August 13, 2008
Going green is so chic right now it hurts, but it’s also so good for the environment!
There are many ways you can help the environment, and there’s plenty of good blogs to check out on the subject, but I would like to focus on a few ways any fellow Kitchener Waterloo residents can help out.
The Kitchener Waterloo area is a city that works well for going green. We’re sorrounded by farm land, we have a well developed public transport system that just keeps getting better and we’re not too spread apart.
Farmers Market!
I know, this isn’t exactly going green but in a sense it is. But what helps more so, is you are supporting local farmers and getting some high quality foods out of it. I can buy beans from the market that’ll last in my fridge for 2 weeks, while beans from Zehrs will last 5 days. Of course, that is just one example of many.
I go to the market every Saturday morning. Did you know Kitchener has a market? Yes, St. Jacobs isn’t the only one and the Kitchener one works just as well. Set in the heart of downtown Kitchener it’s just a 5 minute walk from the central bus terminal.
Alternative Transportation: eBikes, Buses, and Biking
- eBikes are all the rage now a days and although as of this writing the season is nearing an end, it’s still something to look at. As technology gets better we get more power and life out of batteries. Next generation eBikes that should cost under $2000 will soon have lithium ion batteries. eBikes are just like bycicles, requiring no insurance, license or registration — making it perfectly suitable for someone with a small commute who doesn’t want to go through the costs and hassles of owning a car.
WeSellit easily keeps the best stock of ebikes in all of Kitchener-Waterloo. See here for their current listing.
- The bus system in Kitchener/Waterloo is all interconnected. The central hub is located in downtown Kitchener just off Charles St. with another good sized hub at Conestoga Mall. The city has done a great job of introducing new features like Express buses that run every 15 minutes during peak hours, as well as informative displays in hubs to let you know when you should be ready for the next bus.
- Biking is a great way to keep fit and still get to your destination pretty quickly. I travel to work on my bike in the summer and it’s a blast. A good tool to use before figuring out your route is the Google Maps Pedometer. This tool allows you to map out a route but most importantly, you can check out the elevation levels. With it, I was able to see my bike ride to work is almost entirely up hill.
The Green Bag
Most super markets now sell “Green” Bags that you can re-use. Zehrs has quality ones, but they are tiny. If you are looking for some quality ones you should stop by Sobey’s and pick some up. They are larger, have great handles, and one bag can fit all the groceries I need from a Saturday market run. At a couple bucks a pop they make a great investment.
That about wraps up this small summary of how you can help out. Of course, in addition to these suggestions there are thousands more but that’s why I linked some of those blogs on top!
June 4, 2008
This morning marks the aftermath of StartupCampWaterloo #3. I stumble out of my bed, dazed and confused as to what happened last night, panties hanging from the fan. Then I actually wake up and realize none of that happened and I simply went to StartupCampWaterloo with Corey!
Last night’s question was a simple one: Why Start a Startup? We were met with different answers from the panel which included a mix of experienced names as well as newer kids on the block. Essentially, you should start a startup if you want freedom of creativity but at the (early, or more depending on how successful you are) loss of money, sleep, and job benefits. Would many people give up all that just to enjoy their jobs and be creative? Hell yeah! Why the hell do you think I work where I currently work, for the money? No. For the joy of coming into the office and not dreading the next 8 hours. For the cool bonuses, for the creative freedom, for an environment where everyone is my friend, for my own push in the company. That my friends, is what being in a startup is all about. Spaetzel, an attendee actually took some audio of the panel which you can listen here.
The presentations we got to see last night had a good variation from overly ambitious to just plain out cool. I don’t want to give a detailed analysis on each one as that would take ages so here’s a few words for each of them:
- ClutterMe: Sorry guys but the idea is ok, but the execution was poor. Trying to make a “customized” home page but it’s been done very well already
- Let’s Cube: An interesting concept that was mostly mocked (HEY GUYS EVER HEARD OF DELICIOUS?) but they are taking a slightly different route. I talked to the dude running it and they plan to launch in a week. If they fix some design issues I will definitely give them a look.
- Ubigraph: Freakin’ cool man. Now, think of a business model and you got yourself something. Make it more easy to use (fun version?) and I’ll pay $10 to just play with this thing.
- InvigoFire: I think that was the name. His idea was an ambitious one to basically do what some of the multi-billion dollar companies like Google and Yahoo are doing now. Mix of OpenID, DataPortability and OpenSocial. Sorry bud, but you need to keep up more.
- AdvertisingShowDown.com: No website, no slides, just a guy talking about his idea. Idea’s are nice but execution is what matters. Also, I have a print ad that I’m almost done for work and you didn’t convince me that your service would be interesting for me to use.
- Semacode: Very cool, and has potential to be useful. Would like to see some more real-world, useful applications of this though.
That about covers all the ones I could remember. StartupCamp was definitely something neat to check out and it’s cool to see some people with ideas that could become huge. The next one is in Guelph and is a DemoCamp which should provide some more fleshed out ideas!
To end this summary, my favourite word of the night is “Obsession“. That’s what being part of creating a startup is all about. The obsession to create and grow something unique. Best of luck to all who presented last night, I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on all of them.
December 30, 2007
As I was walking to the grocery store two days ago I had an idea for a simple service that would allow for anyone with a simple internet-enabled cellphone to get deals and special offers at the store(s) you’re going to. Here is how it would work:
Deal Database (and website)
Create a database of deals. You can do this one of two ways, either create a community-driven site where people would submit special offers and savings from the stores in their area, or create a mash-up of all the current deal sites out there. Only problem is, there are not that many (If at all?) sites that display deals for brick-and-mortar stores, and most focus on online shopping. Each deal would be tagged with the store name, as well as GPS (Or Street address) location.
Using the service
The service would be very simple to use and have two ways you could use it.
- Simple search: With this method, I could be heading to my local Walmart and go to the services website and type in “Walmart Waterloo”, or “Walmart N2V1K7″ (Postal code search) or any other variety of searches to narrow down your location so you can see the deals for that specified store.
- Multiple deal search: Similar to the simple search, this one would allow you to search via city, postal code, street, etc and display all the deals from stores in the given area. This way, I could be heading to the mall and get all the deals from the 50+ stores within the mall.
- GPS/Location search: This one could work for GPS-enabled phones as well as any phone that can access Google Maps as it can now track your location as well. With this, I could simply log into the site and see all the deals within my area via a Google maps mash-up, or maybe a simple text feed depending on the power of my phone. Additionally, you could also simply search for “Walmart” and it will know your location via GPS and show deals for the Walmart near you.
With user settings, the user could simply setup what they would like to always use, but the initial setup would promote a more simple search, unless we can check and identify if the phone is GPS-enabled (Can you do that?)
That’s my idea in a nutshell, obviously there is a bit more to it but this is just a simple blurb on it. As for making money, programming it and publishing it, that’s another story.
If anyone is interested on working with me on something like this, let me know, otherwise tell me how silly my idea is.
November 27, 2007
I’ve been using Digg for roughly about 2 years now. It was the staple of my Google Reader, it was the reason I had to actually use an RSS reader because I couldn’t easily keep track of the hundreds of stories it gets in a week.
There’s been some recent lashing of words back and forth between Digg and new competitor Mixx.com (Which I previously wrote about here and here), and despite some big names defending Digg I just simply can’t stand it anymore and must rant. So here is why Digg does indeed suck now:
Faulty system and spammers get terrible content to the front page
I can’t stand this anymore. In the past month, I’ve opened so many Digg articles titled “What <X> would look like with <Y>!” thinking it would be something mildly amusing. Turns out it’s total shit. Yes, absolute shit. I was almost annoyed out how this crap is hitting the front page. Today, an article about Google designed in Comic Sans hit the front page with 100 diggs. It was probably the least amusing thing I’ve seen in a very long time
That comment was one of many that showed how unfunny and terrible this article was. There was no 50/50 split of like and dislike. NO ONE liked this tripe, yet somehow it hit 100 Diggs and got on the popular story list, showing up in my Google Reader, causing me to waste my time with this shit.
That’s one of the major problems with Digg. It’s grown so big, and with various friend features now spammers can add hundreds, or even thousands of friends and send them a link to their crappy story whenever they publish one. With so many friends, you are bound to get at least a nice percentage of Diggs.
So much repetition it hurts.
After reading Digg for 2 years, I’ve honestly seen the same crap over and over again. Hell, some articles are titled “This is old, but you have to see it again!” Ok great. Digg is supposed to be a news site, showing new content not old, dried out internet memes. I understand with such a large user base and where pretty much everything is user-moderated it can happen, but when it happens this often, at such levels, it gets very very annoying.
I don’t care what people say about numbers mean your the best, at a certain point you turn into stale shit, and that’s what Digg has become.
Mixx is a growing alternative, that can make it great.
Mixx is a new one out there, and it can do things right but it needs to make sure it doesn’t turn into what Digg has become. With the correct moderation and some more content (Basically, users) I think it could grow to be something awesome. Mixx has a nice look, the user base so far is very friendly, it just needs content
As of this day, I’ve added the Mixx Popular feed to my Google Reader and put Digg away for now. If I actually enjoy the stories from Mixx and find myself reading them, then I will definitely hold onto it.
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Hi! I'm Bart, Currently enjoying life in Waterloo, Ontario. I love Programming, Cooking, Music, Science ... and pretty much everything interests me.