Celio RedFly in Action
November 7, 2009 – 9:36 pm | Comments

A few days ago I commented about the Celio Redfly adding support for BlackBerrys. I came across that bit of information first while researching to purchase a Celio RedFly myself and then while I’ve been …

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Home » GPS, Off topic, Software

It will be Easier Being Green

Posted by Radimus on November 14, 2008 – 8:50 am
closeThis post was published 11 months 24 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.

All they need to do is tie it to your credit card and Al Gore will be able to tax you directly.

Keeping track of your carbon footprint could become as simple as slipping a mobile phone in your pocket: a London-based start-up company has developed software for mobile phones that uses global positioning satellites to work out automatically whether you are walking, driving or flying and then calculate your impact on the environment.

Carbon Diem’s inventors claim that, by using GPS to measure the speed and pattern of movement, their algorithm can identify the mode of transport being used. It can therefore calculate the amount of carbon dioxide that a journey has emitted into the atmosphere – without any need for input from the traveller.

The system’s inventor, Andreas Zachariah, a graduate student of the Royal College of Art in London and chief executive of the Carbon Hero company, said that Carbon Diem is the world’s first automated carbon calculator.

Because it keeps a constantly updated diary of a person’s carbon emissions, Zachariah said that a user can easily track their environmental impact and, if they choose, modify their behaviour to lower-carbon alternatives.

“We’re facilitating people to make little changes and allow those changes to be noted and registered and possibly shared,” he said. “If lots of people realise we’re in this marathon [in tackling climate change] and we’re not running alone, then we actually think people will be motivated to stick to changes.”

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  • @Bubba:

    “Carbon Footprint”. What a crock.


    There's my nomination for the comment of the week. It's nice and concise without any useless details like what makes it a crock. Comments are always better without facts to back them up.

    Steve
  • A quote from the linked article that I found more interesting was the following:

    He has tested the software in Nokia and Blackberry phones, using computer algorithms to predict the kind of transport a person is taking. He claims that in tests over the past year, the software was almost 100% accurate in working out when people were on airplanes or trains; it was between 65-75% accurate at guessing when people travelled on buses.

    So it's not very accurate at detecting bus travel. I think it would also have difficulty with subways, as GPS doesn't work very well (or at all) underground. (I suppose the GPS could detect if you disappeared and then reappeared far away and guess you were on a subway.)

    Also, without user input, how does it know what kind of vehicle you're in. You could be driving an electric car or a motorhome, or flying in a Lear or a 747.

    Worse, without knowing how many people are in your vehicle, will it vastly overestimate your footprint? For example, it won't be able to take into account if you're carpooling or vanpooling. Or, if you're on an airplane or bus, how will it break down your carbon footprint among all of the passengers? Will it assume some average passenger capacity (a private jet is probably worse than a full 747) or just blame you for the entire impact?

    Using GPS is fine for tracking distance and speed, but allowing user input is necessary for any kind of accuracy.

    Steve
  • CodeBubba
    "Carbon Footprint". What a crock.

    -CB
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