The climate is in turmoil. We cant build enough solar and wind generation quickly enough. We have a tough problem if we want to save energy. But what about our daily life? Some estiamate that as much as 20% of the energy used in buildings is all waste related. How often have we seen:
- Giant buildings lit in the middle of the night with no one in them
- Street lights left on during the day
- Doors left open in the middle of the day
The folks at EcoSnoop are developing a range of applications to help communities, end users, government, and business reduce energy waste through social networking. EcoSnoop just released an iPhone application that turns everyday iPhone users into EcoDetectives (or EcoSnoops).
If you see an example of energy waste that needs action, you open up EcoSnoop and then snap a picture. The application asks you to categorize the "EcoCase" into various categories that best fit such as after hours lighting, Water Waste, poorly watered trees, etc. There seems to also be a function called "I want", where a user can take a picture of their roof and say "I want solar". I bleieve they intend to link the "I want function" to some form of lead generation to get back to vendors. The iPhone captures the location, picture, and category - then it posts it onto the users account online at EcoSnoop.com
From the iPhone you can select several others screens. "Nearby" - shows other EcoCases in your general geographic location. "Mine" lists all your EcoCases. "Settings" lets you enter your username and password from the EcoSnoop website.
EcoSnoop is apparently working on a more advanced version of their website that will open up to include a lot of social networking functions, cataloging, and dialog. Through online engagement, EcoSnoop wants to help EcoSnoops bundle and arrange EcoCases into a set of actions that can be taken by the business, community, homeowner or whomever has the energy problem. They also plan a blackberry, Pre, Twitter, Facebook, etc variant. You can track their them on Twitter at EcoSnoop or on their fan page on Facebook.
The company is very concerned that EcoSnoop might violate privacy rights or create some for of "Red Baiting" from the days of McCarthyism. So, they are working o various other steps in the process to maximize the opportunity to save energy while minimizing privacy infringement.
Apparently they are working on a business version of the software that will let businesses see and manage reported EcoCases. The application is free, but one can imagine the business version will have some charge.
If you do not have an iPhone, you can still see activity on the EcoSnoop Website. Everyone should just go to the site and create a username and password. You can install the application on the Iphone via your phones app store or through iTunes. Search on the term "EcoSnoop".
