In examining possibilities for building ad-hoc communities around specific web pages, I was excited to read that Meebo created a widget to release their meebo rooms into the wild. Meebo.com is an Internet application that allows you to manage a variety of existing IM accounts through a single web site. Their chat rooms can be customized, and the interface incorporates multimedia, such as YouTube and other web content. What I was looking to find was a notification feature: the ability to link chats situated in web sites with an administrator not looking at that page at the time. It doesn’t seem to be there at the moment, but Meebo is just a Twitter away from being a killer app.
Living with(out) garbage
The rules include the removal of all garbage cans from personal spaces at work and home and a ban on use of all public trash bins. It is OK to recycle and compost. Unless the business composts, you must eat all the food on your plate in a restaurant or arrange to compost it yourself. Toilet flushing, incineration and donation are fine. You can’t give your trash to others, though, as we’re already very good at doing that. The real kicker—the part that will make you and others aware of your footprint—is the rule that you must carry around any generated garbage, and it must be within five feet of you at all times. The author of the Frog Design Blog has devised a plan to try to go a couple weeks hyper-aware of her ecological footprint, measured in the form of accumulated trash.