by Eleonora Anello
Born for responding to the need of communicating in mobility, nowadays the mobile phones can do so many things that it’s reductive to call them just phones.
Browsing through the several apps, easy-to-use tools of advanced functions, it’s not difficult to find something “green”. By using our phone it’s possible to care about the environment, in many different ways. Regarding the consumer goods, we signal the app Goodguide.
Looking at the users’ comments, it seems to be one of the best eco-friendly apps. Once it’s downloaded, it can be launched every time we are about to buy a product. By putting the objective over the barcode of the product it’s possible to verify what we are buying on the basis of parameters such as the respect of the environment, the health and the social responsibility of the manufacturer. At present the database includes 120.000 products, a number constantly rising, thanks to the users’ reports.
The app, which works also on the web, helps the aware consumers and, at the same time, pushes the companies towards a better transparency and a certain kind of conduct. Goodguide isn’t intended to influence the decisions of the consumers, but instead to allow him to make a more aware decision. Its use is even easier for the online shopping, thanks to the new toolbar, supported by Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.
This ambitious project was born on the quiet in 2007, when Professor Dara O’Rouke, from the University of California, Berkeley, wondered about the goodness of the sun protection cream he was putting on his daughter. After an investigation, he found out that just that cream contained a toxic ingredient.
Useful and enjoyable, Goodguide allows to create personalized lists of favourite products and to share them. It also suggests products to buy instead of the ones that total a low score, by making a sort of ranking of the “fairest” products.
We have tested the app on the products bought by a family composed of four individuals, two adults and two children. Only one product resulted to be present in the database. It was a face cream by a famous French branch, sold in the pharmacies. It totalled a very high score. It’s not clear why the barcode of the Coke couldn’t be read by the system. The limitations of the app thus appear clear: it includes only goods commercialized in the States and it’s not supported enough by the users’ feedbacks. In this respect we believe that, in times when sharing the information can make the difference, limiting the contribution of the people may be a big handicap. This is particularly relevant for projects that are present on platforms encouraging the interaction, such as Twitter, or Facebook, where Goodguide is present with more than 10.000 fans.
“At present and for the next future, we are not planning to expand the app to the European market. We are focusing on the States – answered to us Mia Gralla, marketing manager of Goodguide - As for the choice of the products, we opened to users and companies, allowing them to suggest which products evaluate and include in our program, in the following address: http://www.goodguide.com/product_suggestions/leaders##popular”.
We can deduce from this that being present on the web, and particularly on the Applestore, is and extraordinary promotional tool. It makes of a useful guide an object of desire, at least for who can’t fully make use of it.
Browsing through the several apps, easy-to-use tools of advanced functions, it’s not difficult to find something “green”. By using our phone it’s possible to care about the environment, in many different ways. Regarding the consumer goods, we signal the app Goodguide.
Looking at the users’ comments, it seems to be one of the best eco-friendly apps. Once it’s downloaded, it can be launched every time we are about to buy a product. By putting the objective over the barcode of the product it’s possible to verify what we are buying on the basis of parameters such as the respect of the environment, the health and the social responsibility of the manufacturer. At present the database includes 120.000 products, a number constantly rising, thanks to the users’ reports.
The app, which works also on the web, helps the aware consumers and, at the same time, pushes the companies towards a better transparency and a certain kind of conduct. Goodguide isn’t intended to influence the decisions of the consumers, but instead to allow him to make a more aware decision. Its use is even easier for the online shopping, thanks to the new toolbar, supported by Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.
This ambitious project was born on the quiet in 2007, when Professor Dara O’Rouke, from the University of California, Berkeley, wondered about the goodness of the sun protection cream he was putting on his daughter. After an investigation, he found out that just that cream contained a toxic ingredient.
Useful and enjoyable, Goodguide allows to create personalized lists of favourite products and to share them. It also suggests products to buy instead of the ones that total a low score, by making a sort of ranking of the “fairest” products.
We have tested the app on the products bought by a family composed of four individuals, two adults and two children. Only one product resulted to be present in the database. It was a face cream by a famous French branch, sold in the pharmacies. It totalled a very high score. It’s not clear why the barcode of the Coke couldn’t be read by the system. The limitations of the app thus appear clear: it includes only goods commercialized in the States and it’s not supported enough by the users’ feedbacks. In this respect we believe that, in times when sharing the information can make the difference, limiting the contribution of the people may be a big handicap. This is particularly relevant for projects that are present on platforms encouraging the interaction, such as Twitter, or Facebook, where Goodguide is present with more than 10.000 fans.
“At present and for the next future, we are not planning to expand the app to the European market. We are focusing on the States – answered to us Mia Gralla, marketing manager of Goodguide - As for the choice of the products, we opened to users and companies, allowing them to suggest which products evaluate and include in our program, in the following address: http://www.goodguide.com/product_suggestions/leaders##popular”.
We can deduce from this that being present on the web, and particularly on the Applestore, is and extraordinary promotional tool. It makes of a useful guide an object of desire, at least for who can’t fully make use of it.
Mobile phone signal are not well for our health. According to one science research I have found that it can inject our health and make us mentally lose also it is responsible for cancer.
ReplyDeleteboost mobile phone signal