what type of consumption you might try to reduce.
We look forward to adding metrics to help you understand this chart better in context, like the ability to add a line indicating the average consumption for Americans or other Almanac users, and the ability to hover on a dot on the chart to see the purchases that contributed to that category’s emissions. Enjoy!
We look forward to adding metrics to help you understand this chart better in context, like the ability to add a line indicating the average consumption for Americans or other Almanac users, and the ability to hover on a dot on the chart to see the purchases that contributed to that category’s emissions. Enjoy!
Tags: feature, the almanac
Back-to-School Double Feature…or is it a Triple?
The Almanac is ready for its back-to-school release, so hang in there — we’ve got a lot of new features to announce.
We’ve added features essential to any webapp. For instance, as a user, you can now request a new password if you’ve forgotten your old one, or change your password, your e-mail, or your nickname, using a newly created “user settings” page. If you’re interested in what’s happening on our site, but don’t want to open an account, you can sign up for our mailing list.
We’ve improved the basic functioning of the site. For instance, you can now edit and delete information about your consumption. Further, you can start fresh and clear out your data entirely. You can choose the unit system in which to view your internal data: US? Metric? SI?? Also, we’ve made it so that information about your consumption is rendered using natural language.
We’ve made significant speed improvements to our search, both for users of the product encyclopedia, and for people trying to add consumption to their accounts.
Most importantly, we’ve made improvements to our data: we’ve made it possible for you to see exactly how we’ve calculated every piece of data on the site. If you’re in the product encyclopedia, or just looking at your consumption, hover or click on the word ’sources,’ and you’ll get a tree diagram explaining exactly how those emissions were calculated, with links to more information and the original data sources themselves. If you’re interested in learning about our data generally, you can learn visit ‘Our Data‘. As part of this deployment, we’ve also revamped our data for the emissions associated with different industries (used to calculated your incoming mint.com data, which has been refined to exclude only categories specific enough to warrant footprints). To learn all about it, you can read about ‘Our EIOLCA‘.
Finally, we’ve added an easy form for feedback. We would love to hear any and all thoughts, questions, and comments about the site. You can post something there, or you can talk to us at talk_to_us@thealmanac.org.
Enjoy the fall, and good luck to our summer interns, Gershon and Zeke: thank you guys for all of your great work!
We’ve added features essential to any webapp. For instance, as a user, you can now request a new password if you’ve forgotten your old one, or change your password, your e-mail, or your nickname, using a newly created “user settings” page. If you’re interested in what’s happening on our site, but don’t want to open an account, you can sign up for our mailing list.
We’ve improved the basic functioning of the site. For instance, you can now edit and delete information about your consumption. Further, you can start fresh and clear out your data entirely. You can choose the unit system in which to view your internal data: US? Metric? SI?? Also, we’ve made it so that information about your consumption is rendered using natural language.
We’ve made significant speed improvements to our search, both for users of the product encyclopedia, and for people trying to add consumption to their accounts.
Most importantly, we’ve made improvements to our data: we’ve made it possible for you to see exactly how we’ve calculated every piece of data on the site. If you’re in the product encyclopedia, or just looking at your consumption, hover or click on the word ’sources,’ and you’ll get a tree diagram explaining exactly how those emissions were calculated, with links to more information and the original data sources themselves. If you’re interested in learning about our data generally, you can learn visit ‘Our Data‘. As part of this deployment, we’ve also revamped our data for the emissions associated with different industries (used to calculated your incoming mint.com data, which has been refined to exclude only categories specific enough to warrant footprints). To learn all about it, you can read about ‘Our EIOLCA‘.
Finally, we’ve added an easy form for feedback. We would love to hear any and all thoughts, questions, and comments about the site. You can post something there, or you can talk to us at talk_to_us@thealmanac.org.
Enjoy the fall, and good luck to our summer interns, Gershon and Zeke: thank you guys for all of your great work!
Tags: feature, the almanac
Minty Fresh New Feature
Today’s the day if you are a user of mint.com! We added the ability to import your transaction data from your mint account into The Almanac, and all of your purchases will automatically be placed in your calendar with an estimate of their associated emissions. When you’re in your user account at The Almanac, just go to the ‘import data from mint’ page and follow the instructions there.
We are quite excited about this new feature, which is our first step in automating the recording of your emissions. Look for more new features in the coming weeks!
And as always, we welcome your feedback. Enjoy!
We are quite excited about this new feature, which is our first step in automating the recording of your emissions. Look for more new features in the coming weeks!
And as always, we welcome your feedback. Enjoy!
Your Feature Presentation
Another day, another bunch of features for you to play with here at The Almanac.
We’ve added some new products to our database, which now includes dishwashers, refrigerators, and washing machines in addition to cars and fuels.
We made a new tool for adding consumption to your account called Quick Add – perfect for adding single, non-routine acts of consumption to single days. Just click on the little plus on the bottom right of any day in your account!
Click around and enjoy them. And if you have any thoughts about the site and our new additions, we’d love to hear them. Enjoy!
We’ve added some new products to our database, which now includes dishwashers, refrigerators, and washing machines in addition to cars and fuels.
We made a new tool for adding consumption to your account called Quick Add – perfect for adding single, non-routine acts of consumption to single days. Just click on the little plus on the bottom right of any day in your account!
Click around and enjoy them. And if you have any thoughts about the site and our new additions, we’d love to hear them. Enjoy!
Tags: feature, the almanac
Walkin’ on the Features
We’ve got some great new features that we added to the site today, including our Product Encyclopedia! Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
- Real products are populating the database: we put in our first round of products, so there are now 26,000 cars and a few different kinds of coal for you to choose from.
- The Product Encyclopedia is up: anyone, signed in or not, can go here to look up the carbon emissions of any object that we have in our database. As we add to our list in the coming months, it will automatically expand along with us.
- General site maintenance: that’s the best – those little changes add up. Enjoy them!
Tags: feature, the almanac
The Almanac commended on Triple Pundit
We were pleased to be mentioned today in an article from Triple Pundit about the next generation of consumption calculators. From the article:
It was an honor to be mentioned with along with companies like WattBot, WattzOn, and AMEE – be sure to check out their very cool work.
You can read the whole story here.
Traditionally, carbon calculators factored in annual data from numbers of miles driven, number of flights taken, number of household members and the average cost of monthly utilities. Today, we are seeing an emerging trend in online consumption calculation in which advanced calculations are taking place behind the scenes to provide a more robust measurement of the energy consumed to fuel our lifestyles.
A significant emerging trend that we are seeing in the online calculators is the functionality for business and consumers to create online profiles that store their data, which enables long-term monitoring and assessment, supporting the user in their efforts to reduce consumption. Forum applications on these sites provide businesses with a critical avenue for communication with an audience of new and existing customers.
Some of the leading applications for online calculation of consumption include WattzOn, The Almanac and Wattbot.
A significant emerging trend that we are seeing in the online calculators is the functionality for business and consumers to create online profiles that store their data, which enables long-term monitoring and assessment, supporting the user in their efforts to reduce consumption. Forum applications on these sites provide businesses with a critical avenue for communication with an audience of new and existing customers.
Some of the leading applications for online calculation of consumption include WattzOn, The Almanac and Wattbot.
It was an honor to be mentioned with along with companies like WattBot, WattzOn, and AMEE – be sure to check out their very cool work.
You can read the whole story here.
Tags: greennet 2009, press
