No privacy here / big brother is watching you

[jro...@up-to-date.ch]

Hi all,

I just want to make you aware that there is no privacy at all here on google groups. "big brother is watching you" is describing well what is going on.

I was shocked when I recently added a member manually to this mailing list: After entering his email-address (and the email address only) all his previous posts to any other google group were shown! The oldest post was more than 3 years old.

Let me know if this is a problem for you, alternatively I could set up a group on my own server. However if I do not here from you about this issue, we will stay on google.

Best regards

Juerg
 

[Barnaby Marshall]

I’m fine with being on Google groups. Gmail does scare me in the sense that the ads Google serves you are personalized based on the content of your email. Yikes. Lawrence Lessig has some harsh words for Google in Code Version 2.0.

[Barnaby Marshall]

Hello guys,

The site I am working on that will feature the carbon footprint module will be launching in mid-April. If anyone is interested I can provide you with a log-in so you can have a peek around now.

I’m very interested in helping to make the module as user-friendly as possible, and I’ll be working on it this week. I’m not a programmer, but have got a fairly good grip on CSS design and Drupal.

One group here in Canada have also developed a carbon calculator of sorts, and there is some talk in my group of adapting it to our Drupal site. You can see it here:

http://www.onelesstonne.ca/

Any thoughts on what these guys are doing?

Barnaby

[jro...@up-to-date.ch]

Hello Barnaby,

I find it an excellent idea to provide concrete suggestions how someone can reduce his or her carbon footprint. It would be great, if this was available as drupal module.

After playing around with the tool you referred, I have the following comments:

1) The size of the window is too small for me. I found it irritating to work with this small fixed size window.

2) Could the suggestions be somehow categorized? E.g. similar to the carbon footprint calculator for transportation, electricity consumption, heating. Links from the carbon footprint module could then lead into corresponding sections. If you are looking for ways to reduce your electricity consumption only, you have to browse all of the suggestions in sequence. This can be tiresome, especially if you add even more suggestions...

I think the toughest part about global warming is to make people aware that they are themselves causing it and not "the others". Once they have started to think about their contribution it will be very helpful to suggest concrete actions everyone can do. In particular for the latter the Canadian tools is nice.

Oh, and btw I would be interested in looking into your site. Please send me a login via (private) mail.

Regards

Juerg

http://timeforchange.org

[Barnaby Marshall]

Hi Juerg,

First of all, please let me apologize for taking so, so long to get back to you. Thank you very much for your feedback on the Pembina carbon calculator tool.

At long last the Drupal site I have been working on has launched. Please see http://flickoff.org. We’ve been getting quite a bit of press over the past 48 hours. Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group was at the launch on Wednesday wearing a Flick Off t-shirt. We’ve had about 8000 unique visitors and about 500 signups in 48 hours.

We ended up using the Pembina tool you commented on below, though we are going to overhaul it. We also have the carbon footprint module installed on the site. A number of people have been using it. Now that I have some time I will start to provide some feedback and thoughts to this group.

Barnaby

[jro...@up-to-date.ch]

Hi Barnaby,

Congratulations to your new site. I am very impressed: it has a beautiful, very professional look and certainly contains the right message (at least according to my opinion). I'll recommend it wherever I can.

A few suggestions and comments:

- For simple people like me, it would be helpful to get some help about the meaning of "flick off". It took me a while to find out and I am still uncertain whether I got it right!
- After subscribing, I got no information that an email with a temporary login was sent to me.
- Response time of the site was very slow today. Mostly because it was waiting for maps.google.com and sometimes for google analytics. When I press "create content" why does it need to wait for maps.google.com?

But again: a very good site! I wish you success and hope you can reach an awful lot of people with your message.

Best regards