Gregory Heller Get in touch

Archive

April 2006

15 posts

  1. Getting information to consumers about the products they buy

    WorldChanging ran a great post on the GreenScanner , a public database of consumer opinions about the environmental accountability of over 600,000 products. Basically the Green Scanner is a website that allows a user to enter the UPC from the bar code label on a product and get information about the product. Green scanner focuses on environmental issues around the product, however, there was a great discussion in the comments section of the post about other projects brewing to provide consumers with other information about the products they buy. One of them is GrassCommons . Another similar concept is the Reveal Label , and yet another is the Lowdown on Logos concept from Jim Hightower’s organization.

  2. We’re made out of corn!!!

    This is a great story from Science Friday about corn. The author of “Omnivores Dilemma”. Corn is in almost everything we eat, and our carbon is from corn. A bushel of corn is 56 pounds of 20% of oil consumption is for food growing, more than for transportation! Corn is over produced. And the government subsidizes corn production to the tune of 50 cents a bushel. There is a dead zone size of NJ in the Gulf of Mexico caused by nitrate fertilizer runoff from Iowa! Listen the audio. I might try to read the book .

  3. Drupal Camp New York

    Drupal Camp NYC will be an opportunity of people interested in Drupal and developers interested in learning to develop sites with drupal to get together and learn from each other.

  4. DrupalCampNYC and 3 of our sites get a plug from Micah Sifry

    Deanna Zandt (who we work with on the Jim Hightower sites) pointed out that Micah Sifry referenced JimHightower.com along with a number of other Drupal sites over on the PDF Blog along with DrupalCampNYC which we are sponsoring and helping to organize along with Noel Hidalgo (the man on the ground) and some other folks.

  5. Jim Hightower is podcasting!

    Our client Jim Hightower has been podcasting for 6 years. He just didn’t know it! For about the last 6 years, Hightower has been recording daily “Common Sense Commentaries” that air on radio stations around the country. When we started talking to Hightower’s organization we realized that these 2 minute commentaries were ready made for podcasting. Earlier this year we relaunched JimHightower.com which features the text transcripts and now downloadable mp3 audio files of each daily commentary. You can subscribe the the PodCast feed either via FeedBurner or iTunes .

  6. Deanna Zandt on the Lower East Side

    I had the opportunity to talk to Deanna Zandt while I was in NY. We talked about her upcoming move from the Lower East Side to the South Side of Williamsburg. (video link after the jump)

  7. Zunafish? I can’t see how this will work out

    While I generally like the idea of “re-use” and swapping and freestore and all that, I can’t see how this company Zunafish.com will work out. Basically you have to trade items one for one with other users, and the items must be of the same category. So I have a dvd… “When We Were Soldiers” let’s say. You watched it, and once was enough, so you think, let me put it up for trade along with these other 20 war and Mel Gibson DVDs I will never watch again. Some one sees my list of movies and figures I are a war movie buff, and they have “Saving Private Ryan” so they offer to trade… But I am a war movie buff, I already saw “Saving Private Ryan”.

  8. 15 minutes for the environment

    I just took about 15 minutes to call 9 catalog companies and have them remove me from their mailing lists. Upon returning to NY from some time in Seattle i had a stack of catalogs nearly a foot high waiting for me. The 9 calls resulted in me being removed from 12 catalog mailing lists. I have about 4 more calls to make, and I am sure, upon my next return, there will be some other catalogs that had not come in the last month. The most difficult to be removed from (and only obviously outsourced call center) was the Dell Catalog, which took over 8 minutes. Some of the easiest were tool and home furnishing companies who just needed a code from the back of the catalog.

  9. Thank You Harry Taylor

    Fen blogged about ThankYouHarryTaylor.org . Dan also had a conversation with the organizer of the site and the coordinated actions this Saturday to the "Thank Harry Taylor" for giving us all voice. Here is the back story: Harry Taylor said the following to George W. Bush: “In my lifetime, I have never felt…

  10. Thing Sender: a Mass Mail Recipe for Drupal

    Recently, a client of ours needed mass mailing capability. Nothing fancy, just the ability to send original messages and existing nodes to a large list of email addresses. No token replacement, no click through tracking. Just get the word out. We contracted with Allie Micka to create a suite of modules that would handle not only this discrete needs but other sending needs of this, and other clients. Ingredients: Drupal 4.7 Mime Mail http://drupal.org/node/37911 Mailing List Manager http://drupal.org/node/44580 Send http://drupal.org/project/send News http://drupal.org/node/45616