Version 0.10 online

I'm very pleased to announce the general release of air travel functionality. You can now calculate your climate impact from air travel and see it alongside your domestic emissions. I predict you will be surprised...

It's a real relief to have it out there! I've had air travel working for a while now for the testers, but the graphs have been a real problem, because flight emissions are literally off the charts compared to the rest. However, by changing over to amCharts, the problem is solved. Your charts are also now much more interactive and fun to play with.

This is version 0.10, and it's the last one before the full 1.0 release (at least on my list). The next release will mainly be for tidying up loose ends that have been hanging around, and fixing any major bugs that turn up.

Let me know what you think of it!

Flight figures updated

Testers take note: I've just made some changes to the figures used for flight calculations, so some of you may find that your carbon footprints have leapt up a bit (mine has)!

I was originally using DEFRA figures for aviation emissions, but they do not take into account the extra effect of releasing greenhouse gases at high altitude, which is estimated to be around 2.7 times higher! I've found some better figures, so hopefully the new numbers will reflect better the actual climate impact of flying. I've also added the ability to select your class of seat. First class seats take up around 3 times the room of an economy seat, so if you choose to fly this way, your emissions will be 3 times as high!

I'm trying out a new graphing engine this afternoon, and if it works, then hopefully I'll be able to release flights across the entire site later on today!

Resurgence Article

The Carbon Diet has had a nice little writeup in this month's edition of Resurgence magazine, which among other things says that "this could turn out to be the Facebook of climate change", which is rather nice! You can buy Resurgence in a few places around the country, or you can buy a downloadable PDF online and save a tree.

New social features

I've uploaded a couple of new social features that you can play with. There are two ways to find out if someone has written on your profile; you will now get an email notification if you've given us your address, but you can also subscribe to an atom feed for the comments. These changes should make it easier to keep up with your comments. As well as that, if you invite your friends using the "invite contacts" page, once they join up, the site will automatically send you a friend request. When inviting people, you can also select a group that they will be added to when they sign up. This should make it easier for you to create groups with your friends. As always, if you have any comments, let me know in the forum!

Incidents and accidents

Oops! It seems that a bug crept in with the flight update a couple of days ago which caused an error for users who hadn't entered any data yet. It should be fixed now - I've tested it out manually, and now I'm going to write a bunch of test code to catch problems like this before they make it to the main site. Also, every time there is an error on the main site from now on, I will get an email, so I'll be able to catch these things as soon as they appear. So, apologies for the problems, but we're good to go once again. Sorry about that!

Air travel in testing

It's been a while coming, I know, but air travel has finally been uploaded onto the site. At the moment, it's only open to testers (if you want to become a tester, let me know). It needs a bit of use before I can confidently release it generally, but rest assured that it won't be long now. Also, in the same update, there are a bunch of changes to the profile page and calculation engine. It now takes into account up to a whole year of data if you have it, and it handles inactive accounts (i.e. old cars) much better, so in general the figures should be more accurate. You can also see a list of your top actions on the profile page, so they are a bit more accessible and obvious. I hope you like the updates, and as always, please send feedback through the forum!

How long?

Has it been nearly a month since the last post? It's certainly been a busy time, with lots of meetings going on to try and get this thing to stand on it's own feet. We've got quite a few people using the site now (passed 300 the other day), which is great, but unfortunately with all these meetings (and a few other things going on), I've not had a lot of time for coding. The air travel stuff is mostly written, but it's forcing me to make some changes to the display side of things as well, so there's a bit more to do yet. Forum activity is increasing as well, with lots of suggestions and feedback coming my way, which is brilliant - keep it up!

The thing the site really needs is more publicity, so please, if you can, let people know about it! Invite your friends to join, write on blogs, post to news sites, anything you can think of - it all helps!

So, in summary, nothing major to report at the moment really, but I thought I'd keep you all up to date. The project is still going, it's just getting to be a bit of a handful for one person with no funding :)

Long haul

I've just completed my the Carbon Diet version 0.9. It's been a whole month since 0.8 was completed, so this one has taken quite a while. I've been uploading the changes as I've been making them, so there aren't actually any major new features to announce right now; this is just a way to close off that cycle. It was mostly aimed at social features like the comment system, working avatars, league tables for your friends and groups, and so on. There were also a few major bugfixes; for instance, the email reminder system should now work properly.

Anyway, now that this iteration is complete, it's on to the next one. This one is quite exciting, because it will add the one major thing the site is missing, and which a lot of people have been asking for - air travel! Watch this space, there will be something to play with very soon!

Avatars

One more announcement for today, before I go to bed. We now have working avatars, so you can put an image of yourself (or something else of course) on your profile. I was using an external site called Gravatar for this before, but it's not been working for a couple of months now, so I've dumped it. Apologies if you went and signed up for a Gravatar account because of the Carbon Diet, but at least it works now. I look forward to seeing all your pictures :)

Canada & Australia

After repeated requests on our Facebook group (join us, if you're a Facebook user), we've added data for Canada and Australia. It'd be hard to find two countries more different - Canada generates well over half of it's electricity from renewable sources like Hydroelectricity, whereas almost 90% of Australia's comes from coal! Unfortunately, this means that if you're in Australia, your electricity is going to have a much larger carbon footprint! At least now you have the Carbon Diet, you can start to cut that footprint down :)

Bugs & Updates

Minor update to the group and friend rankings this morning - it should be quicker, and you now get a nice pie chart showing the contribution of each person in the list in a nice graphical way.

I've fixed a bug in the group signup code, which prevented you joining groups without being invited, so that should all work now.

Also, if you've tried to use Gravatar to customise your user picture on the site, you've probably noticed that it's not working. Fortunately (in a way) it's not just the Carbon Diet. Lots of sites using Gravatar seem to be having the same problem. Unfortunately, the people behind it have disappeared, and left their site in a broken state. I've been trying to contact them for ages about this, but to no avail. I'm going to look round for an alternative method of letting you customise your pictures, so I'll keep you informed.

Compare to your friends

You can now compare yourself directly to your friends on the Carbon Diet! On your friends list, as well as in your groups, you will now see a rankings section, which takes all your friends and puts them in order of their annual carbon footprint. Obviously, we're trying to cut down around here, so the person with the lowest footprint is #1!

Comments

Another update for you all to play with! You can now add comments to your friends profile pages, as well as to groups you are a member of. They don't show in the news feed yet, but will do soon. Enjoy!

Invite your friends!

I've just added a page that allows you to invite your friends to use the site. On your main friends list page, there is now a link saying "invite friends". Click the link, enter a few email addresses in the form, and we send your friends a simple email saying that you've invited them, with a link to the site.

We don't keep the addresses, so we don't get anything out of this, it's just a convenient way for you to spread the word! Check it out here.

Facebook Group

For those of you who also use Facebook, I've just created a group for Carbon Diet users. Please join up, and invite your friends! I'm working on a facebook application as well, so that you can put your carbon footprint in your profile, but it's fighting about 20 other things for my attention, so it might be a little while before it's up and running.

Group Invitations

I've just uploaded a new feature - group invitations. You can now invite your friends to groups which you are a member of, which should make it easier to network with people. You can also create invitation-only groups, which users can't join unless they are invited by another user. Next up, I'll be adding a more general "invite your friends" option so that you can easily get your friends to use the Carbon Diet!

Funding

How does a project like this get funded? I can fund a couple of months off work to get it going, but where does it go from there? I'd really like to avoid having to advertise on the site, apart from perhaps the odd affiliate link, but if it has to be that way in the end then so be it. Either way, until the site starts getting a lot of traffic, that isn't going to generate any substantial income anyway. How, then, do I carry on hosting and developing the site when my money runs out? It seems to me like there should be someone out there funding innovative approaches to carbon footprint reduction, but I've not found them yet. I'm spending a lot of time on the phone at the moment trying to find out, but if anyone knows any sources of funding for projects such as this one, please let me know...

Notes

I've just added a note function to the site. You can make notes which are attached to particular dates, and which show up on the daily graph, so you can see when you did certain things. For example, if you turn your heating down, you might add a note to remind you when you did it, so that you can see on the graph what difference it makes. You can attach notes to any of your accounts, or generally to your profile as a whole.

Notes brings the cycle of work for version 0.8 to a close, which is a relief for me! This iteration took a little longer than planned, but that's mainly because I kept adding things to it! The main features in the next version will be flights (hopefully), user and group comments, and aggregate statistics for friend lists and groups. Should be fun!

Shiny New Graphics

I've done a few more updates over the last couple of days, mostly on the graphical side of things. The site now looks a little bit slicker, a bit more modern, and should be more accessible to new users with a new login page. Also, the "remember me" button should work now so you won't have to log in every single time.

Signup problem

Many thanks to Felicity, who pointed out that the signup code was broken and that nobody could create new accounts! I think this was a problem that crept in when I upgraded to a new version of Rails on Wednesday, so if you've tried to create an account and failed, please try again because it's fixed now!

Todays updates

More updates today for your delectation. Nothing huge, but a bunch of little things. Various pages now display a yearly tonnage for your emissions, and now you can enter the number of people in your household to work out the share of that per person. A problem with the action page display in Internet Explorer has been fixed, so everyone using IE should now be able to see what actions they can take. There are a whole load of minor graphical/textual tweaks as well.

Oh, and I added fun transitions to the graphs, simply because they were fun and made it look more interesting :)

Public Profile, Friends, and Groups

I've just uploaded a whiole bucketload of new features for you to play with. It's taken me a few days (hence the lack of blog updates), but now you can make your profile public, so that others can see it and compare themselves to you. You can add people to your friends list so you can keep track of them, and you can create and join groups, organised around any theme you like.

As an example, and to get you started, here is a link to my profile.

Privacy policy change

This week I'm finally working on the social aspect of the Carbon Diet site. Testers will see a new "public" option on their settings page, and a "search" link which will let them search for public profiles. However, because I've now got down to the practicalities of implementing and using this system, I need to make a small change to the privacy policy. The old "public profiles" section said:

If you make your profile 'public', your emissions data will be visible to anyone who visits the site, but we will not make any personally-identifiable information (name, email address, etc.) visible to any other user of the site unless you explicitly allow us to (mainly in the case of adding 'friends' on the site who can see your personal data).

The new one now says:

If you make your profile 'public', your 'display name', country, and emissions data will be visible to anyone who visits the site. However, we will not make any contact information (email address, website, etc.) visible to any other user of the site unless you explicitly tell us to (mainly in the case of adding 'friends' on the site who can see your personal data).

I need to make the display name and country public simply because at least a bit of information is needed in order to be able to find someone's profile. However, you set your own display name, so you can use an alias or even leave it blank if you want to, so this shouldn't cause any problems. If anyone does have any comments on this, please leave them below or on the forum.

Major change to usernames

At the suggestion of a number of people, I've made a pretty major change today to the way that the login system works. Rather than requiring an email address, it now lets you sign up with a username instead. That way, you don't have to give us your email address unless you want to, once your account is created. It should reduce the signup barriers and improve privacy for users, both of which are good things. It also helps with some of the other stuff I will be doing this week.

If you already have a Carbon Diet account, when you next log in (using your email address) you will be prompted to choose a username to identify yourself. Once you've done that, you should use that username to log in from that time onwards.

Take Action!

Today, I've made the action system public. This is a new part of the site which makes suggestions, based on your personal data, for how you could reduce those emissions. There are a bunch of suggestions in there, and if you have any ideas of your own, then if you post them in the Forum, we'll add them to the list!

The release of the action system brings version 0.7 to completion, which was my target for this week. Next week I'll be developing the bit I've been really looking forward to - the social side of the site! This will allow you to view each others profiles, share data, and generally compete to be the greenest!

Email reminders

Even though I work on the Carbon Diet every day, I often forget to add new data every week. Because of this, I've added an "email reminder" option in the user profile. If you enable it, the site will email you each week (or as often as you choose) if you haven't entered data for a while. The default is off, so it won't annoy anyone who hasn't turned it on explicitly, but it should be useful I think!

New Forum

We now have a forum for users of the Carbon Diet site, where you can go and share your experiences, both about the site and about green issues in general. It's also the place to send in your bug reports and feature requests, so if there's something about the site you don't like, or something you think could be better, then get on over there and tell me!

There is another thing, which I forgot to mention yesterday. I've added a live chat facility to the help area of the main site, so if you have a problem, you can get hold of me straight away!

Action Testing

Calling all testers: I've uploaded some new functionality which only you can see for now. There is a new section on the site which makes some suggestions for actions you can take to reduce your emissions. We're still adding content, so there might not be many ideas on the list, but all the functionality is there now. It needs a good test, and hopefully I'll be able to make it public by the end of this week.

The Carbon Diet goes public!

Yesterday, I uploaded the first version of the Carbon Diet that is open to the public! You don't need to be a tester any more to use it, so it's open to the world now.

Since the last blog post, there have been a whole bunch of changes. You can now enter your data in different units, with sensible defaults depending on where you live, there is a whole bunch of explanatory text to guide you through the process, and all the graphical bugs should be ironed out. I've also added support for users in the US, so we're now international!

You can also store mileage with your fuel purchases, so although the site doesn't use it to calculate CO2, we should be able to add some fuel efficiency graphs for you in the future.

Redesign

Today I've been working on a complete graphical overhaul of the site, which I've uploaded early so that I can get feedback on it. I think it's much nicer than the last one, and it shows off the new logo as well!

There are also major changes to the workflow of the site. The site should now be much easier to navigate, and more internally consistent.

There are some changes still to be made before this becomes version 0.6 final, mostly to the tour and to the textual content of the new layout, but that can be tomorrow's job.

Take a look, and let me know what you think!

EDIT: I've just realised, I forgot to re-style the login and other user management pages. I'll fix it tomorrow ;)

More Updates

Last night I uploaded version 0.5 of the site, hurrah! This version is mainly backend improvements, so it's unlikely you'll notice anything hugely different, except possibly a few improvements in the calculations used and a few cosmetic changes here and there. I've postponed the suggestion functionality a little, because there are a few things I want to get right before I write that part.

However, one interesting new feature which you can use is available - the Carbon Diet now has a mobile interface, which you can use through your phone's web browser! This should make entering data much easier as you won't have to boot up your PC just to put an electricity reading in. It still needs heavy testing, but if you want to take a look, load up http://carbondiet.org/m in your phone's web browser.

In other news, I'm now taking a short break from paid work to develop the site full-time. I'm doing a graphical redesign this week, but then I'll hopefully be removing the tester restrictions and letting anyone sign up and get dieting!

Version 0.4

Yes, that's right, I've uploaded the next version of the site today. This one has a fair amount of new stuff in it. As well as improving the workflow and look of the site, I've added the last major domestic emissions source - cars. You can now track your fuel purchases and factor your vehicle usage into your CO2 calculations. That is the most important contributors covered (as far as the site is concerned). Other sources, like heating oil and flying will be added later on after the 1.0 release.

I've also added a tour, so that you can see what the site is all about before you sign up. This is one of the things that really had to be done so that I didn't have to explain everything to every user individually. We're getting to the point now where I can start thinking about opening the site up to a wider audience... maybe after the next version :)

Incidentally, the main thing for the next version is to add CO2 reduction suggestions, so watch this space for more details soon!

Oh, and I must namecheck LibraryThing for the very nice design of their tour, which I'm afraid I've blatantly copied. LT has been a very big influence on the Carbon Diet; I've been trying to keep my design as simple and as usable as theirs. I don't think I'm there yet, but with any luck (and skill) it should be OK in the end!

Version 0.3 and beyond...

Version 0.3 of the Carbon Diet website has just been uploaded for your delectation. This version builds on the existing functionality, adding the ability to track mains natural gas usage. There are also some layout changes, a bit more explanation text in some places, and a bunch of bugfixes and efficiency improvements.

Now that you can track more than one source, you can compare them side by side and see which is dominant. If, for instance, your emissions from gas are higher than electricity, you might want to look at ways of reducing that one first, such as turning down the thermostat a little, or investing in a more efficient boiler or solar water heating system. The possibilities are endless, and now, the Carbon Diet gives you the information you need to make the right decisions!

Now it's time to start work on the next version, which will add the final major piece of emission tracking functionality - vehicle fuel! There will be more later, such as tanked oil and gas, but they will come after the public release.

The complete plan is this: version 0.4 will include vehicle fuel tracking, as well as functionality which allows you to attach notes to dates. Version 0.5 will then add the social aspects, with public profile information, blog and web page widgets, league tables, and so on. At that point, it'll be mainly tidying up, working on the design, and rewriting text for version 1.0, which will be released to the world properly.

After that, I'll be working on support for flights, other fuel sources such as heating oil, tanked gas, and so on, as well as proper graph customisation options. That's all a little way in the future though, we shall see how it goes I guess...

The Carbon Diet goes live!

Ah yes, the day has finally come! The first version of the Carbon Diet is live, online now at www.carbondiet.org! This is only the initial version, so it's quite basic, but I really should explain what it does.

Basically, the Carbon Diet is a carbon calculator on steroids. The idea is that you enter easy-to-get data, like electricity meter readings, gas readings, and vehicle fuel purchases, and the website calculates exactly what your carbon footprint is on a day-to-day basis. This gives you a much better idea of how you can cut your carbon emissions, and when you do, you can see it happening straight away!

At the moment, the site only copes with electricity readings, but I've got a feature rollout planned which should have natural gas on there shortly, followed by the rest in due course.

If you would like to become a beta tester for the site, then head on over there, sign up, and once you've gone through the confirmation process, send me an email with your details so I can activate your account!

Redevelopment

Well, I was ready to upload the first version of the Carbon Diet site a few days ago, but unfortunately once I tried to get it online, I ran into a few problems, the main one being that the hosting company doesn't support one of the Rails extensions I wanted to use. Should have checked that first! So, I have to do a bit of a rewrite now. I was going to do this anyway, but I was hoping to have an initial version up quickly without having to write an entire graphing engine. Still, needs must. Will report back soon on developments!

Hosting

Well, I've got some hosting sorted for this project. As it's running on Rails, it was a bit more awkward, but I did manage to find an ISP who both supports Rails, and is carbon neutral. So, as you can see if you click the link at the side, I now have some space at Green WebHost. Hopefully soon there will be an application in it!

What's this all about then?

Good question! This blog is going to accompany a new project I'll be launching very soon, called the Carbon Diet. The plan is to have a very early release and to get a few friends to partake in a closed beta program until the thing is ready for proper release. I don't want to do one of those web 2.0 open beta things, because it's just so cliched, for one thing. Besides, I'm taking an agile approach to the development, so there is very little functionality at the moment. A closed beta is going to be better, as I can explain what functionality is there to my beta group without having to explain to the world as a whole why something doesn't work.

Anyway, this blog is going to be for announcing changes, talking about the development of the site, and so on. Should be interesting!