20120219

Know Thyself, With Data (Will Analytics Save us All?)

While it's tempting to focus on technology and economics, privacy and cybersecurity are probably the major blocking issues in the way of mass smart grid adoption today. These are serious issues and must be addressed, but let's remember that the flip side of privacy is data. From properly-anonymized data, we can progress through analysis, insight, and action. EnergyHub just released a fascinating report of state-by-state winter heating thermostat setpoints. It's easy to explain freezing New Englanders with "flinty reserve" or "Yankee frugality", but the greater savings realizable with a lower setpoint are probably a stronger explanation. (I'm most interested in why neighbors Iowa and Nebraska have a 4 degree differential.)

Fun as this trivial example is, it points to a heretofore nonexistent link in energy management. Any campaign for energy efficiency is going to find it hard to establish metrics and efficacy if the only feedback mechanism is monthly bills. As we move toward a (privacy-respecting, aggregate) view of energy use patterns, we will have the ability to know what works and what doesn't. That's ultimately much more interesting than just knowing that Vermonters own a lot of flannel.

20120204

Instant Photo Uploading: Using the Cloud the Right Way

Dropbox has announced an experimental build of their Android client that represents exactly how I want to share photos off my phone. I store all my photos locally on my computer and only share a small subset through flickr. Most phone-based easy sharing systems want to send your photos directly to the cloud. Dropbox's new feature will sync my photos with my dropbox folder, so I can easily move them over to my photo repository. (Or, I suppose, set up a cron job to do it automatically.) Thanks, Dropbox, for honoring my use case.

(Don't have Dropbox yet? Get a sign-up bonus here.)