Matt Hampel | matth.org

Still thinking about social energy / water meters after a conversation at Berkman last year.

Here’s one example from a greenwash / happy-marketing-speak site. (you know there’s not much to a company if they only post renderings)

Someone (Gruber?) linked to a description of how an iPhone app grabs images of Sudoku puzzles and digitizes them. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to do the same for different kinds of [water/energy] meters. But it requires discipline on par with a non-Bluetooth pedometer and Walker Tracker: you’ve got to snap the photo or enter the numbers every day.

The other option is to install your own flow meter after the official meter — here’s a McMaster-Carr page  for costing. Set up an X-10 for wireless capture?

How social do you need to be? Lots of levels. Your private dashboard. Some sparklines on your homepage. A weekly email telling you how you compare to the other folks you know on [insert social network].

Use some central site to contribute anonymized stats from users with addresses verified (postcard method)?  Then sell the ostensibly aggregated data to a utility lobbyist for large profit later. How private is your water usage?