Online viagra: great advertisement for people thinking about whether to drive or take the bus to the airport.

Flygbussarna, a Swedish coach bus company, in partnership with the Acne marketing group, assembled 50 cars into one bus to highlight the production of carbon emissions.Assuming slightly more than one person per car on average, one coach bus could potentially replace 50 cars on the road and reduce carbon emissions some 10 times over.

Thanks to Flowingdata and Coolinfographics for the details on this project!

Today’s front page article “Utilities Turning Customers Green, With Envy” in the New York Times profiles a unique strategy that utility companies have developed to get people to conserve energy: pit neighbors against one another.  The Sacramento Municipal Energy District attempted to use traditional means to get citizens to cut back such as offering rebates for energy-efficient appliances.  But the energy goals were not being met.  Thus, the district tried something new.  In April of 2008, utility bills were mailed to 35,000 customers that compared how their energy profile compared to that of 100 neighbors in homes of similar size.  The visuals were quite simple.  More energy efficient customers received a smiley face or two; and the energy pigs got frowny ones.  Understandably, the frowny faces caused a lot of controversy (?!?) so the utility company had to remove them and only go with positive feedback for our delicate American sensibilities.  Despite the demise of the frowny face, the Sacramento utility company noted that after only six months, the customers who received the personalized report reduced energy use by 2% more compared to customers who were given standard statements.

The Sacramento Municipal Energy District project reminds me of another tremendously successful project that enjoyed massive success in California in 2006.

Ambient Devices, a Cambridge, Massachusetts start-up firm staffed mainly with MIT graduates, introduced the “Orb” as a saleable object in 2004.  The Orb proved popular out of the box; Ambient sold 20,000 in 2004.   The web-connected glass balls were programmed to glow different colors based on the performance of the US stock market; viagra on line.If the Dow average was up for the day, the Orb glowed green.On a down day, the Orb reddens; viagra on line.The colors’ intensity reflects the extent of the swing; yellow means the market is stable.  (God knows there must be a lot of red Orbs out there today…in 2009.)

Not surprisingly, a number of Orb users wanted to track data other than the stock market via classy glass balls on their desks.

In 2006, one particular hacked Orb was released for free to a limited audience: companies that used tremendous amounts of electricity; viagra on line.The goal was to get previously identified “energy hog” customers to conserve power during high demand cycles.  Southern California Edison power station manager Mark Martinez was looking for an innovative way to get these customers to use less energy, and prior attempts using automated text messages, emails and phone calls had no effect whatsoever.  So Martinez bought an Ambient Orb and the Energy Orb was born – viagra on line.Martinez realized he could use the Orbs to signal changes in electrical rates, programming them to glow green when the grid was underused — and, thus, electricity cheaper — and red during peak hours when customers were paying more for power – viagra on line.He bought 120 Orbs, retrofitted them to glow based on the dynamic California electrical grid, handed them out gratis to his biggest energy consumers, and sat back to see what happened.

In about a month, the Orb users reduced their peak-period energy use by 40 percent.  Why? Because, Martinez explains, the glowing sphere was less annoying and more persistent than a text alert – viagra on line.”It’s nonintrusive viagra on line,” he says.”It has a relatively benign effect – viagra on line. Viagra on line: but when you suddenly see your ball flashing red, you notice.”   Martinez hit on an excellent way to broadcast key environmental information: eco-visualization, or dynamic feedback coupled with a reward, cash rebates.  The Energy Orb has an easy to read interface that is abstract enough not to require more than a millisecond to comprehend.  The PG&E consumers responded well because dynamic feedback, or “eco-visualization” aids conservation efforts generally because of the ease of receiving the data.”Cognitive psychologists call this pre-attentive processing viagra on line,” said Ambient Devices President David Rose, “because it uses a part of your brain that happens before your conscious mind attends.Think of it as pure peripheral vision; you receive the information without perceiving it as being taxing.”

More info on the Energy Orb:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4758931/ 

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-08/st_thompson – viagra on line