the app was conceptualized by curt gervich, associate professor of environmental science at suny plattsburgh and jesse feiler, ios app developer and president of friends of saranac river trail along with the help of mike otton and maeve sherry, two suny plattsburgh students.

it all began with an idea. the pair came together with gervich’s years of study within environmental science and feiler’s skills in app development. “i had an idea to create an app that would help people reduce their use of electricity in their homes like kind of everyday stuff, like turning out the lights and keeping the heat a little bit lower,” gervich says.

with utility smart, you can track how you throw out trash and recycling and even how high you set your thermostat during the winter. it compiles the data and helps you learn about how your choices impact the environment. the app’s ‘environmental footprint’ feature visibly show how close, or far, you are towards good environmental habits.

to keep the app close to home, user data from a class at the nearby plattsburgh high school was compiled. frequent trips to classes helped the developers design the app to ensure a great user experience. the app is accessible to apple devices such as iphones and ipads.

while setting up for my interview, the two were discussing gervich’s recent trip to asia. feiler, who works more closely on the inner-workings of the app, declares the recent downloads from people in china. “china is our largest install base of users right now,” feiler says. with more than 3,000 downloads the app continues to be updated with new data. the app is free to download from the apple app store.

stock video courtesy: footage courtesy of m_broz, hosted by videvo.net

enter quanto o2–a smartphone-based application that’s based on the car’s specs (year, make, model, engine), speed and distance traveled to estimate the ozone depletion, and offers suggestions for less depletion. quanto 02 stores this data to show trends over the past 7, 30 and 360 days. families will be targeted first so kids are inspired to play an active role (since parents can’t or shouldn’t use devices while driving) with the app. mom and dad can help shape conversation about potential solutions to a cleaner environment and planet and safer communities. social sharing of the app results has aspects to help stimulate friendly competitions in each town, but may extend around the world; and for each brand, make, model, year, engine, too.

the goal is to raise awareness of ozone depletion with every trip we take by car, then gradually to develop a quanto o2 gauge as an oem gauge on every car, right alongside the fuel gauge.

it is hoped that it will speed up the decline vehicles dependent on fossil fuels.
a side benefit is that when cars are driven at lower speeds, accidents and deaths tend to decline and so insurance, medical, personal injury claims, and other related costs could decrease, as well.

photo used under creative commons license

rationale:
many people buy furniture (sofas, tables, beds, etc) locally on sites like craiglist. they need trucks like “uhaul” to transport their purchased items to their home. typically, they need a truck for just a couple of hours to haul. but they need to rent a truck for the whole day which typically costs about $30. this adds additional cost to their purchase and is a well appreciated limiting factor by both buyers and sellers. more often than not this limitation negatively impacts such transactions.

idea:
the app enables people to connect and coordinate with other people who are interested in renting a uhaul. the app enables people to calculate the available space based on the stuff each one needs. based on the space needed for the ume haul consumers, the app will suggest a suitable truck. ume haul enables consumers to connect with uhaul me service provider to rent the truck. finally, the app calculates payment to be made by each person.

benefits:
ume haul availability encourages more sellers and buyers leading to more transactions resulting in more resuse of materials. this will have a great green impact. coordinated uhaul transport will also have a measurable positive economic and environmental impact.