In the interview, Mr. Gore talks about the potential impacts of climate change, the need for sustained action, the importance of reducing dependence on foreign oil, and the benefits that can be realized in the process. He also addresses questions about his most vocal climate change critics.

The following are highlights from the interview, or you can watch the full show on the CBS News website.

Clip 1: We’ve Got To Act

Al Gore speaks about the key to solving the climate crisis is having a strong grassroots consensus, and how many people are beginning to stand up.

Clip 2: Cap and Trade

Al Gore stresses the importance of having American-made renewable energy that can create new jobs. Gore also mentions that our “roller coaster is headed for a crash, and we’re in the front car.”

Clip 3: Climate Change Critics

The Vice-President addressed criticisms from leading scientists and researchers who have discredited his position on human-caused global climate change.

Clip 4: Praising the Copenhagen Summit

In this clip, Gore states that the upcoming climate change conference, to be held in Copenhagen, would be very beneficial for new environmental initiatives.

Further Reading:

“Should I Trust Al Gore, or My Rock Hard Nipples?” (Treehugger)

Grist on the NYT’s “Baseless Hit Job on Al Gore” (AlterNet)

Al Gore And Stephen Colbert Debate Global Warming Solutions (Ecorazzi)

How does the mind grasp climate change? (Columbia University)

Are Americans Cooling on Global Warming? (NY Times)

Excerpt and Sound Clip from Al Gore’s New Book (ABC News)

Al Gore’s Our Choice: Progressive Book Club Review

Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis by Al Gore on Amazon.com

—-

This article originally appeared on TriplePundit and is reprinted here thanks to 3P’s Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. You can find out more about Creative Commons licensing here.

AngelPoints, Inc. is a Sausalito, California-based software company whose mission it is to make it easier for large organizations to communicate, organize and measure their employee volunteer efforts. Their initial products, available since 2001, have mainly focused on corporate fundraising efforts, and are used by some of the world’s largest companies, like Toyota, eBay, Intuit and Hilton.

The company recently announced that it is launching a new product aimed at increasing employee participation in sustainability projects. The concept, called “PSP”, short for Personal Sustainability Practice, is an idea which was originally developed by Adam Werbach and his company Act Now Productions (now part of Saatchi & Saatchi S) for Wal-Mart, and has been wildly successful in that company’s efforts to green its operations and image. Saatchi and Saatchi S is consulting with AngelPoints on implementing this and other employee-focused sustainability products.

About a year ago, I, along with my Presidio colleague Olga Bolotina, assisted AngePoints’ management in their initial evaluation of a PSP offering. Our reports included a feasibility study of a PSP management software product, with a analysis of the beneits to the company’s clients and a financial analysis of the costs of implementation. We found the methodology created by Bob Willard, author of The Sustainability Advantage, particularly useful in calculating some of the harder to quantify benefits, such as employee retention and brand value.

As we outlined in our report, PSPs are wonderful tools for engaging employees in sustainability projects, and one of the main reasons is that there is almost no restriction on the type of project that can be taken on. The employee is encouraged to choose something that is very important to them, and either improves their personal sustainability, he sustainability of the company or the sustainability of the local community. Projects can be as small as in individual weight loss, or as big as a company-wide recycling effort.

According to Walmartstores.com, Wal-Mart had seen the following benefits from PSPs:

“As of September 2007, associates told us that they’ve recycled 675,538 pounds of aluminum, 282,476 pounds of glass, 5,953,357 pounds of paper and cardboard, and 3,177,851 pounds of plastic; walked, biked and swum more than 1,109,421 total miles; cooked 368,779 healthy meals; and lost a total combined weight of 184,315 pounds through PSP. In addition, 19,924 associates tell us they’ve quit or reduced smoking. Interestingly, Associates say they have shared the PSP program with 375,824 of their friends, family and community members outside of Wal-Mart.”

PSPs have 5 major advantages for corporations that can be measured in dollars and cents:

1. Reduced expenses at commercial sites
2. Higher productivity of employees
3. Higher retention of top talent
4. Increased revenue from attraction of green consumers
5. Higher Company Valuation

These and other advantages can also be achieved with many other types of corporate sustainability projects.

There are several unique attributes of AngelPoints’ PSP management software that should allow it to be very successful. The software uses a web 2.0 methodology, with a Facebook-like profile and features tailored to the corporate environment. This allows two-way interaction between employees and managers or employees and their co-workers. This enhances the “bottom-up” features of the PSP, which results in a higher level of engagement and ownership for project participants. It also allows for individuals and groups to share their progress with others, leading to much greater transparency and accountability and resulting in increased engagement, results and more.

From a management standpoint, the most useful feature is likely to be the ability of the AngelPoints’ software to track volunteer participation and statistics on a company-wide, department or individual level. This allows management to put specific, measurable and audit-able numbers to their sustainability efforts. Data like this is extremely important for companies who are publishing sustainability and CSR reports, and when making the business case for sustainability efforts.

I sincerely applaud AngelPoints and Saatchi & Saatchi S for bringing this idea to fruition. I am very happy to have played some small role in it. With AngelPoints’ huge installed customer base, this could have a very significant impact on sustainability efforts nationwide.

Several pieces of this strategy were unveiled in San Francisco last Thursday, at an event entitled Inside Ford’s Electrification Strategy. Ford’s newly-titled Director of Global Electrification, Nancy Gioia, explained how the company is not only planning to build battery-electric (BEV) and plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) vehicles, but is also working on strategies to build the infrastructure that will support those vehicles. Attendees at the event were also invited to test-drive two news Ford vehicles, the Escape PHEV and the Focus BEV. While my fellow 3P contributor will be posting an in-depth look at Ford’s electrification strategy itself, I would like to discuss some of the other things that make up the company’s overall strategy.

[MORE]

How well Ford Motors’ actions measure up to the statements that the company has made is something that remains to be seen. Some commitments made by the company were only made after pressure was applied by shareholders. As it has been said, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. However, the company has made some notable past efforts in greening its operations, led by current Chairman of the Board, and former CEO, Bill Ford.

Mr. Ford, Great-Grandson of founder Henry Ford is known to be an environmentalist, and has made several attempts in the past to move the company in a more sustainable direction, some very successful, and some dismal failures. His major success was the transformation of the River Rouge plant from a polluted industrial brownfield site into a model of green design, complete with green roof. Failures include canceling the company’s electric vehicle program, and the inability of the company to keep to its 2000 commitment to increase fleet gas mileage by 25% by 2010.

What is interesting about these failures is that the company cited market conditions as the main cause. As long as the consumers were demanding larger vehicles, the company needed to provide them, in order to remain in business. Ironically, it was rapidly changing consumer demand that almost put the company out of business, as the economy, rising gas prices and concern about climate change caused buyers to flee SUVs in favor of smaller cars and hybrids.

Huge corporations are not known for their ability to turn on a dime, they are more like Titanics on a competitive ocean, their rudder (leadership) too ineffective to avoid the oncoming iceberg. Perhaps this kind of disaster is the only thing that would allow such an entrenched company to make the necessary changes.

So what, exactly, is the company’s strategy? According to Ford’s Director of Sustainability John J. Viera, the company is not banking on any one technology to solve the various challenges of emissions and oil dependency. Instead, it plans to introduce vehicles which run on a number of different fuels, and employ different technologies in different situations, appropriate to the situation. In addition, the company will become more involved in the fuel delivery process, as in the case of electricity and biofuels.

This was very evident while I was riding in the new Ford Focus BEV, accompanied by a Ford engineer and several of my media colleagues. The vehicle, a prototype of one scheduled to be released in the US in 2011, has a current range of approximately 80 miles, with the production model slated to have about a 100 mile range. During our ride, the engineer explained that Ford did not intend for the BEV Focus to be a car that would be driven by everyone, but would mostly be marketed as a second car or commuter car for those with commutes in the appropriate range. For longer trips, a PHEV is more appropriate.

Ford is also putting it’s money on vehicles that can run on several different types of fuels, also known as “Flex-Fuel” vehicles. These cars and trucks can use Ethanol as well as gasoline. (There are even rumors of a flex-fuel hybrid.) Another type of multiple-fuel vehicle being planned is one that has multiple fuel tanks, such as a propane and gasoline combination. In addition, the company is moving into biodiesel, and will be offering a B20 biodiesel-capable engine for its 2011 F-series trucks.

Although Clean Diesel vehicles are already being produced in Europe, the cost to bring this technology to the U.S. is currently prohibitive, but, according to Motor Trend, the company is planning on being able to offer a clean diesel engine for larger vehicles, such as the F-150 and Expedition, by 2020. This could potentially result in clean diesel technology ending up on other Ford vehicles.

By introducing an assortment of vehicles, with different types of engine running on a number of fuels, the company hopes to diversify the current U.S. portfolio of vehicles away from gasoline. By having a large number of technologies at it’s disposal and readying its worldwide operations to switch technologies quickly, “Ford anticipates it will be ready to leverage the right vehicle fuel and energy sources when and where they are needed in the future (EcoTuesday.com)“. Like diversifying a stock portfolio, this strategy would reduce the risks of dependency on oil, in addition to reducing overall greenhouse emissions.

Speaking to the various Ford representatives, and listening to their presentations, you do get the sense that at least some of Ford’s management are very well-versed in the language of sustainability, and the strategies that they are outlining appear to be sound and well thought out. If these could be implemented in toto, it seems likely that they would work.

However, it does appear that a healthy dose of skepticism is still in order. Ford’s short-term strategy for boosting fuel efficiency is something called “EcoBoost”, which essentially uses smaller, turbo-boosted engines to replace larger engines, something that SAAB has been doing for years. I have to admit, when I first heard about this, I had that same icky feeling that I had when SAAB attempted to pass off turbo-boosting their engines as “recycling”. The catchy, too-green, name, and too-good-to-be-true claims have a faint smell of greenwashing about them; this Wall Street Journal article clearly shows that Ford is likely overstating the fuel economy benefits of turbos.

Perhaps the EcoBoost thing is simply a misstep by a company trying to do anything it can to survive. I really do hope that Ford ends up proving me wrong, for everyone’s sake. A company of this size and influence is in a position to make a huge difference in the multiple fights against climate change and oil dependency. All that is needed is for the company to take its sustainability strategy seriously and to empower good people like the ones I met on Thursday.

What do you think, is Ford going to come through on its sustainability promises?

—-

This article originally appeared on TriplePundit and is reprinted here thanks to 3P’s Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Find out more about Creative Commons licensing.

TriplePundit.com writer Jen Boyton was nice enough to include me on a list of recommended sustainability consultants in her recent article Choose the Best Sustainability Consultant for Your Company, which is reprinted here. Thanks, Jen!

For the sake of transparency, it should be mentioned that I am an occasional contributor to TriplePundit.
We all know what we need to do to make our companies more environmentally friendly: use less energy, water, and paper, travel less and make less garbage. But yeah, it’s easier said than done especially if you’re in a carbon intensive business like manufacturing or energy production. What’s the company without a lot of time or expertise to do? Well, hire someone, of course! Who do you hire, and how do you know what to look for? Here’s the lowdown on the biggest and smallest players in the newest consulting game and how to separate the wheat from the formerly-unemployed-newly-rebranded “Sustainability Consultant.”First, you need to know what you are looking for. Different consultants have different kinds of expertise:

Sustainability Strategy

These are the guys to hire in 2 situations: first, you don’t even know what you need to know. They can advise you about all the different options available to make your business more sustainable and help you set sustainability goals. Second, these are the folks you want if you have made a lot of basic improvements like installing low flow faucets and energy savings devices, set the copier to default to double sided, and you’re looking for a way to integrate your sustainability initiatives into your overall business efforts. Because this step can seem a bit nebulous (what am I actually getting for my money?), this is the place to either take a personal recommendation (3P’s are at the bottom of the post) or go for the name. Many consultants are also writers of well regarded books on sustainability, like Hunter Lovins and Andrew Winston. In addition to being respected by their peers in the sustainability community, these folks have their own brand to protect, so they are going to do their best to make sure your company is well taken care of.

LEED:

LEED consultants are the ones to hire if you want to make sure that your new construction project or retrofit has the best chance of achieving LEED certification at the level you want (platinum, gold). They can also advise you on the expected costs to hit each level and help you make the best choice for your goals. Look for individuals who are certified LEED AP (accredited professional), and ask for references from jobs they’ve completed.

Greenhouse Gas Management:

Hire these folks if you work in a carbon intensive industry (manufacturing, distribution/transportation, or energy) and you are concerned about how pending cap and trade legislation will affect your company. Look for someone who has experience registering carbon emissions in your sector with the Climate Registry, the California Climate Action Registry or in conjuncture with the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme.

Energy Efficiency:

If you know you’re wasting a lot of energy through outdated fixtures, appliances and single pane windows these are the consultants who can help you figure out which upgrades will give you the highest ROI. They can also help you navigate the state and federal incentive programs to figure out which ones you’ll qualify for. These services are best suited to companies large and small in food services, hotels, retail, and manufacturing: any company with a lot of lights and appliances could benefit from these upgrades. Ask prospective consultants to give you an estimate on the amount of money the job will save you, and make sure to check some references.

Waste and Recycling:

Ideal for product manufacturers and retailers, these consultants can help you ferret out waste in your manufacturing process, helping your company save money on both materials and disposal costs. Ask your prospective consultant about their past clients, the projects they implemented, the challenges they encountered, and the final financial results. If you manufacture abroad, make sure you consultant has some experience in the country or region where your factory is.

Communicating your Sustainable Message:

This service is for companies who have made some sustainability improvements and are looking to make more. These consultants are for you if you have spent some time looking internally and you want to shift your focus to the external branding of your sustainable practices. You want to share their sustainability message with existing customers, use it to bring in new customers, and might be a bit fearful of being accused of greenwashing. Look for a consultant with a rigorous background in all of these types of consulting, connections in the sustainability community at large and a strong understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of engaging in social media.

All in all, it comes down to working with someone you can trust. Here are some friends of 3P (in safe, favorite-less alpha order) who we feel confident recommending:

Green Impact

GreenIt Group

Fairridge Group

ISOS Group

Natural Capitalism Solutions

Natural Logic

Padosa

Scott Cooney

Steve Puma

“Decisions. They are made every day. Some are made on the fly such as when a low fuel alert prompts me to stop at the nearest gas station. Some are more considered, involving detailed research and analysis, perhaps on the Internet or consulting with friends or experts. And others are made for us, by our friends and family, or our government. An important question is: are we all, given the data available to us today, making good, well-informed decisions? One thing is nearly certain, if your data isn’t accurate and accessible, a good decision isn’t likely to follow.” - Factual, Inc. CEO Gil Elbaz

As anyone who has ever tried to write a business plan knows, good, reliable data is hard to come by, and can be very expensive. Los Angeles-based startup Factual.com aims to change all that by creating a free “open data platform”.. The company believes that allowing the crowd to create, edit, discuss, share, substantiate or disagree with the data data will bring true accountability and openness to data.

Launched today with this inspiring press release/blog post, Factual.com invites anyone with an internet connection to upload and edit data, on any subject they wish, into Excel-like tables. The tables then become free, open and available to everyone. Factual even takes it one step further than the traditional Wiki model, by giving developers and content providers an API and widgets, which not only allow users to view data tables, and applications based on them, while on another company’s website, but also encourages those users to add, modify and discuss it as well. More about how this works in a few paragraphs.

Factual is the brainchild of Gil Elbaz, a self-proclaimed “data junkie”. Prior to forming Factual, he co-founded Applied Semantics (AdSense), which was acquired by Google in 2003. Elbaz says he has been “crazy about data” ever since he got his first computer, an Apple IIe, in 1983. He became particularly fascinated by the “power of the spreadsheet”, embodied by the much-touted VisiCalc program. According to Elbaz, Factual represents the path that Applied Semantics would have taken, had it not been purchased by Google.

How does it work?
Like it’s cousin, Wikipedia, Factual is inherently simple to understand and use. Most computer users would have little trouble with it’s table-based data entry. They have the option to upload data from their desktop, collect data located on the Internet through a URL, or type it in manually. They will probably want to search to see if the data already exists on Factual. (Existing data tables include The California Restaurant Database, Farmers Markets in the U.S., 2009 Clean Air Choice Vehicles and my personal favorites: Beer Qualities, Video Games & Cheats, and Cigars of the World). For example, searching for cigars currently yields 39 tables.

A table creator can choose to merge those tables in any way he sees fit. The program will execute the merge, adding columns and validating the data automatically. The validation of data is a vital component of Factual, and the company relies on several validation methods, both human-based and computer-based:

• Lots of Eyeballs: [According to Wikinomics...], the more people that view data, contribute data, modify data and debate the validity of data, the more accurate that data will be.
• Transparency: All additions and edits are saved as a history which is also easily accessible to everyone, via a pop-up when you hover over a cell that has been edited. Manual citations can be added, showing the original source of the data.
• Automation: Unlike Wikipedia, the Factual software does not rely on human input alone. The software attempts to validate data during merges by choosing edits that have been more widely accepted in the past over recent edits. New data is compared against data provided by the government, public sources and content providers.
• Open Model: Any and all changes, whether computer or human, are open to debate, and can be modified or reverted.

Once the data is uploaded and merged, users will have the option to share and access that data in a variety of ways. The simplest of these is embedding a data table in a blog or website. The process is basically the same as embedding a YouTube video or an Amazon advertising widget. Software developers will have access to Factual’s Application Programming Interface (API), allowing them to create a variety of programs based on the data tables. Expect to see everything from iPhone apps to desktop research tools.

What separates Factual from other syndicated content providers is that the widgets and APIs are bidirectional: while viewing a table on a 3rd-party provider’s website, users will be able to edit the content in real time, and the changes will be saved in the Factual repository, all without having to link back to Factual.com. Mr. Elbaz believes that this feature will lead to much faster adoption of the technology and quicker growth of the data store, which would ultimately mean higher quality data.

How do they make money?
Upon learning about Factual and whet they are up to, I was immediately struck by how useful it will be, not to mention valuable. But then I thought about how Wikipedia is essentially a non-profit, and I wondered if Factual would take the same route.

It turns out that Factual is, in fact, a for-profit company, although it does not plan on earning money from the data itself, but will instead focus on value-added services. These wold include things like dedicated support and advanced tools. In this way, the company is able to achieve its mission of providing an open, collaborative environment where anyone can easily view, contribute, improve and share data.

What about copyrights?
Factual discourages its users from uploading data that are confidential, restricted from publication by contract , or that was obtained by illegal means (e.g. cracking a protected database). Although the company allows users to add “enforceable terms and conditions” to any table they contribute, it discourages the practice, and reminds anyone who does so that it is their responsibility to enforce any terms. According to the company’s FAQ, “Raw data, facts, and general ideas are not protected by copyright law. If you’ve legally gathered a bunch of data and post it to Factual, it is in most cases free for the world to use and build upon.”

Fin
This technology should be insanely useful for sustainability professionals, for whom finding reliable data can be a major challenge. I would encourage anyone with access to such data to share it freely, so that we all can benefit. As a matter of fact, several socially-conscious organizations are already using Factual, including LiveStrong.com (cancer provider database), The Marine Animal Coalition (Vegan-only restaurants), and Beginning Farmers (list of 500 farmers’ markets).

Have you tried Factual.com yet? What do you think? What are some ways that access to open data might be useful to you or your business? Please let us know in the comments.

—-

This article originally appeared on TriplePundit and is reprinted here thanks to 3P’s Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. You can find out more about Creative Commons licensing here.

…a hitherto obscure macroeconomist who died over a decade ago. Many economists had never heard of him when the crisis struck… But lately he has begun emerging as perhaps the most prescient big-picture thinker about what, exactly, we are going through…Minsky was one economist who saw what was coming. He predicted, decades ago, almost exactly the kind of meltdown that recently hammered the global economy.

Minsky basically believed that the conservative fiscal stance which comes in the wake of a financial collapse, such as the Great Depression, would inevitably sow the seeds for the next crisis decades down the road. The main ingredients are time and short human memories, “Instability,” he wrote, “is an inherent and inescapable flaw of capitalism.” The article compares Minsky’s view to the one held by mainstream economics, that capitalism is self-regulating and self-stabilizing, known as the Neoclassical Synthesis.

Having a Minsky Moment

Minsky’s theory, known as the “Financial Instability Hypothesis,” works like this: in the wake of a financial collapse, the remaining lending institutions will see to take on less risk and revert to extremely conservative practices, which results in everything running smoothly for a while. As time goes by, and people are farther and farther removed from the source event, they are more and more willing to take on risk. Ultimately, this leads to greater and greater speculation, as more and more risky borrowers enter the market, what Minsky called a “euphoric economy”.

The end comes when the riskiest of borrowers enter the market, those whose borrowing can only be paid for with more borrowing, essentially a Ponzi scheme. Once the economy enters this fragile state, it only takes one small incident to topple the whole house of cards (This moment is referred to as the “Minsky Moment”), as everyone tries to shed risk and the cycle basically starts again.

If any of this sounds eerily familiar, that’s because it is exactly what happened this time.

Damage Control

Minsky suggested that it may be possible to mitigate some of the damage by implementing some policies that you also may be familiar with. The first would be a monetary policy in which the Fed would serve as the lender of last resort, in order to stop the bleeding and keep credit flowing. This policy was not implemented in time during the Great Depression and may be what led to it being so long and so deep. It has been implemented widely during the current fiscal crisis, although it is too soon to tell if has worked, although the signs are promising.

The second of Minsky’s policies was that the government should also act as the “employer of last resort”, employing everyone in need of a job at some minimum wage, and putting them to work on socially beneficial task. A form of this policy was used by Teddy Roosevelt and others during the Great Depression, and resulted in much of the infrastructure we currently use, such as bridges, highways and national parks. However, this policy has not been implemented by our current and recent leaders, which brings me to the real point of this article.

I find it interesting how easily the our current government, whether Democrat or Republican, found it to implement one part of Minsky’s plan, being the lender of last resort for financial institutions, yet finds it unpalatable to implement the other half, i.e. putting people to work. It is odd how people like Fed Chairman Ben “Helicopter” Bernake and President Obama have so eagerly adopted only the part of the plan which benefits business and financial institutions.

Odd how one is called “socialism” while the other is called “good business”. I believe that we may be leaning towards the form of government known as corporatism. (Some would call this a form of fascism, although not in the nationalistic sense.)

Too Many Clunkers

Our government seems to be much more willing to put corporations first, by funelling money to one pork project or another. Cash for Clunkers is a perfect example. While it did provide a short-term boost to auto dealers and auto manufacturers, it neglected the fact that people without jobs can’t afford to buy a car at any price, and the program ended up selling a lot of second and third cars. The people at the bottom were left out again. Perhaps the focus should be on putting people to work first, and if it is useful work, so much the better. I can’t even begin to imagine how many people we could put to work at a minimum wage for the amount of money that has been spent on bailing out large corporations.

The thing is, we need both. Corporations need credit to make things, and individuals need jobs so that they can buy what the companies make. As Henry Ford figured out, you can’t have one without the other. Perhaps a system that is skewed solely towards those with money and power, and ignores those without, is more aristocracy than meritocracy, and something that should be avoided.

Your Opinion

What do you think? Was Minsky right? Are we focusing too much on bailing out companies and ignoring the little guy? Please post your opinion in the comments.

—-

This article originally appeared on TriplePundit and is reprinted here thanks to 3P’s Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. You can find out more about Creative Commons licensing here.

LapWorks, located at LaptopDesk.net, is a small company that makes a variety of low-cost laptop lap desks and desktop stands. The laptop desks are designed to span the width of your lap when seated in a comfortable position, and are approximately 21 inches wide. They are lightweight, made of ABS plastic which is slotted along the length to reduce weight and provide ventilation. All of the models fold in half and have a small, hinged tab which allows them to both fold flat, for portability, or to open up into a V-shape, to act as a stand. There are rubber pads placed at strategic intervals along the surface, which are supposed to keep your laptop from slipping.

Please read on for my complete review of the LaptopDesk.

When I purchased my first LaptopDesk, I had a choice between the LaptopDesk 2.0, the Lightweight or the Futura. I chose the 2.0, because it seemed more sturdy than the Lightweight, and was rated to hold laptops up to 12 lbs. At the time, the Futura Model was more expensive and didn’t seem to offer any extra benefits, besides looking different. I even ordered the MouzPad, an extension which clips onto the desk and allows you to use a mouse.

At first, the LaptoDesk 2.0 worked pretty much as advertised. It was lightweight, portable, and kept my lap cool. It made using my laptop on the train much more enjoyable, because I no longer had to hold my knees together to keep the laptop in my lap. When I would get to a café, I simply folded up the desk and extended the riser tab, and my screen was almost four inches higher, which made for much more comfortable viewing.

It quickly became apparent, however, that I was not going to be able to use a mouse the way it was advertised on the website. The MouzPad attachment was sometimes difficult to snap on to the LaptopDesk. It clipped on in a way that was not very intuitive, and you were never quite sure if it was going to stay in place. Although it did manage to hold together pretty well, the surface of the MouzPad was very slippery, and my mouse would continuously fall off my lap unless I could somehow manage to keep my lap perfectly level. Since I usually was sitting in my easy chair or on a couch, this was nearly impossible, and became enormously frustrating. I gave up trying to use my wireless Mac mouse, and switched to a wired mouse, because the MouzPad did have a place where you could clip in the wire, but even this only managed to keep my mouse in reach. Invariably, it would fall off the platform every time I took my hands off the mouse.

Not being able to use a mouse with the LaptopDesk was not a deal-breaker for me, although it really would have been nice to have. I continued to use the LaptopDesk for several more weeks, until I encountered another problem: the plastic riser tabs were starting to crack. This was quite worrisome, given how new the product was, especially considering the company’s claims of indestructibility. Luckily for me, LapWorks customer service was quite nice, and they explained that there had been a bad batch of risers which were not molded at the correct temperature, making them brittle. They immediately sent a replacement part, and assured me that the LaptopDesk itself did not have this problem.

Unfortunately, I did not find out until almost a year later that this was not the case. Cracks began to appear in the hinges and, before long, the entire hinge on one side was cracked through! Despite repeated inquiries, the company was unwilling to provide a replacement, citing their 30-day limited warranty for defective products. I thought that this was a bad call on their part, given that I had uncovered the original problem with the riser months prior, indicating that the entire product had been defective from the beginning.

By this time, the LaptopDesk had become an indispensable part of my laptop kit. Since I didn’t like the design or price of other laptop desks that were out on the market, I decided to bite the bullet and try one of Lapworks’ other models. At only $29, the Futura model had come down in price to match the other models. The Futura is a much better design, and seems to be made of a different type of plastic. The design has much larger air spaces, beefier hinges and larger rubber anti-slide tabs. Where the 2.0 is flat, clunky and unattractive, the Futura is much more pleasing to the eye. If you feel like paying a few dollars extra, you can eve get it in a selection of colors.

My experience with the Futura, after almost a year of constant daily use has been great. It shows no signs of cracking, and the finish does not mar or scratch. It performs very well in terms of keeping my lap cool, and the much more substantial riser is also in like-new condition.

It still remains to be seen whether or not I will eventually experience any of the same problems that cropped up in the original product, but I do not think that will be the case. My feeling is that the company was still working out a lot of kinks in its supply chain at the time, and that these problems have most likely been solved. If properly molded, a product like this should be almost indestructible with ordinary use. However, If you are considering purchasing a LaptopDesk, I would recommend steering clear of the LaptopDesk 2.0, and go with the Futura model, just to be safe.

Over the past 2 years or so, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in coffee shops and cafés, either studying for one of my MBA classes or looking for work. While these places are great for getting out of the house and being around other people, they are an ergonomic nightmare for laptop users. The keyboard/mouse/trackpad is always too high, as when placed on a table, or the screen is too low, like when sitting in a big leather chair or couch. Either way, I was always in for a world of hurt. That is, until I discovered the Logitech DiNovo Wireless Keyboard, Mac Edition.

The DiNovo Edge is a Bluetooth wireless keyboard with a built-in trackpad. It’s combination of sleek looks, performance and features made it the perfect solution. After almost a year of constant use, I can honestly say that it is one of my favorite technology purchases, ever! Read on for my complete review.

When I began my search for a wireless keyboard to use at the cofeeshop, I knew exactly what I needed:

• Bluetooth wireless
• Mac compatible
• Does not require a USB dongle
• Built-in pointing device,
• Pointer on the right and the buttons on the left. This would allow me to use both hands.

It’s amazing how few wireless keyboards met these criteria. After weeks of searching and frustration I was only able to come up with a few options: either they did not have a built-in mouse, they did not work with the Mac, or they weren’t Bluetooth. At the time, my best two picks were a no-name Chinese-manufactured infrared keyboard or the $179 Logitech DiNovo Edge. On the one hand, the Chinese keyboard looked cheap, and I doubted infrared would work in this configuration (infrared is line-of-site, and the keyboard would be underneath the laptop most of the time.) On the other hand, the Edge was just too much more than I was willing to spend, despite the rave reviews. Luckily for me, just a few weeks later, the fine people on SlickDeals.net posted a deal on the Mac version of the Edge, which ended up being about $65. I was in!

Layout
The DiNovo Edge is a really nice, slim, wireless keyboard with a built-in touchpad. It is much wider than a standard keyboard, and is made to sit on your lap comfortably. This wide stance is where most other keyboards fail for this particular application, because it allows you to sit in a natural, relaxed position, and you don’t have to hold your knees together to keep it in place.

It has the touchpad on the left and mouse keys on both the left and right, so you can use it easily with two hands without having to move your hands all over the place. The pretty standard layout includes function keys across the top with home/end/forward delete/page up/page down and arrow keys on the right. Intended as a media center keyboard, there are play/pause/fast forward keys on the left and a neat volume touchpad on the right, including a handy mute button.

Mac users will appreciate the addition of the forward delete key, missing on Apple products, and the way that the media controls work as well as an Apple Remote. The media controls have turned out to be one of my favorite features, because they allow me to mute for a phone call, or to jump to the next song in iTunes, without moving my hands from the keyboard. This is a major improvement from the complex multiple-key Quicksilver commands that was my prior best solution.

The only real downside to the layout would be the lack of a numeric keypad. While a deal-breaker for some, I find this to me a minor inconvenience which the other features more than make up for.

Look and Feel
One of the best things about the Edge (among many good things), is how it feels to type on it. have a tendency to use a lot of force when typing, so a “chiclet” style keyboard, like the new Apple keyboards, is way too hard on my fingers. Logitech has been able to provide the feel of a long keystroke and solid bottom that is the hallmark of full-sized keyboards. What’s amazing is that they were able to do it in a keyboard that is only about 1/4 inch thick and extremely light. It is very comfortable for me to type on.

As if all of the other features weren’t enough, it even looks great! This is a keyboard that was designed to look good sitting in its charging cradle in your living room, and has the sleek minimalist looks that are the hallmark of Apple products. It’s definitely the best looking keyboard I’ve ever seen, and matches perfectly with my 15″ MacBook Pro.

Performance
It’s really hard to find an area where the Edge doesn’t excel. Consider the battery life: Logitech claims that the DiNovo Edge can go up to a month before having to be recharged! Although I have not conducted any type of scientific test, this claim seems to hold water. In the entire time I have owned it, I have never once run the battery completely out. This is saying a lot, since the Edge lives in my bag, and I frequently forget to charge anything the lives in my bag.

I haven’t had any problems with the DiNovo Edge, from a quality standpoint. It has held up quite well, so far.

Cons
It’s really hard to say anything bad about this keyboard. However, there are a few minor flaws that have popped up:

• Sticky touchpad: The touchpad has a very sensitive “touch to click” feature, which can’t be disabled. This has caused me some grief when it has caused me to inadvertently remove items from my Dock! According to the Logitech tech support forums, this is a hardware issue that cannot be fixed. While not a deal-breaker, it can be quite frustrating. I have learned to pull my hand off of the touchpad for a second when I see it dragging something that I had not intended.
• Bluetooth crashes the Mac: Quite often, my Mac will crash when attempting to connect to the keyboard. I’m pretty sure that this is a Mac problem not a problem with the DiNovo Edge Keyboard, specifically, because I have experienced a similar problem with my Mac wireless keyboard, but it is nonetheless extremely frustrating.
• Dust magnet: The Edge has a glossy finish, which looks nice, but is a magnet for dust.

Conclusion
As you can tell, I can’t say enough good things about the Logitech DiNovo Edge Mac Edition Keyboard. It has literally saved me from quite a bit of pain, and my repetitive stress injuries are improving because of it. I’ve come to love it so much, that I now use it in my home office, in place of my purchasing a keyboard tray. The fit, finish, layout and performance are all top-notch. Even with a couple of minor of annoyances, it still stands out for me as an example of what can be done with really good design.

The best part is that they can be had for under $100, if you search diligently. Don’t be afraid of the $179 sticker price shown on the Logitech site. I got my Mac version on Amazon for around $65 during a special sale. The current Mac version is on Amazon for $89 and the PC version is $134. I’m sure you can find the PC one even cheaper if you look around.

Have you had any experiences, good or bad, with this keyboard or others? I’d love to read you comments!

Steve

I have been a fan of Ferris’ work since reading The Four-Hour Workweek, but I have always been skeptical about whether is was possible for an ordinary person to actually pull off some of the things he has written about. His logic and methodologies are logically sound, but some of the claims seem outrageous. My opinion was changed in a big way when I tried out his Upside-Down Method for building a fire. This worked so well that I almost burned my house down! But, more to the point, everything worked exactly as he described it. So when I read about how effective and easy the diet was, I was eager to see if it could work for me as well.

In short, the diet has worked extraordinarily well for me, in a way that no other diet ever has. I have already lost over 20 pounds, and continue to see a downward trend. The reason it works so well comes down to two factors: sound application of science and simplicity, two hallmarks of Feriss’ work. The diet is an extremely simplified version of a low-carb diet, but with a couple of twists: in addition to protein and vegetables, you also eat beans, hence the “slow-carb” moniker, and exclude brown rice, which Feriss claims is too calorically dense. You maintain a very short list of proteins, veggies and beans, and then for every meal you choose one of each.

However, what really makes the diet work is a once-a-week free for all. Every week, you have one day where you can eat whatever you want.  Read on for some great tips on how I made this diet work for me.

In my interpretation of the diet, I pretty much do what Tim outlines in the article. I would read all of the discussion that is in the comments of that article, there is a lot of useful information there. However, I do eat a wider variety of food than what he outlines, although I still try to keep it simple. It’s basically some kind of meat/poultry or eggs, beans and a vegetable at every meal.

Breakfast
For breakfast, I usually eat scrambled egg whites with one egg yolk, although lately I have just been eating one fried egg alone because I don’t want to eat as much as the weeks go on. Adding guacamole or salsa to egg whites makes them a lot more tasty. I like to eat a red or yellow pepper sliced up and then some kind of beans, usually refried beans or cannelini.

Beans
As far as beans go, I have tried almost everything that Trader Joes offers. I like the marinated bean salad and the canellini beans the best. Of course, you have to be careful not to eat things that have too much added salt or sugar, so baked beans are usually out, although I have them once in a while to break things up. Chili works great, because it has meat and beans together. Just make sure you get the ones without too much sugar, etc.

Veggies
For vegetables, I usually use frozen and then cook them in the microwave. Doesn’t really matter which kind, but I don’t think that corn really qualifies because it is more of a starch. You only need a small amount. Plain is better than anything with a sauce that would add carbs and calories. I also buy fresh broccoli from TJs and then steam it with a steamer basket, which is really quick and tastes better than frozen. Once again, I only need to eat a couple of broccoli spears. I use “I Can’t Believe it’s not Butter” spray, which has no calories and tastes great with some salt. Sometimes I don’t feel like cooking, so I substitute pickles and/or olives as a veggie. I love pickles and olives, so it works for me. They work well with the bean salad, because you don’t have to cook it, either.

Protein
It doesn’t hurt to have some frozen, grilled, chicken strips on hand, because you can cook them fast and they taste good. I sometimes take a whole bag of TJs frozen chicken breasts, marinate or brine them and grill them all at once and keep them in the fridge, so I have food ready for the week. This works pretty well, although once you cook them, you end up eating the same thing all week, so it would probably be a better idea to cook a variety of meats instead of just one kind. You might also want to consider a spice rub instead of a marinade, both for convenience and because you can avoid sugar that way. In my area, Kinders Meats has some really good spice rubs and marinades, and there’s a brand called Grill Mates that you can find in the spice section of the supermarket.

The best part
The most important part of the diet, in my opinion, is making sure that you have one day that you eat whatever you want. You actually have to kind of pig out, because you want to spike your calories. I usually have a pancake breakfast in the morning, candy bars all day, something good for lunch like a Gordo’s hamburger and pizza for dinner. I absolutely love pizza. I try to avoid eating pizza during the week, even though Ferris says that you can eat it within 1.5 hours of a workout. I only eat it on Saturday because it is too addictive for me, and would cause me to go off the diet permanently. I used to have a big ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery, but I have a lactose intolerance, so it was making me sick. Now I just eat other desserts.

Eating this much feels totally wrong, and everyone will think you are crazy, but the numbers don’t lie. I have been charting my weight for weeks, and every week my average weight is lower than the last week. (I use an average of the last four days). This tells your body that it does not need to store calories, because you are telling your body there are plenty of calories around. If you didn’t do this, your body will go into fat storage mode, and you will plateau.

It also has a psychological effect of giving you a way to eat the things you want every week. For me, this is huge, because being on a diet does not mean that I have to deprive myself forever of the foods that I love. I know that, once a week, I will have an opportunity to eat whatever I am craving, and it has become a sort of game to see what fun things I can find to eat on Saturday. I am not the sort of person that can eat “everything in moderation”. This works really well for me, and I am no longer thinking about what I am missing all the time.

Keep track
Keeping a chart of your weight definitely help, because you weight will fluctuate. Your weight may go up after your Saturday binge, but you will see an overall downward trend, kind of like a rollercoaster, but where each successive peak and trough is lower than the last. Like I mentioned, using a 4-day moving average will help you see the trend a little bit better. I weight myself at the same time each morning before I eat, and without clothes on.

I think that is pretty much all I can think of. It’s best if you keep it relatively simple, so come up with a strategy that works for you. Let me know what you think.

Deciding what metrics to use, where to draw the boundaries and how to compare wildly different materials is a highly involved and technical art known as Life-Cycle Analysis, or LCA. Sustainable Minds, a Boston-based software company, is making LCA much more accessible to designers with its new web-based software service. I was recently able to see the software in action at a seminar entitled, “Mastering Environmental Impact Assessment in the Design Process”

As Pratt Institute professor and ecologist Christopher X J. Jensen, Ph.D., explains, while quantitative methods, such as LCA are the best ways to measure the environmental impact of a product, these methods need to be applied by scientists, and do not jibe well with the qualitative methods generally used by designers to evaluate the aesthetics of a product design.

While qualitative analysis may be an appropriate method to jude aesthetics, “for a design to be truly labeled as “more sustainable” than another, it has to be judged quantitatively. Judging the sustainability of a designed object based on qualitative comparison is dubious at best, and often leads to the promotion of a design or practice that actually has a greater environmental impact than other alternatives. We call this “greenwashing”, and it is important to note that greenwashing does not need to involve intentional obfuscation; any claim of lowered impact or “sustainability” that is not based on quantitative analysis could be wrong, and therefore could be a form of greenwashing.”

The Sustainable Minds application, currently in private beta, attempts to bridge the gap between these two worlds of design and environmental science, by utilizing a process based on Okala, a comprehensive design education project of the Industrial Designers Society of America. Okala developed several concepts which make LCA accessible to designers:

• Relative impacts: There is no such thing as a 100% sustainable product, because all products have some impact on the environment. Product sustainability must be evaluated in relation to other products.
• Okala Impact Factors: Using the newest environmental impact characterization methods and normalization data from the US EPA, as well as the newest weighting values from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Okala Impact Factors enable estimation of the ecological performance of any product or system.
• Sustainable Design: While “ecological design” is economically viable and environmentally benign, sustainable design include those plus requiring a product to be socially equitable.

At the present time, the Sustainable Minds software is able to evaluate Okala Impact Factors for approximately 240 materials and process, covering the bulk of currently available design choices for North American products. The continuously updated factors allow design teams to perform what-if comparisons based on 10 impact categories, or compare just global warming impacts, measured in CO2 equivalents.

To use the software, designers create a “project” which is a container for multiple design “concepts”. Each concept is a particular implementation of an idea in which the designer can make different choices in materials, processes and transportation options. The software allows for consideration of the impacts of the use and disposal phases. All of these factors go into a “system bill of materials” (SBoM), which is everything that is creating an environmental impact within the “system boundary” of the analysis.

All of the concepts within a particular project are being evaluated upon the exact same criteria, yet there is plenty of room to expand or shrink the analysis. Do you want to know all possible impacts of your designs, from cradle-to-grave? Simply expand the system boundary to include the use and disposal phases. Want to know what will happen if you change something small, like going from steel fasteners to aluminum? Copy a concept and change that one component. The interface shows all of the concepts side-by-side, with the easy-to-interpret Okala impact numbers and global warming numbers displayed in large text.

In many cases, the design choice with the least environmental impact may be quite counterintuitive. What make the Sustainable Minds software such an excellent and valuable tool is the way that it reduces these complex choices into a few easy to compare numbers. During the class, I was able to experience this firsthand. Along with a group of four others, I was tasked with using the software to develop three new concepts for a children’s plastic backyard play set, and then evaluating the impacts of those concepts.

It quickly became apparent that our instinctual assumptions about what is “good” and what isn’t does not always match with reality. Our first attempt was a sort of hedge maze, shipped as a biodegradable framework upon which grass and other plants would grow. Of course, this concept turned out to be the least sustainable, requiring a lot of water and yearly replacement. But what was really shocking was the overall environmental impact of the biodegradable plastic that our framework was made out of. While this material has very little impact in the disposal phase, it has a huge impact in its manufacturing. Our best concept turned out to be one made of sustainable wood and recycled aluminum.

My experience with the Sustainable Minds software was a positive one. Except for a few minor hiccups, which is understandable, since this is beta software, the interface is easy to use. The biggest hurdle, for me, was understanding what the names of the various materials and processes meant, which shouldn’t be a problem for the intended users of the product. Even for someone who is not a designer, this is an useful tool for understanding how design choices impact the environment.

—-

This article originally appeared on TriplePundit and is reprinted here thanks to 3P’s Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. You can find out more about Creative Commons licensing here.