Technology – Page 7

May 31, 2012May 30, 2013

How to Stop Receiving Unwanted Mail

Are you trying to live a more edited life, but your mailbox teems with catalogs, serving as daily reminders of your former excessive ways? Do you receive multiple “Important Information Enclosed” envelopes a day–ones that never contain important information? Does your recycling bin teem with unopened junk mail? Do you want to get rid of it? Then a service called Catalog Choice may be for you.

The service provides 4 ways of combating junk mail:

A free general membership allows users simply create an account and search for companies to opt-out of unwanted catalogs, coupons, credit card offers, donation requests, and other junk mail. You can also enter their zip code to get delisted from phone books. Catalog Choice then acts on users’ behalf to get their opt-outs processed by the senders.
For $20/year they protect your name from being sold by data brokers–the guys who buy and sell your address to direct mail marketers.
For $6.75, you can buy one of their self-addressed envelopes which handles up to 15 places to be unsubscribed from.
MailStop™ Mobile is their free download in the iTunes store that allows customers to use their mobile devices to take pictures of unwanted mail. Once uploaded, Catalog Choice will process and manage the opt-out requests.

While it might seem easier to just toss the stuff, these daily paper assaults create clutter and confusion in our homes, not to mention a significant amount of waste. By shelling out $30/year or so on Catalog Choice and switching all of your bills to paperless, you can probably achieve a mailbox that stays empty for weeks.

image credit: Smallbiztrends

Correction: Previous version of this post did not include “General Membership” or “MailStop™ Mobile” as part of Catalog Choices options.

May 23, 2012May 28, 2014

Drag and Drop Architecture at MIT’s CityHome

Are you interested in modular design, but worry that standardization will translate into an impersonal living experience? (Chances are you’re not, but just say yes.) Well the Changing Places Group at MIT’s Media Lab is developing a cool project called CityHome, which allows tons of customization for the modular, urban abode.

The project is a technological tool-set that matches a home’s architecture and functionality to the needs of its resident. Residents start by making a profile based on social media data and questionnaires (kinda like an online dating profile for architecture). The program makes suggestions based on the data and has a drag-and-drop capability so residents and architects can design the optimal living space for their particular lifestyle. Environmental sensing data optimizes the unit’s efficiency.

The above video uses a “very small footprint” 840 sq ft apartment as a case study (not sure what that makes the 420 sq ft LifeEdited Apartment…microscopic?). It shows that space in myriad configurations, with transforming walls and furniture.

While the project is not live just yet, it represents a direction for architectural design that allows for easy space customization and optimization before production. One of the biggest challenges of building the LifeEdited apartment was making changes in real time. Tools like CityHome might be able to leverage technology so residents get what they want and architects and builders build better, faster and more efficient homes.

Thanks for the tip Bruce!

May 8, 2012May 23, 2014

What to Do with Your LPOIP (Little Pieces of Important Paper)

With April 15th just come and gone, you might be burrowing away 2011 receipts in a folder (or, like me, jamming their crinkled remains into a Sharpied envelope). Once you’ve filed your receipts—feeling 80% confident you got all of them and 90% sure the IRS won’t bust you—you notice other little pieces of important paper: business cards. Manually entering them into your contacts is a pain, so you make a pile and keep the ones you’re going to act on toward the top; those important ones stay on top until newer, more important cards replace them. Eventually, there’s an unintelligible, begging-to-be-tossed pile of paper.

For many of us, LPOIP (little pieces of important paper) is a big problem (figuratively speaking). We are unable to organize them well and can’t throw them away.

Enter Shoeboxed.com. The online service allows you to make digital records for receipts, business cards and several other varieties of LPOIP’s like bills and bank statements.

Users can mail, scan or use one of their iPhone or Android apps to make a record of the LPOIP. A high accuracy, OCR, human-checked scan is made and recorded on the site. The receipts are high quality enough to be accepted by the IRS and business card data is entered into a CRM file for easy uploading (note cool design or nice paper stock unfortunately).

There’s a free plan which features 5 monthly OCR/human scans; you can also use their web uploader, which requires a little manual input. Paid plans range from $10-50/month depending on the amount of documents scanned.

It’s easy to argue for holding on to some types of paper like old photos and love letters, but receipts and business cards are just pains–ones that accumulate over the years, requiring file cabinets and elaborate organization. Services like Shoeboxed allow you to save space, organize and simplify an otherwise entropic scenario.

image via Planet Receipt

May 2, 2012December 20, 2013

ecoATM Buys Your Unused Electronics, Clears Drawers

Few things are sadder than staring at obsolete gadgets. These once-cherished, once-state-of-the-art, once-quite-expensive tech relics usually die slow deaths in drawers and closets across the nation.

ecoATM might have a solution. While it doesn’t solve the problem of planned obsolescence and designs that preclude upgrading perfectly usable gadgets, it does send your neglected gadgets to loving homes or to a proper burial.

ecoATM accepts phones, iPods and MP3 players. You hook them up to their ATM-like kiosk, where several diagnostic tests are performed to assess their value. Cash or credit is given on the spot (there are security features to prevent the sale of stolen or fraudulent goods). The company either sells your gadget on secondary markets or “responsibly recycles” them depending on their condition.

There are only 50 kiosks in the US right now, the bulk of which are in California, with some outliers in Seattle, Kansas and Nebraska. There is a corporate recycling program as well. But the company has attracted a number of powerful investors who surely recognize the value and vastness of used gadgets.

According to its site, making 1 phone results in more than 3 tons of mining waste, and the disposal of phones puts 75K tons of toxic materials like arsenic, cadmium and mercury into landfills annually. Accordingly, the company seems to recognize that reselling and properly disposing gadgets is just a beginning, saying on their site:

Solving the eWaste problem on a broad scale requires the collaboration of the OEM’s [original equipment manufacturers] that make the devices, the retailers that sell them, and the consumers that buy and retire them.

In other words, systemic change is what’s really needed: where manufacturers design products that have longer life-cycles; where retailers have business models that don’t thrive on constant upgrading; where consumers demand products that are well-designed and can be upgraded.

But until that time, ecoATM is a great option, clearing our drawers and closets, reducing the size and toxicity of our landfills, providing a return on our initial purchase and giving second lives for neglected gadgets.

via Geekwire

April 18, 2012August 28, 2013

If Everything is Amazing, Why is No One is Happy?

In this popular clip from the Conan O’Brian show, comedian Louis CK questions whether the “amazing” items that are designed to make our lives happier are doing that at all.

We’re no Luddites at LifeEdited. We love computers, eReaders and cutting edge design. But just because something is the latest and greatest, just because it’s faster or lighter, doesn’t mean it supports our happiness. Like the guy Louis CK talks about who gets angry when the in-flight wifi service goes down–a service he hadn’t known existed minutes before. Might the latest and greatest stuff sometimes give us more reasons to be unhappy? Even though it’s the latest and greatest, it can still break, consume cash, increase clutter and be replaced by the latest version of the latest and greatest.

Louis CK’s contentions are borne out in research data. Dr. Ruut Veenhoven of Erasmus University in Rotterdam studies happiness. Over the last 50 years–a period of enormous technological change–he has observed little appreciable increase in happiness in the US.

Of course there are factors besides technology that determine our collective happiness, but it might be fair to say technological progress hasn’t been decisive in making our lives happier.

What do you think about the connection between technology and happiness? How do you evaluate which stuff to include or exclude in your life? Have you found ways of satisfying your technological–or any other consumer needs–that help maintain your happiness? Let us know what you think.

screenshot via World Database of Happiness