I have had it. Done. Fini. Completely over it.

We have a PO Box at the post office, but we also have a mail box that comes to our office building. I prefer to use the PO Box and rarely give out our physical address as a mailing address. This means I check the mail box to our physical address about once a week. Each time I check it, here’s a portion of what I find:

Five letters from Comcast addressed to a previous occupant named Jeff. I get his mail because it says “Or Current Occupant”. That makes me feel real special. I happen to catch the mailman delivering our mail and ask him to take the letter back. He says he’s not allowed. “Or Current Occupant” means I get it whether I want it or not. Great Comcast, I’m pissed because you are cutting down needless trees for something I never asked for in the first place and now I find out I am forced into being second best? I feel a little like I am back in 3rd grade trying to set up play dates. First I’ll play with Dana, if she’s not home, then Becca, and I suppose if she’s not home, I’ll make due with Sarah. Well Comcast, I’m not interested in you making due with me. Please stop the madness.

Six letters from Qwest. Let me first just preface this with I called (about 3 months ago) and canceled all Qwest solicitations. Oddly enough, when I called, the Qwest sales person was floored. He acted as though I was passing up on the winning lottery ticket. He said that in all his time at Qwest he’s never met someone who doesn’t want to learn about special deals that will reduce my monthly bill by almost a third. I told him I was kind of a special deal myself and I didn’t need anymore competition.

Looking into this all just a little bit further, it dawned on me why I am still getting mail from Qwest. As it turns out, I was previously receiving mail to:
OsoEco
OSo Eco
O So Eco
Oso-Eco
OSO ECO
and Oh So Eco.

So when I first called I said, “Please remove ALL variations of OsoEco from your mailing list.” And to be honest, I noticed a slight decrease in the mail but it never completely stopped. I didn’t pay too much attention because I remember hearing something about needing to wait 45-60 days to see results. I am now about 90 days post junk mail notification and still getting tremendous amounts of Qwest mail. Here’s where the lightbulb when on. I put my investigative hat on and looked at the name on the 6 letters from Qwest.

O. So Eco

Someone had to physically put a period there. I mean a period doesn’t just show up like that? If it did would I become Katie. Wilson-Hamaker? I mean shoot, if this is where we’re going, then maybe I could become more like Prince and have a name that no one can pronouce like K^%$*. This is all just getting Oso Ridiculous. When Qwest gets a clue, will someone let me know?

Ok, rant over. Besides, Eckart Tolle says that vengeance, anger, and frustration is only my pain-body expressing itself (or is that my ego?)

What do OsoEco’ers say about Junk Mail?

Check out the following sites:
Green Dimes
ProQuo
41 Pounds
I am convinced that these three websites are all under one roof. They all provide easy, one stop shopping for all your junk mail needs.

Hello Friendly (and Patient) Beta Testers,

The OsoEco beta site was unavailable for part of the weekend. The site is back online and we apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused. We very much appreciate your patience with us during this phase of soft beta.

We will be using our blog to communicate any future outages and system announcements to you. You can click here to subscribe to our blog feed.

Thank you all for support of OsoEco.

Sincerely,

Caroline Cummings, CEO/co-founder

Many of you may be thinking - how the heck can golf be eco!!?? Especially when US golf courses soak up more than 476 billion gallons of water annually. Golf’s use of chemicals, water, and other resources are often criticized for threatening the quality of our environment. Visit Golf and the Environment to learn more and get involved.

I’m making some eco gift suggestions for the dad that loves to golf because sometimes - it’s the little changes that bring attention to the larger issues.

Here’s a few eco gift ideas for your golf lovin’ papa:

The Endurance Tee

The Endurance Tee will outlast a wood tee by at least 10 to 1 ratio. They are manufactured with degradable materials and the tee will breakdown over time and when placed in active compost the process is greatly accelerated.

Find out more: www.ecogolf.com





Eco Tee2Green (T2G)

The T2G is your choice for a true green friendly product. These tees will biodegrade in most cases in less than 60 days.

Find out more: www.ecogolf.com

See these products on OsoEco.

Then maybe you can get your dad to sign the Eco Golfer Pledge.

Like most women, I’m constantly in search of the perfect skin care products. This may seem funny coming from a mere 21 year old, but I take my hygiene seriously. I have sensitive, dry, finicky skin that’s easily irritated by synthetic, highly fragrant ingredients. I have spent my mid-teen to early twenties trying to find natural and/or high tech skin regimens that suit my needs. I’ve tried so many different products – and by that I mean A TON!! I’ve tried Aveda, Philosophy, Kinerase, Peter Thomas Roth, Murad, Presciptives, Boscia, Juice Beauty, and others that I can’t even remember. Not that these brands aren’t good, they’re great, but they didn’t fit my face cream and eye moisturizer fancy at the time. So every time it’s time to find a new product, I do my research and then head back to Sephora. This time I think I’ve found the Holy Grail.

For the past month or so I’ve been obsessed with Korres’ natural products; especially their Thyme Honey Cream, Evening Primrose Eye Cream, and SPF 30 Watermelon Sunscreen Face Cream. I can’t think of a bad thing to say about the products or the company! The products smell as great as the ingredients they come from, aren’t harsh, and last forever. I can literally use the Thyme Honey Cream at night and my face is still so supple in the morning, I don’t need to reuse it.
Korres was founded in 1989 in Athens, Greece by a pharmacist wanting to create his own homeopathic remedies and chemical engineer that helped him do it. The couple (George and Lena Korres) successfully launched their line of natural products in 1996, where up until then Korres Pharmacy had been the leading center for homeopathic medicine in Greece. Their products are without the synthetic compounds that lack potency and effectiveness, are known skin irritants, and are pore-clogging, unnatural, non-biodegradable chemicals. Instead they use various natural foods, flora, and herbs for the key benefits. To name are few: Greek Yogurt, Guava, Thyme Honey, Rye, Wild Rose, Sugar, and Eyebright (Euphrasia). Plus many of the ingredients Korres uses are native to Greece and are cultural staples of the country.

I can’t wait to use up my current non-Korres skin products so I can try so more! I think next on the list is their Watermelon Body Scrub and Guava Body Butter. For more information on Korres check out these sites:

Korres’ Official Site: http://www.korres.com/

If entrepreneurs are artists of the free market, then OsoEco is the enabler of green art all around the world. That’s right, green art. Right now, new ideas, innovation, and change are not only pressing, but necessary. So who can think of a better way to green your life than to be your own best eco-entrepreneur?

Here’s how you do it. Get creative about how you use products. Offer your suggestions to others. And if your idea catches the tipping point wind, sell it, share it, build it. Do what it takes to help yourself and others reduce carbon.

If you want to know what some of the cool free-market artists are doing on OsoEco, keep reading. These finds have popped up on OsoEco to either promote, sell, share and/or build upon. They all aim towards one thing: reducing our footprint.

Soles United – check this out. This one is probably my most favorite find of all time on OsoEco. You can recycle your old croc’s to make a lighter weight croc. This is truly about taking something out of the waste stream and profiting from it. I just recently heard that someone is taking old yoga mats and recycling them for another use. I wish I knew more about this but it’s just as cool as reconstituting crocs for another go around…

Cheat Neutral – this is funny… According to the Cheatneutral folks: “Cheatneutral tries to make it seem acceptable to cheat on your partner. In the same way, carbon offsetting tries to make it acceptable to carry on emitting excess carbon.” If you have the time, watch the video. It’s about a 13 minute video… but well worth the laugh.

Eat Local – this is the greater Portland, OR response to helping you eat local all year long. Every city should have a guide like this.

Store Wars (Vegetable Parody for all ages) Be sure to forward this one on to your kids. My nine year old loved it.

We are Oso Excited to launch OsoEco to the public today!

We have been testing our green social shopping tools over the last several months with a small group of users behind the scenes. Today, we are quietly launching OsoEco to the public, with the intention of continuing to gain valuable feedback before shouting out OsoEco to the world.

For those who decide to join us we’d love it if you played around with the site (while having fun of course) and sharing your thoughts with us. We’re building this for you – so we want to make sure we’re providing social shopping and social research tools that meet your needs.

What Can You Currently Do on OsoEco?

1. Create your own Profile.

2. Tag your interests (assign keywords). This allows you to easily connect with people, products and articles that match your interests.

3. Learn about the power of TAGriculture™ on OsoEco. Basically this is how the OsoEco community works together to create a shared language and directory around green and health & wellness.

4. Take OsoEco with you wherever you go on the Web by adding an “Add to OsoEco” button to your browser’s toolbar. (Note: we currently only support Firefox)
   

This is an example from our TAGriculture™ page that shows who has been using the tag “organic cotton”

How Do You Share Feedback With OsoEco?

At the bottom of each page, you’ll see a “feedback” link – click on this, and you’ll be taken to an Eco Matter where you can post your questions, suggestions, etc. in a comment.

Where Can You Get Help On OsoEco?

Feeling stuck? Click on the “help” tab to find helpful videos, walk throughs, etc. Not finding what you need?

What’s Coming Soon to OsoEco?

[within the next 4-6 weeks]

1. Invite friends into OsoEco and share your finds with others outside of the OsoEco community.

2. “Follow” a Find, Eco Matter and/or Person and receive notifications of any related activity.

3. Use OsoEco across browsers (currently only support Firefox).

4. Eco Matters page will become more organized.

5. The Search feature will become more enhanced.
   

Thanks for your interest - enjoy the site and we look forward to hearing from you.

Updates, tweaks and enhancements on the Beta Site…

TAGriculture:

Are tags the glue that hold our site together; or are they the pathways that connect everything? Hmmmmm. Not sure. What I am sure of is that we have just added our TAGriculture page… and I just got so excited writing that last sentence that I knocked my water bottle over onto my keyboard. Hopefully I’ll survive the rest of this post without electrocuting myself. If not, well, I’ll miss everyone. You’ve been swell.

Back to TAGriculture…

Tag-ri-cul-ture = The science, art, or practice of cultivating tags, engaging in conversations and spirited debate about TagMeNots, and creating a rich and prosperous shared green language.

You can use tags to organize any finds, notes, people, eco matters, in a way that is important to you. You can also use TagMeNots and the Tag Detail pages to expand and share your knowledge.

Want to know more about tagging on OsoEco? If you’re a beta tester, log in, and check out the Help page.

What are TagMeNots?

I first talked about TagMeNots early this week where I butchered the explanation. Here’s a quick lowdown on what they are: TagMeNots give you an important tool for sustainability – the ability to see what’s not there. TagMeNots help us tell the difference between “not” and “don’t know”. Intrigued? Want to know more? Beta tester’s, feel free to log in, and check out the Help page.

This area of the site is very much in beta right now. Over the next several weeks, we will be growing and changing it. Some things on the horizon: The Tag Detail page will soon let you look at any tag and, like a wiki, contribute to it. We see tags as being the place where the community will hold conversations and share knowledge about what certain things mean. This is all part of building a shared green language!

How To Videos:

We had a number of University of Oregon students in the office a few weeks ago testing out our site and giving us feedback. Suddenly, I was hearing my voice throughout the room as people started watching some of the How To Videos. It’s humbling when you think you’re really funny, but then you hear yourself thinking you’re really funny and you realize you’re really not. It was a sad day for me.

But now, in the comfort of your own home, you can watch updated how to videos on tagging finds, people, eco matters, and see how tags work on your personal page. Sorry that I say “uh” so much. I’m working on this, I swear.

Well, though my computer is a bit soggy, I made it through this post. See you on the site!

When I was 4 my sweet, dear brother pushed me into a marble table and I cracked my head open.

I had been sick for a few days, but, I was in the state where I had completely recovered, and was using my “sickness” to issue orders to my brother. “Get me some water” “I want saltines, now” “You have to do it I’m sick”.

He, being the cold-hearted nasty older brother that he was, couldn’t take it anymore. He pushed me very very hard off the couch, and WHACK that was it.

My mother, did, and still does, refuse to believe that he actually pushed me… she, in her “blame the poor victim” mentality, to this day, maintains that I simply “fell”. Uh Huh.

Now, my brother actually admits to doing it – however, he doesn’t take any responsibility for it being psychotic and mean. “You sort of deserved it” is his mantra. No responsibility. No culpability. No apology.

Thank god it’s not genetic – or, if it is, the DNA somehow missed me. Maybe it’s recessive.

Which leads me to this – I made this whole post about all the updates to the site – and, you know what, I got some things wrong. See, I’m a big person, I can admit it.

What, you may be asking, the heck am I talking about?

I’m talking about my use of the words “ratings’. I’m talking about my explanation of Tag Me Not.

The word “ratings” isn’t accurate – because they’re really tags. They are tags that we’ve given extra attention to and made it easy for people to tag as “green” or “not green”, “practical” or “not practical”, “cool” or “not cool”. And because they’re tags with emphasis, it’s very easy for us to make them something else. We’ve put these on the web site as a test of sorts – put them up, have people see what we’re trying to do, and lead us down the path of choosing tags that beta testers see as meaningful and meaty. Maybe we’ll hear from beta testers that what you’d really like as quick tag options are “recycled” or “I have this” or “this company uses sustainable practices”. I think by using the word “ratings” I put an emphasis on these that was not quite right. BUT the important thing to remember is that over the next weeks we’ll be finding some way to ask beta testers what would be valuable.

The next thing I sort of kind of okay I messed up on, is, Tag Me Not. I come from a family of fighters not lovers (as I illustrated in my beginning story…). Ethan pointed out to me today that I had framed Tag Me Not in a completely different way than he thought of it. And, frankly, his explanation is a much nicer, non-confrontational way. And I like it more.

So here it is, Tag Me Not by Ethan: “Tag Me Not gives you an important tool for sustainability – the ability to see what’s not there. In stores, fair trade coffee often comes with “Fair Trade” labels, but you never see any coffee labeled “not Fair Trade”. Same goes for “organic” and countless other labels. But both in stores and on the web, the absence of a label is not the same as the presence of a “not” label. For example, if a shirt on OsoEco doesn’t have an “Organic” tag, does that mean it isn’t Organic, or just that nobody’s tagged it yet? Tag Me Not helps us tell the difference between “not” and “don’t know”.

“With Tag Me Not, things like “Organic” and “not Organic” aren’t two different tags – they’re the flip side of the same tag. This means that tags now offer us spectrum! So now when we look at the Organic tag, we can see side by side all the items that we’ve determined are or are not Organic. The same goes for unappealing characteristics. Think “Toxic” and “not Toxic.” Sure, some times there will be contradictions between how different members tag things. For those cases, we tally the relative counts of Tag Me So’s and Tag Me Nots. Sometimes this kind of contradiction will be really fun, like in seeing who thinks a note should be tagged “funny” and who says “not funny.” But the point isn’t to highlight differences among our opinions, it’s to highlight differences among our options. Which might be a waste of time, since all of our options for addressing sustainability are really just the same old boring rigamarole. Not.”

Now doesn’t that sound a bit better than my version?….

Sigh. Well, I’m sorry about my, uh, miscommunication; and I’m sure I’ll be making many many more mistakes. But, hopefully, I won’t split any heads open….

Conversations….mmmm, I love having them. But the art of conversation is not celebrated enough in our culture. And it is becoming ever more critical online as we struggle with tools that don’t communicate facial expressions or even intonation. So what can we do to bring forth conversation and nurture it?

Of course there are some simple obvious answers: ask questions and express gratitude. Come from a state of curiosity.

But how about receiving with grace? We have valued being independent or autonomous so highly that many of us have lost touch with the ability to receive with grace. Allow other people to feel good about their contribution. Don’t quickly close the social reciprocity contract–you know that sense that you have to return the favor? Don’t take it to be a sign that you are a slacker or a mooch! What a negative framing that is…although it does point to people who are not being gracious about receiving (or our jealousy of those that do receive with ease).

Keep in mind that people don’t see the world for what it is, they see it for what they are. Most people think about themselves, especially in our competitive culture. If you allow people to see themselves positively, they will see you positively.

I had a lovely friend who spoke about those in his social network in the most flattering terms. He said how brilliant and creative they were. And it made me feel like I must be pretty brilliant or creative to be included in his world, since that was clearly what he filtered for. And I had the sense that when he talked about me to others, he was saying amazing things about me (ones I might not even be able to believe about myself). Oh, was he ever attractive to spend time with!

What can you celebrate in others? Especially when they have given you something. Instead of returning the favor, do them a different sort of favor by saying very specifically what you see them having done for you (or for others), how that works for your needs and values, and how thankful you are for it. This is NOT a display of your weakness, in fact it shows your confidence and strength.

Allow it to create a flow in conversation toward common connection–shared celebration of shared values, other instances of gratitude or other things to be grateful for. Be patient in listening and clearly ask for more. I mean clearly as in “can you tell me more about that?” Or “What I hear you saying is ‘insert summary or key points‘ and I would love to know more about how you came to that/where you want to do with that.”

Receive with grace and enjoy your conversations flourishing–online and off.

Phew. We’ve just uploaded some updates to the site – most notably with language changes, ratings, tag me nots, and search.

Language Changes:

Well, beta testers have been asking us to change Dilemmas for a while now – and yippee! It’s done! We heard feedback around “Dilemmas” being too limiting – and, you know what, you were right.

Share What Matters to You….

What we now have on the site is a place called “Eco Matters”…. This is where you can rant or rave about finds, share your eco successes and bright ideas, ask questions, and well, share what Matters to you.

You might be wondering what’s happened to all the dilemmas people have been posting – they’re still there, in the Eco Matters area. We think it better represents what people want to do – but, again, we’d love to hear your thoughts. In the coming weeks we’ll be refining this area even more.

Ratings and Special Tags

We’re trying out using tags to rate things. Right now we’re using “cool”, “not cool”; “green”, “not green”; “practical”, “not practical”. We know we want to be able to rate things, and in the coming weeks we’ll be gathering feedback from Beta Testers about whether these are the values we want to use.

Soon, we’ll be adding ratings to the Eco Matters area of OsoEco as well…. but that’s still a couple weeks off….

You may have noticed in the past weeks the ability to quickly tag something or someone with “follow”. Well, now we’ve added a few additional quick tags – wish list and friend. Soon, the follow tag will notify you when whatever you have tagged that way has activity.

Tag Me Not

We’ve been playing with this idea of Tag Me Not for the past couple weeks. You say that some thing’s green; I say it’s not. I say something is recycled; you say it’s not. The idea is different than just tagging or untagging something – by saying that it is specifically “not organic” or “not recycled” is a place to start a discussion.

You’ll see Tag Me Not in a few places right now… you’ll see it on your personal page when you open up a tag; you’ll see it below the tag text field when you tag something (tagging something “green” automatically creates the option for me to tag it “not green”).

So let’s say I open up my “organic” tag to see what I’ve tagged organic and what other OsoEco-ers have tagged organic. What I’ll see now is a bunch of numbers under finds… this number is indicating how many people have tagged it “organic” and how many people have tagged it “not organic” and what the net tag is on the find. What’s nice about this is I can quickly see what the community is saying is organic, what they’re saying is “not organic” and if more people are saying it’s one thing or the other. I can also add my voice to the debate by clicking on the green number (it is that tag), or red number (it is NOT that tag) and expressing whether I think it is organic or not organic….

Search

It’s not absolutely perfect – but we finally have search available. You can find this in the upper right hand corner of all OsoEco pages. Yahoo!!!!

We’ll also be refining this over the next couple weeks, so please, if you have any feedback around it, let us know.

Well, the title pretty much sums it up :)

A little background: mock ups are when I create pretty (sometimes they aren’t so pretty – but usually they’re better than Caroline’s) drawings that illustrate some aspect of the site. They are basically visualizations to see where we’re going before we build it.

So, here’s a few of the things I’m working on today:

Tagriculture

This is what we’re calling Tagriculture – it’s the idea that our site will function very simply and sweetly by using tags – and tags are how people can find each other, and things they’re interested in, and also say what it is they like or don’t like.

Which brings us to….

Ratings

We’re getting ready to introduce some sort of way to use tags to rate things – what you’re seeing here is not necessarily what we’re going with – again, this is an idea and we still haven’t gotten any feedback from our community as far as what they want to be able to rate finds (products and articles), and what we’re calling eco-matters at the moment (this is the place where people will be able to post questions; rant or rave about products or articles; post great ideas; and share eco-successes). On this mock up you’re seeing the values of green, cool, practical – and the ability to be able to rate it a yes, a no, or a not sure.

And finally….

Finds

The Finds page – anything that you can find on the internet and bring into OsoEco via our bookmarking tool we’re calling a “find” right now (again, I’ll be posting about language later – I thought today, but I think that will be what I’m working on tomorrow…). With this mock up I’m also playing with the new layout we will soon be going with – it incorporates a side-bar that is giving stat-type things – like, what are the last 5 finds that we’re added to OsoEco; who are the last 5 people to post an eco-matter; who’s on the site right now; what are the lastest notes that have been posted, etc…..

So that’s it. Feel free to let me know of any thoughts you have….

One of the many themes of this week has been “how do we communicate with each other and with beta testers effectively?”

In some ways this sounds like it should be so so easy. I mean, really, I’m raising a child, Katie’s walked on the wings of bi-planes, Caroline survived growing up in New Jersey, Ethan and Lew made it through being music majors (aka big dorks), and I’m not quite sure yet what Jean, Brittany, and Kelsi have made it through but, geez, talking with others should be a no-brainer, right? WRONG.

There have been many moments where Ethan, Lew and I have had deep discussions over the course of weeks about some functionality that needs changed and then we just go ahead and change it without talking to anyone else – because, man, it’s been the only thing on our minds for a chunk of time and how could everyone else NOT know about it? There was also one week where Caroline was back and forth from Portland more than she was in the office, and none of us knew until we saw her little suitcase sitting by the front door.

And this carries over to talking to the OsoEco community. We keep saying that we want the site to be a collaboration between us and everyone who’s using it – and we’ve put in some definite steps to do this (one major one being the feedback box you can find on every page in the test site; another being the usability tests we’ve been conducting over the past months) – but now it’s time to step it up and do more.

We came up with some ideas earlier this week – right now, we’re going to use the blog to talk about what we’re working on during the week; what are the hot topics we’re wrestling with; and let everyone in on our conversations, hopes, dreams, frustrations, failures, successes… we’re also going to use this space to pose questions to the community – to talk about what things we’ve got boiling, and see if anyone out there has things they want to add to the pot.

We also are wondering if there are any beta testers out there who would like to work with us on updates – what this means, is that before we update the general beta site, we’d have community members take a look at what we think is ready for production and get thoughts, feedback, etc. If you’re interested, please shoot me an email at adeleatosoeco.com (with the at being an @ sign….).

One of the hot topics today has been about Language, better how-tos and what’s this, and words we’re using on the site to communicate what can be done – cuz really, what the heck does Tagging mean? And a Note? What’s a find? And why can I only post a dilemma but not rave or advocate about something?

Tomorrow I’ll be posting some of our ideas that have come out of meetings we’re having today and see what others think. Till then – keep talking. :)