Lately I’ve been playing with a neat product called Trendio. You get $10,000 in play money and purchase words for your portfolio. You are banking that the words you purchase will be on more headlines among the top news agencies. If the word is perpetuated more your stock increases. It’s interesting to see how much words such as Bush, Oil, Gas, Iraq are really ingrained in our current media.

Another fun tool I’ve come across are Google Trends. No play money involved but you can type in words and see a how many people have been searching for it over a given timeline. It also shows you what countries people are searching from and allows you to compare upon various words. Very interesting to see things such as technology and design being more heavily searched upon in India than the States.

eBay’s feedback tool is indispensable for figuring out who you want to do business with. The unfortunate part is that it is a closed system, only relevant for eBay purchases. Anybody who has used forums to trade, purchase, or sell knows that it is equally important to have some level of feedback to promote commerce, whether it is from eBay or the forum itself.

RapLeaf has created a feedback system whereby all users will have a single feedback account for all to view. As we know scamming runs rampant on niche forums. With a single feedback system users who normally scam people by using multiple accounts and claiming to be people they are not, will definitely have a more difficult time. Of course people can still claim to be people they are not but I would say a lot of people who get scammed are people trying to get a deal that is too good to be true. The need for a good deal often temporarily blinds people from an obvious scam.

Not to say that the victim should not be shown some sympathy but RapLeaf is more of a tool that will empower those who make transactions regularly on the web. Allowing for all of their feedback to count whether it’s on RedFlagDeals, HowardForums , or Craigslists.

An interesting element that RapLeaf has added is the ability for friends to vouch for you. As you can see I have no feedback as of yet. The larger number would be my buying/selling feedback. The superscript would be the number of friends that would have vouched for me. I’m not completely sold on the friend vouching scenarios as I can see a lot of situations where users may abuse it but its good for honest users who simply have not done any previous e-commerce.

In time, conventions will arise but like anything else, you should use your best judgement in figuring out who you want to do business with.

I’d like to believe despite my constant ramblings that I am not an ideologue. Regardless if you believe this to be true or not, global warming is a real concern. If you are not really aware of the issues I strongly encourage you to watch An Inconvenient Truth on opening weekend:

May 24 – New York and Los Angeles
June 2 – Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington D.C.
June 9 – Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Denver, Sacramento, St. Louis, San Diego, Miami, Baltimore, Portland
June 16 – in theaters everywhere

If there is enough buzz generated by this film dialogue may finally begin on this serious issue. Global warming is not a myth no matter how hard the lobbyists argue against it.

I value individualism and wouldn’t care if you didn’t care but our apathy is affecting everyone. All I want personally is awareness so our governments will feel our pressure and the public will not accept environmental issues being put to the back of the agenda list in favour for more economically viable futures. Such is what just happened in Canada’s most recent budget announcement which makes no mention of any environmental concessions save for a monthly transit tax credit.

Yes we will all have more money in our pocket but at what cost? Being rich in a non-existent world won’t matter.

Trailer of An Inconvenient Truth

And now the Take away … No more excuses about not knowing what to do (taken from climatecrisis):

9 things to do

Want to do something to help stop global warming? Here are 9 simple things you can do and how much carbon dioxide you’ll save doing them.

1. Change a light – Replacing one light bulb with a compact florescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

2. Drive less – Walk, bike, carpool or take mass transit more often. You’ll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don’t drive

3. Recycle more – You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your household waste.

4. Check your tires – Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve gas milage by more than 3% Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere!

5. Use less hot water – It takes a lot of energy to heat water. Use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of C02 saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year).

6. Avoid products with a lot of packaging – You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%.

7. Adjust your thermostat – Moving your thermostat just 2 degrees down in the winter and up 2 degrees in summer, You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple adjustment.

8. Plant a tree – A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime

9. Turn off electronic devices – Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo, and computer when you’re not using them will save you thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

I chose the short list so it wouldn’t be off-putting but if you are interested Treehugger has a list of their own, complete with dramatic title: 25 Ways to Save the Planet

Again this isn’t me trying to feel good by ordering you to do things. It’s me being obsessively worried what will happen if we do not. And if you think these things don’t make a difference well you don’t know economics very well. Individual decisions = aggregated results, our current capitalist marketplace. If a group of people decide not to buy Nike because of their use of sweat shops it will affect Nike’s bottom line. Less money = concern (this is how you affect companies).

In this situation if we consume less than there will be a shift in the marketplace to support this type of lifestyle. Which in turn will (hopefully) breed more green innovation. That’s why it’s important for the government to support these efforts in tax credits or other concessions for less consumption, whether it be a hybrid vehicle or consuming less electricity. It doesn’t make the most sense economically, at first at least, but when more markets emphasize green solutions it will become a social norm.

This is my hope and my dream.

Those who know me know I’ve been discussing reputation as a means of commerce for a while. Currently money usually supersedes any previous transgressions but what if the system was contingent on reputation? Well we’ve seen reputation in play for a while from such e-commerce sites as eBay and Amazon. Someone with a bad rating probably isn’t going to get business.

Dave Chiu and Didier Hilhorst have further articulated this for a project at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. It’s neat to think of a future where being a nice guy gets you rewarded.

-View their Slideshow
-View their Pictures