GigaOM » gas prices

Gas prices up? Time to remember remote work again

Jessica Stillman — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:03:06 +0000

Gas prices are once again high enough to warrant a flurry of media coverage. And, inevitably, the pressure that prices put on commuters leads to another round of interest in remote work, interest that in the past has tended to wither away when prices came down. Support for telecommuting is a slowly but steadily rising background hum, but the way much of the chatter about remote work tracks gas prices suggests that many commentators are focusing on remote work as a short-term solution for sticker shock at the pump rather than a long-term trend that might help damp down our gas-price traumas permanently.

Prices shouldn’t control our interest in telework. Instead, remote work, if viewed as an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how we live, could and should control (or at least mitigate) our gas-price sticker shock. That’s what a recent post by Switchbord, the blog of the Natural Resources Defense Council, suggests. The piece digs into the numbers at Chicago-based think tank Center for Neighborhood Technology, which maintains a huge database of information on average housing costs, driving rates, transportation costs and transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions in 900 metropolitan and so-called “micropolitan” areas.

Surprising no one who owns a car, the post finds that transportation costs have been putting a squeeze on family budgets for a decade. “Analyzing its current data in aggregate, CNT found that, between 2000 and 2009, US transportation and housing costs increased at nearly twice the rate of incomes. If you’re feeling squeezed, no wonder,” reports the NRDC blog. But the post goes on to drill down into the data on specific locations and makes the case that those who live in denser but not super-expensive communities are seeing their budgets impacted the least:

The aggregate data show that 72 percent of communities covered in the system have combined housing and transportation costs that under standard formulas would be considered unaffordable for typical families, when median regional household income is compared to average housing and transportation costs. Locations become more affordable, however, in neighborhoods with close access to amenities, jobs, and transit….

Residential neighborhoods closer to downtown where housing-only costs were still in the affordable range but where superior accessibility (proximity to jobs and other typical travel destinations) brought the costs of transportation down to an affordable level as well.

Dense communities take the bite out of transportation costs? There’s no shock there, but what does that have to do with remote work? In short, urban-design experts have argued that the rise in remote work will tend to promote denser communities as workers stay home all day and desire their houses to be in convenient proximity to amenities. In other words, more remote work not only saves you from a hefty gas bill to fuel your commute short-term, but if viewed as a long-term shift in how we work, telecommuting might prompt lifestyles and communities that simply demand less gas, whatever the gas price happens to be.

Fickle, gas-price-linked interest in telecommuting: a perfectly natural reaction to pain at the pump or a shortsighted failure to take full advantage of what remote work has to offer?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Richard Masoner / Cycleicious.

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A breakdown of gas costs per city [Infographic]

Katie Fehrenbacher — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:30:47 +0000

It’s official: the Obama administration managed to get an agreement with auto makers for 54.5 miles per gallon standard for cars and trucks by Model Year 2025. Hoo-rah.

American’s have been driving inefficient gas-guzzling cars for years, and with rising gas prices (along with the weak economy) are really feeling the pinch at the gas station. Here’s how much drivers across the U.S. have been spending on average to fill up their tanks per month, courtesy of online banking web startup Mint.com. Folks in Silicon Valley are spending the most, while New Yorkers spend the least.

Provided by Mint.com

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How High Gas Prices Could Help Google

Katie Fehrenbacher — Wed, 04 May 2011 07:00:49 +0000

Updated: Google has shown a surprising interest in the future of energy, from investing hundreds of millions of dollars into clean energy, to developing a plug-in vehicle project. But there’s another way that Google could be connected to energy more directly through its core search business: according to data crunched by Marin Software, as gas prices rise, paid search click-throughs seem to rise, too.

Essentially when gas prices go up, people appear to end up driving less to the store to buy goods, and are likely turning to the Internet to buy more stuff. That’s the assertion that you could make from the five quarters of data that Marin Software has pulled and which shows “a strong correlation (R-Squared = 0.97) between the price of oil and the number of paid-clicks.” (The closer to one the R-Squared figure is, the better the correlation. Zero is a lack of ~~opposite~~ correlation.)

Marin Software, which sells a service to help online advertisers manage their campaigns, found the correlation in the data on its management platform, which includes over 800 clients and $2 billion in advertising spending. You can see from the table above, the ups and downs seem to almost mirror each other.

Perhaps the most clear conclusion of the data is that researchers need to take a deeper dive into pin-pointing the complexities of such a correlation. However, it’s still unclear if rising gas prices would actually boost Google’s bottom line, as Google also is dependent on overall energy prices to power its data centers. That’s precisely why Google has been experimenting so much with different ways to control its energy sources and to produce clean power.

On a side note, while high gas prices might appear to be good for Google’s search business, they are definitely good for lowering carbon emissions and fighting climate change. And that’s also something Google has also pledged to invest in.

Image courtesy of Brownpau, and Marin Software.

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Gas Prices: Another Reason to Adopt Web Working?

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:00:46 +0000

Between the shaky but continuing economic recovery and the political unrest burning through the Middle East, 2011 has seen oil prices continue to rise. And despite the recent dip due to the tragedy in Japan, they’re likely to continue to go up according to many experts. It’s obvious that raising the cost of commuting increases the appeal of web working, but have we already seen an increase in home-based work?

Davinci Virtual, a U.K. provider of “virtual office services,” for one, says yes, reporting an increase in demand for its services it attributes to the spike in fuel costs. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in car-centric Atlanta, government researchers found a 75 percent jump in the number of telecommuters (though they still account for only seven percent of workers). That’s good news when it comes to reducing carbon emissions due to commuting, too.

But there’s still plenty of possible telecommuters with jobs that are compatible with remote working who have yet to take up the option. The Mobility Choice Coalition says that out of a potential 9.6 million workers already able and permitted to telecommute, only 5.2 million are currently logging on from a distance two or more days a week. What’s stopping the other 4.4 million? The MCC suggests, “individual firms or managers may tacitly discourage telecommuting even where it is permitted by policy.”

Are you one of these reluctant managers, tempted by the possibilities of virtual teams but still harboring doubts? Perhaps rising oil prices could be the final factor to push you to adopt web working. After all, The Oil Trap a project of Lisa Margonelli, the director of the Energy Policy Initiative at New America Foundation, claims:

The average family of four making $50,000 a year spends nearly $8000 a year on their cars, maintenance, and fuel combined–more than they pay for taxes or medical care.

Eliminate some or all of that cost and that’s a big chunk of change you can use to attract the best talent that won’t come out of your pocket. At a price of $3.50 per gallon, Americans will spend $41 billion on gasoline this March. What else could we be doing with some of that money if more of us were web workers?

(Image courtesy Flickr user A Siegel, CC 2.0)

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Daily Sprout

Josie Garthwaite — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:00:40 +0000

Quest for Corn-Free Gas: Some SUV and boat owners in Florida are more than willing to drive out of their way to fill up at stations that sell biofuel-free gasoline, looking for “the extra mpgs that come from ditching ethanol.”Autobloggreen, Florida Today

Co-Ops Strike Out Against Climate Bill: Some 930 rural customer-owned utilities that are more dependent on coal than many other generators have pitted themselves against supporters of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill and the Edison Electric Institute. — ClimateWire via NYT

Energy Prices in the Tank: Gasoline futures started falling midweek after a government report showed a huge surplus, showing some of the first signs that an extended rally in pump prices is nearing an end after 52 straight days on the rise. — Associated Press

Duke for Nuke: Duke Energy, Usec and other energy companies have teamed up to evaluate a Department of Energy site in Piketon, Ohio, as a potential location for a new nuclear power plant. — Press Release

Electrovaya on Deck: ExxonMobil has been working with Electrovaya on technology for electric cars, and next week the company Electrovaya will discuss its plans for the Maya 300, an all-electric vehicle slated for 2011. — Greentech Media

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Daily Sprout

Josie Garthwaite — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:30:54 +0000

DOE Dole Too Slow, Says Chu: Energy Secretary Steven Chu says he’s “turning up the heat” on stimulus programs in areas including fossil energy and electricity transmission that “don’t feel the sense of urgency that they should feel” to get cash out the door quickly. — Associated Press

Second Look at Japan Climate Plan: On its face, Japan’s plan to cut emissions by 15 percent compared with 2005 levels by the end of the next decade seems modest, but “by some important measures, Japan’s target is more ambitious than that contemplated by either the United States or the European Union.” — NYT’s Green Inc.

Clunker vs. Clunker: The House and Senate are in the final stretch of shaping two versions of a cash for clunker bill — one that would require a major leap in fuel efficiency, and another that’s more concerned with clearing dealer lots of SUVs and pickups than boosting MPGs. — BusinessWeek

Cheap Oil Era Officially Over: For the first time, the Energy Information Administration appears to be joining with experts who have long argued that the era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close. — Grist

Gas Prices on the Brain: A new survey from Kelley Blue Book finds that for the last two months, rising gas prices have caused more than 60 percent of people shopping for a new car to either change their minds or consider vehicles they wouldn’t have otherwise. — Press Release

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FollowUp iPhone Conversation Tracking

David Appleyard — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:00:14 +0000

A recently released application for the iPhone exploits an interesting new market — tracking conversations and following up calls. FollowUp aims to provide a location for noting down the action you need to take after receiving or making a call, along with a due date.

Functionality

As you’d expect, FollowUp integrates well with the Contacts application for noting down who you’ve called. The process involves opening FollowUp and noting down that you’ve had a conversation. You can enter the details of the person, date, call subject, associated notes and also set a follow-up date for when you should call them back.

If you’re lagging behind, the app will flag up those conversations which are most urgent and warn you if the follow-up date has expired. You can also set your own priorities if preferred.

After returning the call, you mark the conversation as completed and the previously stored details are retained for future reference. You may also choose to follow-up immediately, storing the old conversation while simultaneously creating a new one.

Problems

If you are someone who deals with regular phone calls and ongoing conversations, the application could be quite useful. However, I’m slightly skeptical about its functionality and price for a couple of reasons:

If dealing with a large number of clients and phone calls, inputting notes and conversations into your iPhone would be far more time consuming that using some form of desktop solution. It’s great when traveling, but probably not the ideal solution when in the office.
Most people would find the notes app to be perfectly suited to their needs. While lacking Contacts integration, it’s a quick (and free) way to jot down the required response to a call. Alternatively, sending an email to yourself or using some form of To-Do list manager would also work well.

If it’s an app which you’d find useful, FollowUp is available now from the iPhone App Store for an introductory price of $6.99. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on how you remind yourself of the need to call someone back — do you rely on a razor sharp memory or, like me, do you have some form of to-do list app?

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Daily Sprout

Josie Garthwaite — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:00:33 +0000

Brits Develop Carbon-Eating Cement: A new kind of cement based on magnesium silicates requires much less heating than the conventional stuff (which accounts for 5 percent of global carbon emissions) and absorbs large amounts of CO2 as it hardens. — The Guardian

Gimme a $2-a-Gallon Gas Tax, Says…Texas Oil Man?!: “There’s a reason that everybody in Europe drives roller skates and here we drive SUVs. It’s because Europe has a huge tax on gasoline.” — Fortune

Record Insurance Payouts, Courtesy of Climate Change: Adjusted for inflation, 2008 was the third most expensive year on record for the German reinsurer Munich Re. The company is now calling for an international plan to halve emissions by 2050. — NYT’s Green Inc.

2009 Forecast: Hot Hot Hot: UK climate scientists expect the 2009 to be among the five warmest years on record, indicating a rapid return of global temperature to a long-term warming trend and an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009. — Green Car Congress

Climate Change Off Hook for Neanderthals’ Doom: Recent analysis of late-Pleistocene hominid habitation delivers a solid blow to the popular hypothesis that climate change did them in. Now it looks like they just couldn’t compete with modern humans. — Wired Science

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How Hot Are Hybrids Globally?

Josie Garthwaite — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:02:25 +0000

In 2008, worldwide interest in hybrid cars began to spike at the beginning of the summer, just as gas prices began to skyrocket. At least that’s when Google’s year-end Zeitgeist, released (and covered on GigaOM) today, shows a jump in searches for the term. Surely that’s just in the U.S., where “good weather and vacations” (according to the Energy Information Administration) cause demand to average about 5 percent higher in the summer, right? Funny you should ask. We did — and found that while U.S. Googlers have the strongest interest in hybrid cars, hybrid searchers from Malaysia, Canada, and Singapore are not far behind. From there, regional search volume drops off precipitously.

To be sure, Google presents an imperfect science for judging demand for hybrid-electric vehicles. In Malaysia, for example, Honda has made a big push for its hybrid-electrics there, but made hardly a dent in a market where some local manufacturers use “hybrid car” to describe dual-fuel-option (natural gas or gasoline) vehicles, according to CNET Asia. Still, the top 10, which is ranked according to Google’s search volume index, offers a glimpse of relative interest in the technology. The numbers represent the likelihood of users in each country searching for “hybrid car,” on a scale of 0-100. Google divides the total number of searches for each country by the number of searches for this particular term, and then normalizes the data based on the country’s traffic volume.

United States: 100
Malaysia: 66
Canada: 60
Singapore: 56
Australia: 45
New Zealand: 42
South Korea: 35
India: 30
Hong Kong: 23
United Kingdom: 22

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No, Seriously: Microsoft Patents Page Up & Page Down

Om Malik — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:19:04 +0000

Put this in the category of “you gotta be kidding me.” Microsoft has applied for and received a patent (U.S. Patent #7,415,666) that essentially patents “Page Up/Page Down” functionality. The patent (Timothy D Sellers, Heather L. Grantham, Joshua A. Dersch) that was filed in March 2005 is yet another proof that our patent system is as (if not more) dysfunctional as Britney Spears.

Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments

A method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed. In one implementation, pressing a Page Down or Page Up keyboard key/button allows a user to begin at any starting vertical location within a page, and navigate to that same location on the next or previous page.

For example, if a user is viewing a page starting in a viewing area from the middle of that page and ending at the bottom, a Page Down command will cause the next page to be shown in the viewing area starting at the middle of the next page and ending at the bottom of the next page. Similar behavior occurs when there is more than one column of pages being displayed in a row.

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