Ealing Council Says You Need To Pay To Recycle Garden Waste

The above photo shows the current garden waste recycling bags that are used within Ealing. You fill these with your garden waste and each week you put them out with your rubbish, and other recycling, and Ealing council comes along and picks it all up for you. Brilliant! The recycling options in Ealing are great. In fact when I moved here a year ago, I found you could recycle so much that I found it confusing!

• A white bag for plastics
• Orange bags for garden waste
• A small green bin for food scraps
• A larger green storage container for paper and metals
• and then general rubbish if indeed you had any after al of that recycling!

OK so you don't need to have a PhD to manage all of that recycling but it certainly helps! ;-) Below is a picture of my standard recycling ... although admittedly in the height of Summer there are usually more garden waste recycling bags, as the above image shows!

In 2012 however this is all going to change. Well the garden waste recycling will at least. Ealing Council highlights that putting garden waste in landfill is not an option. In the long run this leads to green house gas creation which is clearly not a great thing, and it is a needless impact on landfill sites. It just doesn't make sense to dump reusable garden waste into landfill sites. Besides councils in the UK have recycling targets that they need to meet. Although I am not certain I assume there are financial impacts if these recycling targets are not met? I need to research this some more.

So there simply should not be a barrier to entry for people to recycle as much of their waste as possible. Previously, the only barrier to entry for Ealing residents was the need to have a PhD to understand the options ;-). In April 2012 though this all changes. Ealing council have announced a subscription service for the collection of garden waste. It will cost residents another £40 a year on top of their council tax. This for a service that is currently covered by council tax in Ealing. Residents will be able to get a wheelie bin, or bags, for their garden waste - however collections will only be every 2nd week.

Lets add a barrier to entry to recycling! That'll help residents help the council to meet their recycling targets! This is simply not a good idea in my view. If people see a perceived cost for a service, they are less likely to use it. OK we already pay for the garden waste recycling, but this comes out of our council tax bill now. Now on top of this I have to pay for a service that I already get for free. What's more I pay and its only available every 2nd week as opposed to every week? Crazy.

Ealing prides itself on being a green borough. There are fantastic parklands and fantastic gardens that make Ealing a desirable place to live. Why are people who maintain their gardens going to be penalised for making Ealing an enjoyable place to live? OK this might sound a little extreme, but this is what it equates to. If you are an avid gardener you will have to pay a little more each year to keep your garden tidy. 

Oh and don't try and dispose of your garden waste in your regular rubbish (not that you should). In their FAQ Ealing Council highlight that this is not an option.

I certainly hope this doesn't lead to an increase in fly tipping :-(

Councils should be doing everything in their power to encourage residents to recycle correctly. They should not be charging for the privilege. 

Cheers

Murray

Jawbone Up Review

So I did receive a Jawbone Up wristband for Christmas! Yay! So far it has not suffered a fate of death as experienced by some people. Apparently issues have arisen after 10 or so days of use - more info about the Jawbone Up issues and no questions asked refund. I have only had it for just under a week but I have charged it fully and it appears to be maintaining its charge so fingers crossed it keeps on working!

Initial impressions from me are that it is a lot bulkier than I thought it would be. OK it's not massive but I notice it. When putting on long sleeved shirts or jackets, or gloves - again I notice it. It gets in the way. I am getting more used to it, and I have been wearing pretty much well 100% of the time but initially, as I don't wear a watch, I think I have noticed it more than I should have. Rest assured this is not a show stopper ;-). My personal issue only!

In terms of functionality. You put it on, you walk about, or sleep, and then you sync the data to you iPhone so it can be used within the free Jawbone app that you install on your phone. It couldn't be simpler. You can set goals, such as the number of hours you wish to sleep, or the number of steps you wish to take in a day, and after syncing data with your phone it then provides you nice daily graphs of your daily activity, as can be seen below.



The above screen shot shows you the daily breakdown of your sleep, activity and food consumption. I find the food section of the app a little limiting so I don't actually use it. You can basically track the food you are eating by taking photographs of it and uploading. I would use the food consumption functionality if there was a little more science behind it, as an example highlighting the number of calories you have probably consumed. Below is a more detailed breakdown of the daily activity graph. This is only until 11:02 am as I was testing the accuracy of distance within the app against RunKeeper. More on this later.



Battery life seems really good, assuming that it continues to maintain it's charge! It takes roughly 80 minutes to fully charge and so far I think I should get about 7 days on a single charge.

What is really missing from the application though, or a browser based interface, is access to export your data so you can track trends and reports across time. Within the application you only have access to a timeline where you can scroll left and right to see your previous days activity. It I want to compare the activities I did 4 weeks ago with what I am doing now, there is simply not an easy way to do this. It would really be great if I had access to reports over time, such that I could really see that I was becoming more active, or whether or not I have activity spikes that drop back in time. This should not be the goal of the Jawbone Up, rather it should encourage you to remain active and become increasingly more active. Weekly reports and monthly reports, highlighting continued progress, would allow me to do this. I think this is really lacking from the application.

I have been a huge fan of RunKeeper for a year and a half now. In fact RunKeeper was the first thing I blogged about on this blog. I don't use it as regularly as I have previously, but I did use it the other day to test the accuracy of the Jawbone Up. I performed the following walk:



Along the following route: (as RunKeeper uses the GPS they can provide very nice route maps in the summary reports of your activity)



and as it turns out, even though the Jawbone Up doesn't use GPS it is pretty accurate with respect to distance travelled. The above Jawbone Up activity picture shows 4.85 kilometers distance travelled and RunKeeper shows 5.25 kilometers. The Jawbone report is for the whole day up until 11am, however most of the activity is from the walk measured by RunKeepr as well. So distance covered is reasonably accurate. I much prefer the under reporting within Jawbone Up compared to if it reported figures more than they were!

Another odd thing about the Jawbone application is that your activity data is stored in the cloud as opposed to within the app. OK so there are community features with the Jawbone Up App, so I can understand that data will have to maintained on a server somewhere in order to share it with others, but why on earth, if I scroll back through my time line of activity does the app have to download data from a server. Surely the data should be cached within the application so I can look at my activity without any data access? Not sure why they would have designed the app this way? But if I put my iPhone into flight mode I cannot look at any of my historical data within the app. The data has been there previously as it is synced from the wristband itself. This is really odd.

This may have sounded negative on the whole, however all in all I am a fan of the Jawbone Up. Once on your wrist you don't have to do anything for it to track your activity. Unlike RunKeeper where you have to activity start and stop the application prior to, and after, each activity. The Jawbone App just silently collects data. however what it does need to make it far better and a much stronger product on the whole is:

• Offline access to your data! Why on earth do I need a data connection to look at my timeline within the application?
• Far better reporting options to allow me to monitor my health progress.
• Better food resources. Allow people to track calories consumed as opposed to simply photograph food and tag restaurant locations.

So I am a fan and I will continue to use it. I hope to see product improvements moving forwards, but given the Jawbone Up hardware issues, they might be a while away! 

So definitely worth a try if they fix the hardware problems! Right now I definitely would not be buying one off eBay or the like. you have no idea if you would be getting a broken one or not. If you want to try, wait until they start shipping them again and get one from a retailer with a returns policy, just in case!

Cheers

m

Gowalla Goes To Facebook

It was announced on December 5th, on the Gowalla blog, that Gowalla was going to Facebook. It's a talent acquisition and not a product acquisition, so unfortunately the Gowalla app will be put to bed early in 2012. You will be able to export your data but early next year the app will be closed down.

This is a real shame. I really love Gowalla. For me it was always a different user experience to Foursquare. Gowalla, for me, was always more about discover-ability rather than simply checking into a place to become mayor. For each check-in you made you received a stamp in your passport. some places were featured and had their own icons and there was always a challenge to get these graphically stunning icons into your passport. The UI designers at Gowalla are great. It's no wonder Facebook have acquired them.

There was always the comparison with Foursquare, but for me Gowalla stands out above Foursquare on the usability and ascetically pleasing stakes. Possibly to avoid the comparisons, Gowalla re-launched itself as a crowd sourced city travel guide service in September. I loved the look and feel of this re-launch as well, however for me there were two issues with the re-launched service:

1. Roaming Data costs! Having a crowd sourced travel guide is fantastic (it's an idea very close to heart), however when I am going to need this most (In Europe) is when I am in another country, so when I am roaming! It's going to be a nasty shock when I discover all these cool places on Gowalla, then get home and see my roaming data bill. Cue severe holiday hangover! A mechanism around this of course would be able to download the city guides to your device prior to going and then allow offline usage. Check-ins could simply be queued until you are back on WiFi, or back on your home network. Guess we unfortunately won't be seeing this feature :-(
2. Also with the re-launch they removed access to your passport page! This was the page where you could see all of the stamps of places you had visited and the count of your passport stamps! this was a small feature that I actually really missed. It's not really the point of a travel guide service but when I was growing up I was always fascinated with travel and looking back through my passport at all the stamps I had collected along the way. Living in Europe now there are no stamps! Confound the EU I say! ;-). The Gowalla passport icons were a visually stunning way to look back at your recent trips you had made. As I say it's no wonder Facebook want the Gowalla UI team.

These (personal) issues aside, Gowalla you will be missed. for several years you held a prominent place on my mobile phone idle screen.

Good luck.

cheers

m 

My 9 Most Viewed 2011 Flickr Photos

Before you get insanely bored of Top in 2011 lists here are my most viewed Flickr photos of 2011. I am getting in ealry before the rot sets in! ;-) These are not necessarily my favorite photos that I have taken this year, in fact some are not even mine, however by views these are the most popular photos on my Flickr photo stream this year. If I find the time I think I shall go through and pick out my favorites from this past year as well.

The first, above, seems appropriate. In the early 1980's Nintendo Game and Watches were really the first introduction I had to any form of mobile technology. These are the collection that I have left. I don't have batteries at the moment but they are still a nice collectible.

Steve Jobs comes in at second. Clearly not my photo but at the time I questioned if he was launching the iPad2, his last product launch, or whether or not he was in fact launching a very old Ericsson mobile. After all this is what he is holding in his right hand! Click through to the flickr photo if you want to see his latest mobile. It's in the comments ;-)

Then it seems as though the English Cricket team managed to break the Ashes urn in their wild celebrations after beating Australia in the last Ashes test match series in Australia. Something to celebrate for sure, but breaking the Ashes urn seems wildly inappropriate!

My next most viewed photo is on corporate message! I posted theis just after T-Mobile in the UK launched their iPhone Customer Care App. Amazing what interest a single person can generate by posting a photo. Imagine what interest you could create if you used Social Media to engage with all of your Customers on all of your products. The options are limitless.

Finally some photos of value! :-) This was the first photo I posted of Peter after his birth. This is probably Peter at 2 hours old. He looks a little tired!

Peter at 1 day old. Pretty gorgeous! Him not me! ;-) Dad looks rather chuffed though! :-)

This is a picture of Martin Cooper, the inventor of the mobile phone, with one of his first creations. As far as I am aware the choice of apps on this phone is limited. Apparently they have been used to build houses though. After all they are the size and weight of bricks!

This is Peter striking his first Blue Steel pose. Quality! ;-)

And the finally, Mon meeting Peter for the first time!

A very momentous year for us really! :-)

Anyway, thats the most viewed. In the next week or so I will try to post my favorites. Some might be on both lists ;-)

Cheers

m

Jawbone Up! Hmm Perhaps Jawbone Down?

The Jawbone UP bracelet had a lot of potential. Containing an accelerometer the bracelet will track your movement and sleep patterns. In conjunction with an iPhone, and soon an Android, app you can then download and track your data. Arguably this should show you how inactive you are and allow you to adjust your lifestyle to actually try to be healthy!

It has various other features as well, such as a vibration alert if you have been stationary too long. This should tell you to get off your backside and do some exercise.

Sounds ideal. In fact so ideal I have been reliably informed that I should be getting one for Christmas. Yay!

Only one small problem. They don't seem to work :-(. In an email from the CEO of Jawbone, Hosain Rahman explains that a production defect, in some instances, means that the bracelet cannot hold a charge. Some units also are unable to download any data therefore removing any usefulness in the product!

Jawbone are offering a full refund to anyone who has brought the UP bracelet, even if you are not experiencing any problems. To me this suggests there is not a lot of confidence in the production process of any of the initial build of the bracelets! I don't think any of this initial build will be lasting too long :-( I hope the one I get does work, but I am not entirely confident! If you have purchased a Jawbone UP and want your no questions asked refund click here.

Such a shame as I think it is a great idea! I hope they sort their production issues and I hope they release a version that actually works. There are some limitations to the product e.g. how they integrate details about food you have eaten. I think this is flaky and offers nothing more than a diary feature. It would be nice to add a bit more food science to the service as opposed to simply letting you upload images of unhealthy snacks you have eaten!

I think Jawbone have done the only thing they can do in the circumstance. They are stressing that quality of their product and service is of utmost importance. The hit they must be taking, in what I am sure would have been a Christmas surge of sales, must be huge. I hope that they pull through and are able to get a quality product out the door. Hey I still want to try it!

Cheers

m

Product Design Gone Mad - The Enviro 3000

Welcome the all new and all improved "Enviro 3000". This is not the bin for this generation but the bin for generations to come! Just listen to the features we have packed into this Enviro model:

• Conveniently placed push button's to allow you to automatically open and then close the bin. One button for each action! These are situated right at the rim of the bin to ensure if there is any nasty bacteria lurking there you are 100% guaranteed to get it all over your hands! This feature is specifically designed to improve your immune system. Once it has made you ill you will never be ill again!
• It has an on/off switch on the back of the bin, again conveniently located so if the bin is up against a wall you have no access to it what so ever! Yes folks you need electricity to make this bin work!
• There is a charging outlet so you can recharge your bin. That's right this bin is also battery powered folks! Sure you can use it without power, but it's seal tight lid has been conveniently designed to make usage without power really quite difficult. Don't worry though see the accessories described in further detail below.
• It will work for possibly 12 hours on a single charge! If that's not convenient then you can leave it plugged into the wall! That's right why not consume electricity and make more carbon dioxide while disposing of your waste! Why does it only possibly work for 12 hours on a single charge? Well we are not sure how long a single charge really works as the bin is always broken within the first hour. It works really well on a single charge for that hour though.
• Open's automatically if you wave your hand over the lid! Yay! This feature is sensitive enough to work after about the 5th wave over the lid, by which time it would have been more efficient manually clawing your way into the lid with a screwdriver. The screwdriver is possibly the easiest way into the bin if there is no power as you can prise the lid open easily with this. This then leads onto Enviro 3000 accessories!
• Yes folks when you buy the Enviro 3000 all good stockists will also be willing to sell you screwdrivers so you can still conveniently dispose of rubbish if the Enviro 3000 loses its charge or indeed there is a blackout. Never be left with the worry that you won't be able to use your bin again. there is also an additional paid for attachment that will allow you to strap your screw driver to the bins side, just so you never misplace your screwdriver again!

But wait you want more!? Wow you are a hard lot to please! Well... wait for it, there is an app to open the bin as well! Yay for apps! What I hear you say? you cannot find the Enviro 3000 app in the app store? Well guess what you don't need to. Just have your phone in your hand when you wave you hand over the lid, and if the auto open lid is still working, after the 5th wave the lid will open! It works with any phone, or indeed any object that you might have to hand! Does Angry Birds work on a wooden spoon? No it doesn't! The Enviro 3000 app does though. You don't believe me? Simply wave a wooden spoon over the lid and presto, after the 5th wave, if the auto open lid is still working, guaranteed the lid will open!

But Wait you still want more? Wow this is a seriously hard sell! You guys really are top Consumers! Well if it's more you want then it's more you will get! As the picture below shows, the Enviro 3000 is guaranteed to break within the first hour or so of usage! It's lid will be permanently stuck in the open position thus rendering it quite useless! But don't let that worry you as we have the perfect solution! For another slightly larger price than you piad for the Enviro 3000, you can buy the Enviro 4000!!!! The 4000 offers the same brilliant features as the 3000 but it's just slightly bigger than the 3000, hence making it the perfect rubbish disposal device to dispose of your broken Enviro 3000's! Yay for forward thinking!

Never let it be said that the Enviro brand isn't all about the Customer and serving your needs best. Our motto is: 'If it's not rubbish then it's not worth selling! Shabba!'

For more information on the Enviro brand and range of products please get in touch! Also please stay tuned for impending announcements about the even larger, and therefore more power hungry, Enviro 5000! It'll be perfect for getting rid of your broken 4000's!

Remember if you are not consuming your are a Communist!! Make rubbish and buy bins folks.

Peace, Out

The Enviro Product team wishes you a Happy and waste filled Christmas!!

Voting ... It's A Serious Business!

Now don't get me wrong, I am not trying to belittle the concept of voting, democracy et al! the above picture is of someone protesting in Russia about Putin and how he's not a very nice chap. For some reason though it really had me thinking of this chap, pictured on TV behind a presenter on a show during the last national election in the UK.



In this case this chap hasn't decided who he is going to vote for as politicians, at the time, were far too scared to ask him!

Don't know why I linked the two, my brain is functioning oddly at the moment.

Two Glaring iPhone Design Flaws.

The first: It really would not be fair to say that using the iPhone is child's play. Sure it's simple to use out of the box and yeah it just works .... well it does in all but the hands of a child. As can be seen in the photo above, I let my son have a whirl of my trusty old iPhone 3GS war horse. It was so difficult to use that he simple resorted to attempting to eat it! OK it could be said that given half a chance he will try to eat anything that finds its way into his hands, however in a scientific experiment, conducted soon after this iOS usability testing experiment, I gave him a HTC Desire S Android device. This is just as shiny as an iPhone 3GS, however he did NOT try and consume this! So although it might not be child's play the iPhone still clearly tastes better than Android devices.

The Second Design Flaw of the iPhone: Well soon after Peter's smartphone taste testing experiments my iPhone 3GS displayed the following error:



Seriously. I mean this accessory is not optimized for this iPhone? What?! Are they suggesting that my son is an accessory? Crazy stuff. I had not thought that a child was the latest fashion craze. It seems that my son is either too modern, or far too old school and as a result has a compatibility issue with a phone that is after all only just over 2 years old! It's a real scam. When a new phone comes out all the interfaces are changed so the old accessories don't work! So when you buy your new phone you have to upgrade all your accessories as well. I tell you it's a cynical money making exercise! Make sure your new design is subtly different that everything needs upgrading if you want shinier stuff! ;-)

Cheers

m