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I know the rest of this post is going to sound like a gushy infomercial, but I really love this service, and vastly prefer it to Zip or Modo. You see, most other car sharing co-ops or businesses have a designated spot for each car, and you book the car for a round-trip; you need to return it.

But this is commonly a problem for two reasons: 1) Life doesn’t always work like that—I often need to go TO a place, but I want to stay there a long time before returning, or I have another way to get home. 2) As long as I have a car booked out, no one else can use it.  So if I drive 15 minutes, go shopping for an hour, then drive back, that’s an hour that the car could have been in use, where it’s just sitting. This makes the system inefficient and drives up costs.

Car2Go solves this by having all trips be one-way: you leave the car anywhere in the main area of Vancouver. The area is from Nanaimo Street in the east to out almost to UBC in the West, and from downtown all the way down to 41st Ave. You can take any available car in this area at any time, just by walking up to it and getting in.

When you’re done your trip, you can park it in any spot on public streets that’s not time restricted, like, not at a meter, not in a lane that’s no parking during rush hour, not in a private lot. But the best part is, you can park in ANY residential permit required spot, and also in many of the garages downtown for free. Often it’s MUCH easier to find parking for a Car2Go than for a regular car—like in Kits or the West End. Now, instead of taking my car and paying at a meter, I take a Car2Go and park closer and quicker.

Using Car2Go is extremely affordable, and even cheaper than using my own car, especially if parking costs are necessary.  The basic costs are:

$0 sign up fee (yep, free) if you use my signup code: “Mobility”
$0 deposit
$0 per year after that
$.35 / minute for a trip, and this includes all gas you use, and all insurance, and up to 200 km.

A 12 minute drive is $4.20—if you’re taking another person, that’s cheaper than the bus; if it’s just you, it’s still cheaper than a cab.

Car2Go cars are all SmartCars, which hold two people and a lot of groceries, and they’re fun to drive.

You use a smartphone to find a car near you, or you call the number and they’ll tell you where one is.

There are some downsides: you can’t reserve a car more than 15 minutes in advance, and sometimes there aren’t any cars around you—but this rarely happens. Sometimes there’s one within a block, most of the time there’s one within 5 blocks. Twice, though, the closest car to me was 900 meters and so I had to bus it. Oh well. Not bad for 9 months.

You can’t end a trip outside the main area; if you take a car to, say, Squamish, you have to keep it checked out until you come back to Vancouver.  However, a whole day is capped at $66, and if you compare that to the cost of a rental car, including the time and hassle to pick it up, drop it off, and fill it with gas, it’s actually still a better deal.

My favorite trick is to use one to drive to dinner and park hassle-free, have half a bottle of wine, and then take a cab back, or to use it to get to an ultimate game, and then catch a ride home.

So what’s the catch? There aren’t very many. You need to have a credit card, a clean(ish?) driving record (and a driver’s license) and 3 years driving experience. That’s pretty much it.

Since I’ve started using Car2Go, I tend to take a bus if there’s one that runs directly, and I use a Car2Go if I’m going someplace awkward to access by bus or I’m in a hurry, and I only use my car when I need to haul extra people or gear.  It’s totally changed the way I move around the city, and it’s saved me money.

They’ve given me a promo code that you can use to sign up for free, and it’ll give you and I both 30 free minutes once you are a member.  So, use my signup code: “Mobility” and join now.

Oh, and I should add that it’s now in Vancouver, Austin, Portland, San Diego, and Washington D.C.

Comments: 1

I’ve also gotten pretty good at handling (don’t say firehose, don’t say firehose) this firehose (d’oh!) of emails. Not perfectly, but I’ve got long experience on my side and a twitchly set of keyboard shortcuts.

So when I heard about Sanebox from Andru Edwards, I was frankly doubtful that it would do much for me that I wasn’t doing for myself. But it turns out.. well, I’m getting ahead of myself. What’s Sanebox, you ask?

Sanebox is a cloud-based service that offers to clean up your email inbox, like Dobby the house-elf, leaving just the important emails in your inbox, and sorting the rest away for your heirs to deal with. It’s supposed to save you “hours” a week.

The key questions are, how does it know what to pick, and how well does it do at picking?

How does it know what to pick? I have no idea. There’s NO setup initially. They just ask that if something seems misfiled, that you switch it back to where it belongs (i.e. put it back in your inbox, or kick it out to the “read later” box.) I get a lot of mail from random people who have never emailed me before. I’m on some mailing lists that are critical, and others that are lame. And I get email from generic-sounding addresses that are actually quite important. So I don’t know how it knows, because *I* don’t know how to tell it.

Then, how does it do? Frankly, I was stunned. Sanebox really did do an amazing job right off the bat. Since Sanebox, I probably only have to look at a third or a quarter as many emails when they arrive—it’s that’s wonderful.

Later when I have spare time, I look through the emails that have been moved to a “SaneLater” folder, which fills up with all those Facebook notifications and commercial emails and mailing lists that are too good to unsubscribe from but you don’t need to read right now. I can ignore it for a day or two or even longer. It’s heaven.

Sanebox also has a few other tricks it can do—it will scan your Spam folder to see if there’s anything mistakenly sent to there and rescue it, and it can hold items out of your inbox until tomorrow or next week and then drop them back in front of you. It also has more granular controls, but honestly, I like it BECAUSE it’s not granular—it just spins golden emails out of the pile of hay that used to be my inbox.

The only catch is, after the 30-day free trial, it costs some actual money: $5 / month. But since I get Gmail for free and I live in email, it’s a worthwhile investment for me. And perhaps, by supporting it, it’ll grow and either get bought by, or influence the development of, Gmail itself. Because even though I’ve already been using Gmail’s various tools (Priority Inbox) for getting me to my important email, Sanebox really does do a stellar job. It’s like the opposite of a spam filter.

And I also happen to like companies that actually CHARGE for something I VALUE. Compare this to Instagram which was free and then sold ITSELF and ALL MY PICTURES to Facebook. I’m not getting a penny of that.

You can try it for a month and then very easily discontinue it, and it’s not just for Gmail, it works with Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, and more, they say.  If you sign up for Sanebox via one of my links, I’ll get a $5 discount, and so will you. So there’s THAT carrot.

Really, I can think of only one downside—though it’s a BIG one. You see, Sanebox needs to have complete access to your inbox, so your privacy is in its hands (claws? gentle iron grip?) You’ve probably had to make this privacy choice several times in the past few years—deciding which companies you can bet your privacy on.  Some companies have that “thing” that just makes me trust them (hi, USAA!), some don’t but have a service that’s worth the risk (hi, PayPal!) , and some are too sketchy, frivolous, scary or poorly implemented that I won’t go there (hi, Microsoft!).

Sanebox seems to me to be worth poking another hole in my ever-leaking privacy shield, but you may not think the same way.

If you get too much email and you want to see what a professional wrangler could do with it, give Sanebox a try, and let me know if you like it.

Comments: 3

It’s a 1-room apartment and it’s tiny tiny tiny and very very cute.  From the outside, the building looks a little shabby, but from the inside, her place is a home already, and she hasn’t even unpacked yet, just eaten pizza and made a mess!

The previous tenant did no cleanup, or at least, none more than the most basic.  The walls were dirty, the fridge still had food, the shower wasn’t washed down, etc. etc. etc.  I hope the previous tenant loses her security deposit.

Meanwhile, my sister has already started to repaint one of the rooms and is going to have it ship shape in no time.  I’m SUPER impressed.

And now I am going to bed.

The article itself is thought provoking, but it opened up an even deeper question for me.

A story I read about 20 years ago talked about an scientist who became an invisible man, and had the government after him with all the resources it could muster.  There was a task for of dozens of people who hunter for him constantly.  They tapped dozens of phone lines of old friends and relatives.  They got all his records from every moment of his life and put it all… in a medium sized room.

Today. we are creating digital version of ourselves online, through social media, online databases, Web site profiles, log files… the archive of information about what I have done in the past ten years is far, far more vast.

And here’s the interesting thing.  I have a particular image of myself.  I think of myself as smart, kind, outgoing, etc. etc.  But what if my digital self proves I’m not? What if my digital self is stingy? What if my digital self is mendacious?  What if this digital shadow is fleshed out, is so clear a representation of myself, that someday I have to confront it, me, the knowledge that I am not what I think I am?

This is already being done to some extent: Google knows what to advertise to me, and how, in ways that I myself might say are ineffective or misguided, and yet, my digital self reveals that they will work, that they do work, that they did work.

What happens when our digital selves—the part of us that searches for “ways to hide stains” and “how to get out of a parking ticket” and the part that doesn’t remember birthdays any more—when those digital selves become more fully visible to others?  I don’t know if my shadow self would look nearly as nice in the sunlight…

She wears it rarely, and it had been a few months since the last time she’d had it on.

As she donned it, she noticed that the right pocket had a bit of a heft to it.  A little smile escaped her lips: there was obviously some treasure she’d left in the pocket from last time.

What could it be? A twenty dollar bill? Too light.  A lump of gold? Too heavy. A kitten? Probably not, but it could be ANYTHING at this point—a mystery made and revealed all at once.

She jammed her hand into the pocket anxiously…

... and jammed her finger directly into a wet, rotted apple, held together only by its wrinkled skin.

Mystery solved.

The object of Wallabee, as far as I can tell (part of the fun is making your own rules) is to “forage” at places near you, in hopes of finding objects and “honeycombs”, the game’s currency unit.  You can only forage at places within about 100 meters (or a little wider range for big places like parks and offices).

Items that you find can be:

* stored in your pouch,

* saved as sets,

* “mixed” i.e. merged into better, more rare objects a la Diablo

* dropped at places you’ve foraged

The mixes I’ve found so far are “Clowns” plus “Clown Car” which combines into a “Big Top Tent”, and “Elephant” plus “Lion” which combines into “Ringmaster”. Also, I’ve managed to pick up half a dozen pairs of Nerd Glasses. Is this a message, Wallabee?

The best part though, is that Wallabee appears to have… wait for it… a business model! Yes!  In fact, there are two ways you can spend money (in other words, that the developers can make money).

1) You can become a Wallabee “Pro” for about $5 / month. Being pro increases your chances of getting objects and honeycombs.
2) You can just flat out buy honeycombs, for a rate between 300 and 2000 for a $1, depending on what bulk quantity you buy, and you get a discount if you’re a Pro.

Honeycombs can be used to buy items from the store, where the shelves are limited and items disappear quickly if not purchased.

I love that Wallabee is earning money from Day 1—I’m tired of the free model that leads to flame out or burn out or both.

The profile is a little anemic, and you can only add friends via their email address at this point. You also aren’t able to check in on other services while you forage, but both those things will come late, I’m positive.  I figure they actually don’t want to encourage viral growth yet, while they’re so new.  It only takes one Scoble inviting everyone in his contact list and Boom, server go bye bye.

The art of the app is lovely, a little more detailed and less cartoon-y than Gowalla, which remains the gold standard in icons in my mind.

I look forward to seeing this app flourish, and I encourage you to play!

We got them all the paperwork and receipts and all the other stuff they asked for in April 2011, and it was January before we got their reply.  Not that I mind, but that’s a long time to wait for what we KNEW was going to be bad news.

They claim, together over those two years, Susie and I actually made about $30,000 more than we said we did, combining income they say we didn’t report, and expenses claimed that they are disallowing.  To which I replied, “Wow! We’re richer than we think! Call Scotiabank!”

I jest.  But here are some of the things they disallowed: 
* unclaimed interest that we actually did claim
* insurance we paid for, for reasons I can’t figure out
* that whole bad debt thing from the client I sued? yeah, can’t claim that

Then it gets even more bizarre. They disallowed:
* us going to South by Southwest, the biggest Internet conference in the U.S. (“This appears to be a music festival.”)
* Susie going to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore where she was paid to lead a blogging training session (“Outside of your business geographic location”)
* us going to Boulder to work with our employee Justin (“No evidence that this trip was business related.”)

They also informed us that we (and anyone, really, they aren’t picking on us) can only claim two conferences a year according to tax law.  Any additional conferences are not tax deductible. It’s the LAW.

Now, I’m not going to badmouth the CRA here or talk too much about our rebuttals.  But I will say that this feels like the end product of a general attitude that the Canadian government seems to have overall: namely, that “work” is something best performed at a desk not at a home, 9-5 and not mixed in with other activites, and you should make Canadian things to sell to Canadian people, that travelling too much and participating in a global community of entrepreneurs and creators is discouraged, and that people who are one role in your life (wife, mother, brother-in-law) can’t possibly be also something else (business parter, client, employee) legitimately, without there being something “fishy” going on.

We’ll see what happens now.  First is a rebuttal with evidence and logic, then there’s an appeals process.  Stay tuned.

Comments: 1

This is her third.  The first one was six months ago because there was something ominous on an ultrasound—I picture it like the bad guy from the Green Lantern movie or The Fifth Element or, well, any horror movie where the bad guy is a big lump of goo.

The second was right after the first, because they didn’t find anything the first time but they decided that it COULD be because they aren’t any good at taking biospies and they “missed” so they wanted to do it again—but really it turned out to be because there wasn’t anything the second time either.  (Except, having raised the idea that a biopsy might just “miss” the lump, the positive result of the second test was now tainted by the fear that they just had two strikes instead of one.)

But at least that was over, we thought.

Well, Susie went back for her now-really-frequent checkups, because once you have a false positive, that puts you in the same category as someone who actually had a real positive.  Imagine: if you fail a drug test, but you get retested and it turns out it wasn’t a valid result, but your company now wants to test you four times as often as anyone else just because their test own was faulty once… seems unfair. Why not just tell Susie: you’re fine, go be normal? But I guess preventative medicine doesn’t work that way.

Anyway, she went for a test recently, and they said, oh, wow, yeah, definitely that’s some cray-cray brand new breast thing you have there that we missed the first zillion times we looked at your breast and that you can’t even feel, and don’t worry about it it’s probably nothing again, but why not get lots more tests now.

So we spent a super-sized lunch hour at the Rapid Access Breast Clinic—I’d have called it the Breast Rapid Exam, Analysis and Surgical Treatment center if they’d have asked me—and they stuck a significant amount of needles in her (i.e. more than zero) and I got really faint and later felt bad for feeling worse than Susie did about the whole procedure. It’s hard to be a supportive spouse when you can’t, you know, look at what’s going on in the room and the folks say things like “No passing out, sir.”

The biopsy goes like this: lie down, get ultrasound so they know what to poke, get a numbing shot, then get a needle with a hollow core that pulls out a bit of tissue that goes CLICK, then they wipe up the blood (way less of a hole than a blood donation) and then you apply direct pressure and then you get dressed.

And afterwords we ate donuts.

In a week, we’ll get to stop worrying.

So, yeah.

In B.C., you can’t kick out a tenant for no reason, and you can’t raise the rent by more than 3% or so. The new owner has to continue to rent to us; rather, he can only ask us to leave for a few reasons: if he’s going to renovate so much that it’s unliveable; or if he’s going to demolish it AND he has the permits and everything ready to do it; or if he is going to put himself or a family member in the house.

That’s what he says he wants to do: have his son move in.

I find that a little hard to believe—that someone would pay the price that this house was listed at, just so that their son has a place to live… but that’s what we’ve been told. I’ll be watching to make sure that they actually do live in the place.

He takes possession on February 1, and then we get two months notice from that day.  So April 1 is our last day in the house, unless we move out sooner, which I honestly hope we can do. Carpe diem, etc. etc.

We don’t have to pay our last month’s rent, which is nice. Packing up all our stuff, though, that’s going to be a drag.

We would really like to find a house over in East Van, near Commercial Drive. The shops and businesses are great; it’s close to downtown; we know lots of cool people in the area.  I don’t know how many will be available, but fingers crossed.

Man, I love semi-colons; it’s obscene how often I use them.

We’ve known, basically, that this would happen. From the day we moved in several years ago, we knew our time in the house was limited. Originally, we thought it would only be a year.  It turned out to be much longer, but the writing was on the wall.. because we can basically write anything on the walls that we want

I’ll miss having a crazy amount of space—the basement room that was huge and empty that you could exercise in, the number of bedrooms, the long hallways.  I’ll miss the huge yard that my Scout friends and their families came and camped in several summers in a row.

I’ll miss the real fireplace, and the gorgeous hardwood floors, and the kitchen cupboards with the musical handles that remind me of my grandmother’s house. 

I won’t miss the sketchy back steps that are falling apart, and the smokers from the BC Cancer Society who came over to the end of our back driveway to chat and puff and leave their butts on the ground. And I won’t missing having a landlord who doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know anything about the house.  I won’t miss the scary parts of the basement, or what it filled with once upon a time.

But most certainly of all, I will miss the good memories, people coming over, parties and video games and drinks and dinners.  BBQs and takeout and doing crafts.  A lot of years of memories.

Thanks, house.

Listening with the Third Ear is a new site that Hop Studios built. It's pretty cool.

Our newest client: The Creativity Cure

This is our latest client.

Related: No one goes to work tomorrow.

#SQUIRREL!

Useful only because there's no easier way.

Kaboom!

Note: This is from 2010 so it's probably bigger numbers now.

When do they imitate the trip back?

“I swore with my hand on the Bible to uphold the Constitution. I didn’t swear with my hand on the Constitution to uphold the Bible.”

Who Said It?

“Buy anything you want at the grocery store; cooking is always cheaper than eating out.”

Who Said It?

“There are two things in this world that take no skill: 1. Spending other people’s money and 2. Dismissing an idea.”

Who Said It?

“Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”

Who Said It?

“Oh boy! Another great opportunity for personal growth!”

Who Said It?

“I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so. ... She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain—it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”

Who Said It?

After over a decade of user testing, it is clear that the way we search the web is similar to the way we would search our home for valuables as it was burning to the ground. Frantically.

Who Said It?

“We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value ... The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory holds that the singular goal of the corporation should be shareholder value maximization. Instead, companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders.”

Who Said It?

“We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.”

Who Said It?

“You ought to expect better of people. It encourages you to be a better person yourself.”

Who Said It?