Consumptivity
Making money from films
Scott Kirsner has compiled an online list of the best ways to sell your video creations online. Everyone is making video, but few figure out how to sell them. Kirsner gives you 21 different sites that pay videomakers and dissects the monetary deal each one offers. I haven't found anything as useful anywhere else. It is the equivalent of the first version of a "Writer's Market" for digital video producers. This list is free, part of a longer downloadable e-book he hopes you will buy, the Future of Web Video. I did; the rest of the book is a bargain for anyone serious about peddling a video of whatever length. I hope he keeps the list updated.
-- KK
Getting Paid: Sites that Help Filmmakers and Video Producers Make Money
Free
Available from Scott Kirsner
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
Spiderbrace Video Camera Stabilizer
The DV Rebel's Guide
The Complete Animation Course * The Animation Book
How to publish this blog
Eight years ago Cool Tools started out as short email messages containing my personal recommendations for cool stuff. I occasionally emailed these quick raves to a very small circle of friends. Several of my friends asked me to add their friends to my list. Soon there were several hundred readers. In the winter of 2000 I published 90 or so of my tool reviews in an issue of Whole Earth Review. This was not much of a surprise since I used to edit the magazine, and the reviews were clearly written in Whole Earth style -- short, always positive, useful. I kept reviewing a tool or book when I thought of it, but after several years of adding folks to the list (which is still going) it occurred to me that with a small amount of extra work I might as well post my recommendations on a blog. On April 17, 2003, five years ago, I posted the first review on this site. (It was the Utili-Key, a sharp blade built into a key, a tool I continue to use and get past airport security.)
Originally the blog was not called Cool Tools but Recomendo (you can still get to Cool Tools from Recomendo.com). I added only one new tool a week since I wrote most of the reviews. In either a stroke of genius or a stroke of luck I asked anyone who wanted to join the list to submit a cool tool recommendation first. (To join the list now, go here.) These reader-supplied reviews were so good, and so frequent, that I was able to post a review per day. While the reviews are primarily written by reader/users each one was edited, checked, polished, researched, packaged and designed by me. When it worked, none of that effort was visible. As the site's traffic grew the name Recomendo was needing too much explanation so after a few months I changed it to Cool Tools.
After years of editing/writing this blog myself, I found relief in Steven Leckart, who has been doing the hard work of researching, double-checking, editing, and presenting the reviews written by readers. Before Steven began editing the site in January 2007, Charles Platt guest edited Cool Tools for four months. And for the past two years Camille Cloutier has been posting entries and managing the blog's health, stability, technical improvements, while adding new features and extinguishing bugs, all behind the scenes. She is this site's vital webmaster. (Thank you, Camille.)
Now that Cool Tools is five years old, it is ready for its next stage. In a month or so I will be turning on a redesign of the site. The idea is to acknowledge the community of readers who have developed Cool Tools, and in the spirit of the times, harness more of that collective wisdom. So version 2.0 will have member's comments, discussions, and more direct means of feedback. It will look a little different, too. I am very leery of messing up something that works, but change is your friend. There is a lot more traffic to the site, so just to keep up with that load requires new tools.
To give you an idea of where Cool Tools is right now here are some stats from February, 2008:
Number of readers on email list: 2,829
Number of RSS subscribers: 187,000
Number of unique visitors per month: 225,000
Number of page impressions per month: 492,000
Technorati rank: 2,824
Amazon's Kindle blog rank: 7
This is a readership that is larger than Wired when we first started it, and 10 times as large as CoEvolution Quarterly and the Whole Earth Review at their peaks. And Cool Tools is run by three part-timers, instead of a staff numbered in the scores. To do that it uses a lot of cool tools.
What follows is the kit of webtools that powers Cool Tools. You could think of it as Cool Tools' cool tools. This is the stuff we use everyday to make the site run. As we like to remind readers, if you know of something better, please let us know.
From day one, Cool Tools has run on Movable Type. MT has handled this traffic easily. We recently upgraded to version 4.0. We also have installed Movable Type's new Community Pack, which will provide the community functions such as member profiles, forum areas, ratings, etc. MT has been a very reliable workhorse. I don't believe we've had any down time due to the software.
However while I eagerly recommend Movable Type it has one fault that is shared by other non-hosted blogging software such as WordPress: it is lousy in handling images to be posted. I am a drag-n-drop guy, a spoiled Mac user, who refuses to code HTML. I also post a lot of images from all kinds of sources. I don't want the extra step of having to upload images to the blog. I feel I should be able to simply drag an image copied from wherever and have it land in the right spot in my blog entry. MT doesn't make it that easy, but the Boing Boing crew turned me onto a tool that I use for all 9 blogs I contribute to: ecto. They call it desktop blogging for Mac and Windows.
I compose all my entries in ecto, (I am typing in it right now), then I drag my image icons to where I want them to appear in the text and then hit publish. I can switch between blogs fast, and very importantly, I can also post to other blogs, including those on other platforms, from ecto as well.
A recursive moment. Here is the page I am composing in ecto. WYSIWYG.
This allows me to cross-post entries to Wired's GeekDad, or Long Now's Long Views. (There are other blog composers that have fans like MarsEdit, and Abode's Contribute, but I haven't found them superior for what I do. I should also clarify that hosted blogging systems like Blogger and Typepad have much better interfaces and don't require the friendly composers that way industrial-level blogware hosted on your own server does.)
Other tools: I use EasyBatchPhoto to resize my images to a proper blog-specific size. It's a little Mac utility. I don't know if it is the best, but it works. I drag an image into it and it resizes it and dumps it in the right folder. It'll also add a watermark for my Asia Grace images.
For outbound RSS feeds we use Feedburner. It has a pleasant management interface, and gives me handy stats about readership and what items are read. It has a lot of other tools, which we don't use out of laziness.
Half of Cool Tool's income comes from ads, as served up by Google Adsense and FM's ad network. The other half comes from Amazon purchases. We are enrolled in Amazon's Affiliate program. That means that when a reader clicks on a red link to Amazon, and actually purchases the item, Cool Tools gets 8% of the purchase price. We don't have an affiliate relationship with other vendors, except Netflix. But Amazon's deal is interesting because Cool Tools will get a fractional cut of any thing else a reader purchases on a visit initiated by a link in Cool Tools, whether or not they purchase the linked item. If you go to Amazon to check out a pair of tweezers listed in Cool Tools but end up buying a $24,000 tractor for the backyard, we get a fraction of the tractor purchase.
Cool Tools and all KK* blogs are hosted by WestHost, who are headquartered in Utah. Over the years we've outgrown the small-time web hosters we once used. Because of our traffic is hefty enough we have our own dedicated dual processor machine at WestHost, although they offer many options for lower traffic sites.
Their minimum package starts at $4/ month. We are happy with them. Prices are reasonable, downtime negligible and service excellent. They claim 99.9% uptime and that matches our experience. We can reach a capable human on the phone or via chat any time 24/7 almost instantly. We also run our mail through them, and they also handle our domain registrations. And they include AWStats for monitoring traffic.
For web stats that we really think about, that is, for keeping track of the number of visitors, what is being read, and all that, we use Google Analytics. This is a wonderful free service. There is so much power and depth in this tool, and Google Analytic's interface is so elegant that one could mine it full time. You get what the web has always promised publishers -- an exact picture of how your content is used. But frankly, I hardly delve into it because I am not really trying to optimize traffic. (I am trying to optimize usefulness of the content.) I dip into once or twice year just to see what's going on. Sign up is quick and painless. You simply need to insert an invisible pixel on all your pages.
Google Analytic's results for Cool Tools.
I need to search Cool Tools all the time. I am constantly trying to find a tool in the archive, or researching similar past tools. The standard blog search function included in Movable Type was pretty spotty and never worked very well. We've found that Google's search of Cool Tool pages was far more responsive and practical. So now we use another fantastic service from Google, Google Custom Search. Google offers this as a free custom search box which you can install on your blog. This tool will provide readers with very fast, excellent search results of just your blog. You can install a free dedicated search for as many blogs or sub-groupings of pages as you wish. (In fact you can gin up your own "search engine' for any set of websites you want.) The free version of Custom Search displays Google branding and ads and has limited design possibilities. We use a pro (paid) version on most of the KK* blogs (but not Cool Tools yet) which removes the ad and allows us to style the results in line with the rest of the site's design.
I still maintain the original Cool Tools email list. Members of the list get a weekly email with the 5 cool tools that week before they are posted on the website (usually). To get on the list you sign up here and provide a cool tool you love. I've been using a bare-bones email list manager called Minimalist. It really is minimal. You can only interact with it via email (!!), it is currently unsupported, and it was written eons ago. But it was free and worked. However lately we've had a few hiccups with it, so we will be moving onto a new mail list program, Dada Mail.
-- KK
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
KK* Lifestream
Peopleware
Money for Nothing
Lightweight, packable sacks
These reusable nylon bags are about the size of a plastic grocery bag, but are stronger, can hold a lot, and they pack into a self-contained pouch attached to the bag. They become very small when collapsed/packed and are very lightweight (1.5 oz). It takes me around five seconds, to stuff one back into its pouch (I think I've even done it in two). I find I can easily keep three ACME's in my not-huge handbag so I don't have to remember them; a lot of my shopping is done walking, so the car isn't the best place for them. I use them multiple times per day because of their convenient size and weight. Unlike the reusable shopping bags sold at grocery stores, these don't have a logo emblazoned on them, so I feel comfortable bringing them into any store. They're cheaper than similar bags of this nature I've seen. They also come in subdued colors -- I have three in black (I originally ordered four, but my boyfriend nabbed one as soon as he saw them! I also just ordered four more in a different color). Before purchasing I was concerned that they don't have a flat bottom -- I thought they might spill all over when I do throw them in my car. Turned out not to be a problem, because it's very easy to knot and unknot the handles. Because ACME's handles are part of the body of the bag, there are no seams to get stressed by the load. I definitely haven't maxed mine out, but ACME advertises it can hold up to 25lbs. I've mainly put things like a gallon of milk, plus other stuff - definitely things I would have doubled up a regular plastic bag for.
I save about 3-4 plastic bags or 2-3 paper bags each trip to the grocery, about 12 plastic bags per week, not counting all the other non-grocery places I pick up additional bags. I used to have a few of the Whole Foods-style reusable bags, but don't use them at all now. The ACME bags are far more portable. Helping the environment feels good, and I find the concept of reusable/self-contained things to be elegant, but the main reason I am so happy with the ACME bags is how much they've reduced the clutter in my life. I have a tendency to carry a lot of "junk" from place to place--home to car, work, and even within my house--and then I end up with large numbers of bags hanging around the house/car/work. Having only three ACME bags in use at once forces me to empty them immediately so I can use them again. And then I don't have to wonder what to do with the plastic bags I get from the store.
-- Maria Blees
ACME Workhorse Bag
$8
Available from ReusableBags.com
Or $24, buy 3/get 1 free from ReusableBags.com
Related items previously reviewed on Cool Tools:
Gossamer Whisper Uberlight Pack
Ikea Tote Bag
Grocery Bag Panniers
Classic, great outlets for gifts
Still hunting for the perfect gadgety gift? Looking to treat yourself to what you actually want but didn't know you need? You're bound to find something truly wonderful with one of these stores or catalogs previously reviewed in Cool Tools. I read magazines and blogs. I enjoy reviews and recommendations. Sometimes the best stuff materializes via happenstance clicking, especially if you know where to look.
-- Steven Leckart
X-Treme Geek
Like its competitor Think Geek, X-treme Geek favors products that are high tech, slightly unusual, maybe hackable, and certainly ingenious. However X-treme has a wider range of stuff than Think Geek... -- KK
Available at x-tremegeek.com
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McMaster-Carr Online Catalog
The best way to describe McMaster is to say that they carry everything you need to build anything. Items that you could normally only order through factory distributors, or materials that could only be ordered in large quantities, are easily available in any size and quantity, no matter how small. (No minimum order, either!) Their prices are excellent and they tend to only carry good merchandise... -- Alexander Rose
Available at McMaster.com
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Dynamism
The Japanese consumer often gets futuristic gadgets years before the American does. For those who can't wait, Dynamism.com imports advance Japanese goods. Their prices include appropriate duties, warrantees and modifications for the US market; for that service they charge about 30% more than the same device would demand in the Akihabara electronics mall of Tokyo. Dynamism.com specializes in ultra-lightweight laptops (like the coveted Libretto) and ultra-small digital cameras. Tomorrow's technology today. -- KK
Available at Dynamism.com
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Gemplers
The most he-man cool tool catalog I've come across yet. Gemplers began by supplying the hardware needs of commercial farmers. It now also serves gentleman farmers and dude ranchers, and anyone else working outside -- like contractors, surveyors, landscapers and groundskeepers. The catalog is huge: 563 pages of outdoor gear and heavy-duty tools that real men covet. Many of these tools are specialized or little known. Not just another industrial supply catalog, it's the ultimate backyard wishbook. Their service is good. -- KK
Available at Gemplers.com
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Harbor Freight Catalog
Both a web presence and a store chain with a mail order catalog, Harbor Freight imports really inexpensive machine, automotive and woodworking tools from the People's Republic of China. It's the first place to go for tools which are needed for one project but you don't anticipate a huge use for afterwards... -- Thayer G.
Available at HarborFreight.com
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
Google Catalogs
Guides to Gear
A Review of Review Sites
Compendium of product reviews
Since it debuted a few years ago, I've eagerly awaited the arrival of these product-packed issues of Wired. Tested, reviewed and rated are pretty much every gadget imaginable in every category imaginable (much of it very newly-released, too). Again, exclusively for Cool Tools readers, Wired's editor in chief Chris Anderson has graciously provided a pdf of the Fall issue (on newsstands today). What you get: 125 pages of solid content broken into specific sections and spreads, everything from A/V to office to kitchen to automotive to garden to gaming equipment and accessories. This means: flatscreens, laptops, lawnmowers, headphones, pocketcams, DV cams, blenders, cell phones, wine openers, strollers, and more, ranging from cheap to relatively affordable to the 'yeah right.' Items are rated on 10-pt. scale with "Editor's Picks" and specs-comparison "Scorecards" for the quick take away. Of course, the highs and lows for each and every product are detailed, warts and all, from the most minor annoyance to the biggest bonehead oversight. As a consumer, I value and crave the details. I read a ton of reviews prior to any purchase, especially those on Amazon and Epinions. There's still just something about glossy photos and thorough, thoughtful editing that makes a 'professional' guide like this virtually irreplaceable. File under: porn for consumers.
-- Steven Leckart
Wired Test
Available at Wired.com
Available for download (8MB PDF)
[DISCLOSURE: I contributed one short review to Fall Test; otherwise, I had absolutely no hand in its creation --sl]
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
A Review of Review Sites
Pricenoia
Guides to Gear
Recycled moving boxes
I have mixed feelings about U-Haul and their prices, but one thing they have done that is priceless is create and maintain a surprisingly helpful Box Exchange forum. It's a standard web forum divided into geographical areas so people can request free used boxes or make theirs available for free or cheap. We just saved ourselves $250. After responding to two posts, we had something lined up in no time. We drove into the city (Manhattan) the next day from where we live in Jersey City and picked up a bunch of boxes in various sizes that were practically brand new -- all for free. I basically ignored the "buy" forum as the "free" one was successful in under 24 hrs. We first tried Craigslist, but found that most people in our area at the time wanted money for boxes. From our experience, people on the U-Haul forum seemed willing to go a little out of their way to get rid of their boxes. Most of the posts are definitely from individuals, but interestingly, there were a couple of business disposing of boxes (we got ours from an electronics importer in Chinatown). We have not yet completed our big move to Wisconsin, but will be giving away our boxes the same way when we do.
-- Guil Barros
U-Haul Box Exchange
Available from U-Haul
[The site does not have anywhere near the critical mass of a Craigslist, but if you're looking to save $ and/or recycle, it's worth having another resource in your arsenal -sl]
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
Forearm Forklift
Freecycle
Nylon Hand Truck
Be(a)ware of how your belongings could track you
This book will make you look at every store-bought item you own or debate owning with a curious skepticism that -- after reading the book -- won't seem too unwarranted. It was published two years ago (a cheap paperback came out in the fall), but if you've yet to explore the fascinating, potentially paranoia-inducing, world of RFID and you want the cautionary, consumer-advocate perspective about the Radio Frequency Identification tracking being proposed -- and used! -- by certain companies (for instance, Gillette, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart), I highly recommend this one. I've been meaning to read it for a while and so some of the stories were familiar (i.e. the nightclub in Spain that chips its members), but there were plenty of bits that were new and interesting to me (i.e. all the patents IBM has applied for, including one for an RFID-enabled closet). Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre take a pretty sensationalist tone -- "Big Brother" is mentioned a number of times -- but the scope of the research is impressive (lots of endnotes) and their insight into how this tech could be abused is thought provoking.
-- Steven Leckart
Spy Chips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move
Katherine Albrecht & Liz McIntyre
2006 (paperback), 304 pages
$11
Available from Amazon
Sample Excerpts:
While it may occasionally occur to workers that their [employee ID and access] badges can squeal on their movements, there's one place they probably don't expect to find an RFID reader: the bathroom. But a company called Woodward Laboratories has found a way to embed a tag reader into a product they call the "iHygiene Perfect Pump." It's a liquid soap dispenser that doubles as an employee badge reader and monitoring device. To unsuspecting employees, the device appears to be a perfectly normal soap dispenser. But hidden within its sleek plastic exterior is an electronic spy that captures the ID badge number of the person standing at the sink...The handwashing surveillance system requires employees to wear RFID-enabled badges, but soon employees' actual uniforms could report on them instead. The nation's top two uniform rental companies, CIntas (which clothes workers at Starbucks, Disney, Sears, and Wal-Mart) and Ameripride (with clients like Ooutback Steakhouse, 3M, and Cherolet) have quietly begun slipping spychips into employee uniforms to keep track of washing and rental logistics. The tags come encased in sealed plastic disks that can withstand years of commercial laundering, yet still beam out their unique ID numbers whenever they come within range of a reader device.
After minor successes chipping nightclub revelers [in Spain via Applied Digital], the RFID industry turned its marketing efforts to an even more acquiescent crowd: the dead. They were on hand with microchips to implant into the corpses of the victims after the devastating Southeast Asia tsunami, and they're ready to help should research organizations like the University of California decide to embed RFID chips into cadavers and associated body parts. The school is considering microchips as one possible way to stop the illicit trafficking of human remains donated to their school in the wake of lawsuits by donor families.
More...
Simple intro to ethical consumerism
I normally steer clear of overview texts, but I have to say this book, part of the "Rough Guide" series, is an excellent, refreshingly straightforward resource on how to consume with higher ethical standards. Granted there is some overlap with Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century, but this book -- a cheaper paperback (printed on paper made from 100% recycled fiber) -- focuses less on interesting cultural tidbits and inspirational sketches of specific communities. Instead, it's a no-nonsense look at the in's and out's of the plethora of choices you can make to change and manage your impact. There are very concise, instructive passages on topics like ecotourism, local vs. organic, clean cosmetics, socially responsible investment (SRI) -- including a four-step plan for "Greening your pension fund" -- as well as the benefits of switching to solar, wind and/or micro-hyrdo systems (For instance, did you know the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy [DSIRE] maps the tax incentives and grants available in various states?). Overall, it reads like one of those "Complete Idiot's Guide" books, which is precisely why it's so useful. The sections are short and the language is clear. Considering how much info is floating around online, this book could really help cut through the noise and arm you with the basics.
-- Steven Leckart
Shopping with a Conscience
Duncan Clark & Richie Unterberger
2007, 344 pages
$12
Available from Amazon
Sample Excerpts:
The 'e' word is without a shadow of a doubt subjective, morally loaded and often problematic. And it's easy to make ethical consumerism sound laughable by taking it to its apparently absurd logical conclusions. But, while you could spend hours arguing over the subjectivity of it all, semantic nit-picking is not really very good grounds for ignoring the effects we have on the rest of the world. And, while we have all our own specific ideas of what should and shouldn't count as accepted standards, it's probably fair to say that we all aspire to some common idealsŠIt's surely more constructive to ask how these standards can be achieved than to argue over whether or not ethical shopping is an oxymoron.
*
Babies may account for a small percentage of family biomass, but when fitted with disposable diapers they generate roughly half the contents of a household's trash. A typical baby gets through around 5000 disposables during its diaper days; across the US, this adds up to an astonishing 20 billion each year, enough to cover a football field with a three-mile high pile.
*
Certain volunteering projects aside, there's no point in deluding ourselves that we're saving the world by going on vacation; but if tourists and travel companies act and operate with an eye on social justice and environmental sustainability, there's no reason the destination countries can't reap more of the benefits and bear fewer of the costsŠ Advocates of ecotourism claim that the sector has contributed a great deal both to conservation and economic empowerment of people in remote regions. However, the term has been tarnished by criticism from a range of commentators. One issue is that ecotourism has no legally binding definition, which means there's nothing to stop an unscrupulous travel agent from slapping the label on any nature-focused holiday, regardless of the damage it may cause.
*
Be mindful, too, that many of the companies that offer "green" power alternatives are sometimes subsidiaries of larger companies that own nuclear and coal power plants, like Southern California Edison, which offered "Earthsource" through its Edison Source division. And some of the companies with green options are themselves large and notorious financial powers - Enron, for instance, offered a green "EarthSmarth Power" plan to California consumers when that state was open to competition, though it was scrapped just a few months later after it proved unprofitable. Standards across the whole green energy field remain so erratically defined and enforced that vigilant customers would do well to heed the Union of Concerned Scientists' advice about dealing with green electric suppliers in general: "Be skeptical and ask questions."
*
Compared with clothes production, shoe manufacture tends to be more industrial and hi-tech - something that usually means longer-term contracts and more leverage over labor conditions for brands and retailersŠ[However] There is still not a single company in the Fair Labor Association specializing in non-sporting shoes, so this industry clearly has a long way to go. Right now, just about the only shoe shops that seem concerned with ethical matters are specialists producing non-leather shoes.
*
The mortgage industry is a huge part of the US economy; in 2002 alone, it financed $2.5 trillion in loans. Considering what a massive business it is - and how the building of "green" or environmentally responsible real estate is itself a rapidly growing field - it's rather astonishing that there are virtually no companies or financial institutions specializing in "ethical" mortgagesŠThere is one company that does make a clear commitment to supporting environmental and social causes as part of its standard operation. MortgageGreen based in Marin County near San Francisco, earmarks 10% of its profits for a dozen organizations devoted to environmental sustainability and progressive social change, including the Rainforest Action Network, Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice and Adbusters. As with socially responsible credit cards, this could take a while to add up to a substantial sum, though as the company points out in its literature, if just one in a thousand US mortgages were funded through such a program, $5 million would be generated annually. MortgageGreen says it will beat any mortgage lender's total loan package cost, and contribute $400 to its social and environmental activism fund in the borrower's name if it can't meet that obligation for any reason.
Encyclopedia for (bright) green living
Chasing a guilt-free, consumption-rich lifestyle can be exhausting. Managing your ecological footprint, however, isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. It starts with incremental change(s) - or, as this book suggests, it first necessitates a certain awareness of your environment, the objects in it, and the origins, travels and projected lifespan of said objects. Fittingly, the book begins with a chapter on "Stuff" (and, incidentally, the Guide was printed on recycled paper and wind power credits were purchased to account for the energy it took to print each copy). One of seven sections transposed from the Worldchanging blog (Shelter, Cities, Community, Business, Politics and Planet are the other six), "Stuff" alone left me dumbfounded as I perused my home. Nevertheless, the book's steadfast optimism and do-what-you-can attitude rescues it from the preachy, doom-and-gloom self-righteousness that can plague a lot of 'environmentalist' works. The Guide also provides informative sketches of communities far and wide that are exploring and enacting change of all types. It's a good introductory resource on a staggering range of material -- everything from biomimicry to freecycling, citizen science and social entrepreneurship to prefab and Brazil's telecentros. If you happen to know each of those in detail, there's more than 500 pages of other ideas (plus dozens of other books and sites highlighted within). Sure you could just tune into the blog, but owning a physical, inspirational snapshot of where we're at now means you can revisit it in time, if only to see what sticks.
-- Steven Leckart
Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century
Alex Steffen (Edited), Al Gore (Foreword), Bruce Sterling (Introduction)
2006, 608 pages
$25
Available from Amazon
Also independent bookstores near you
[DISCLOSURE: Kevin Kelly's name is one of several that appear on the jacket cover of this book and within.
Yes, he publishes Cool Tools. No, he didn't give me the book or suggest I cover it. -- sl]
Sample excerpts:
Good intentions are great, but remember that only passion changes the world. There are more avenues for action than even the most motivated overachiever among us could ever pursue. So we shouldn't try to do everything: we should try to do the right things. When we seize the chance to make changes that are both important and speak to us as people, we transcend good intentions and more meaningfully express who we are. Why be boring? Why follow other people's instructions for designing a better life? The world needs more passionate people, deeply engaged with the business of designing their own lives in ways that speak to them. From passion comes creativity, and from creativity come better answers.
The equation we should all follow is this: do the easy things, then do a few more challenging things that we really believe in and enjoy. If we're home repair geeks, we should green our homes. If we're policy geeks, we should find the best practices around, adopt them, and improve them. If we're fashion geeks, we should show the world exactly how fabulous dressing green can be. If we're business geeks, we should make our fortunes selling a sustainable product the world really needs. If we're gardening geeks, we should make the yards in our care thrum with life. The world doesn't need our suffering, it needs our shining examples, and every one of us has an example to set.
*
How can we tell if the two-by-four we're about to purchase came from a muddy clear-cut or a careful, selective harvest? Did it have the tree's equivalent of a happy, cage-free, grass-fed life?
Forestry nerds spent the better part of the mid-1990s figuring out how a wood buyer could answer those questions. The result was a system of third-party certification, in which a trusted entity separate from both the buyer and the timber industry vouches for the wood. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) - an independent agency including environmentalists, foresters, and indigenous peoples - sets the standard. Accredited audit firms inspect forests and mills; the ones that pass may affix the FSC trademark to their wood. Globally, 168 million acres (68 million hectares) are currently certified. It may sound like a lot, but combined, that worldwide total only actually equals the size of Texas...
Beware of imitations: a year after FSC started up, Big Timber's main trade association, the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA), created its own standard, called the Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI). For all its slick public relations, SFI has yet to shake its reputation as an industry greenwashing group. The tip-off? Every last member of the AF&PA, from International Paper on down, has won certification, despite their widespread practices of clear-cutting and raising single-species tree farms.
*
Seafood Watch, a program launched by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, has created a concise, informative list to help fish lovers keep track of which species we can grill free of cares, and which are ecological no-no's. The Californian aquarium offers this information to visitors on a wallet-sized reference card. It can also be downloaded or requested from the aquarium's Web site... Updated regularly to reflect improvements and declines in fish populations, the searchable online Seafood Guide has detailed information on the ecological status and nutritional value of different species of wild and farmed seafood.
*
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Communist Cuba not only lost its biggest buyer (the Soviet Union had paid above-market rates for Cuban industrial-agriculture products such as sugar), but it also found itself faced with a U.S. embargo, and at a distinct advantage in the global economy. As a result, Cuba had no money with which to buy oil, fertilizers, or pesticides - the main ingredients in factory farming.
One result was hunger. In 1989 Cubans were consuming an average of 3,000 calories per day; by 1993 that number had dropped to 1,900 - the equivalent of skipping one meal. The Cuban response to this crisis, born out of necessity, was to create a system of sustainable agriculture that was not reliant on fossil fuels or global shipping systems...
The government instituted a program that turned Havana's many vacant lots into farms or community gardens, virtually handing the land off to anyone who agreed to turn it into a viable food source. This scheme was so successful - many neighborhoods were able to produce at least 30 percent of their own food - that it quickly spread to other cities. Today, Havana's crumbling buildings are stitched together with farms and gardens. Forty-one percent of Havana's urban area is used for agriculture, and the city generates 51 percent of Cuba's vegetables...
Best of all, most of what Cuba produces is de factor organic, because the lack of available pesticides and fertilizers meant that scientists and farmers had to devise ways of protecting and controlling crops using only what nature provided.
More...
Seeking the origin of our food
This is a behavior-changing book. It explores the origin of modern North American food and challenges you, the reader, to confront the genesis of what you eat. It does not begin as you think it does. Author Pollan, now an enlightened omnivore, challenges everyone to take responsibility for their food -- no matter what it is -- by tracking its path back to the sun. If you can face the path of your food in full knowledge and be at ease with it, then happy eating! If not, then Pollan traces out interesting alternative food paths, pioneered by memorable characters full of great stories. For instance he feels obligated as a meat-eater to not only to witness the slaughter of his meat, but even to kill it himself if he can. He leads us steadily all the way down this road without ever scaring us off. As one experiment, he prepares a meal with food that he either hunted or grew himself, and again tracks its moral and energetic path to the table. Almost everyone I know who has read this book, including our family, has altered their eating habits in interesting and unexpected ways.
-- KK
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Michael Pollan
2006, 451 pages
$18
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Descendants of the Maya living in Mexico still sometimes refer to themselves as "the corn people." The phrase is not intended as a metaphor. Rather, it's meant to acknowledge their abiding dependence on this miraculous grass, the staple of their diet for almost nine thousand years. Forty percent of the calories a Mexican eats in a day comes directly from corn, most of it in the form of tortillas. So when a Mexican says "I am maize" or "corn walking," it is simply a statement of fact: The very substance of the Mexican's body is to a considerable extent a manifestation of this plant.
Researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of North Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn. "When you look at the isotope ratios," Todd Dawson, a Berkeley biologist who's done this sort of research, told me, "we North Americans look like corn chips with legs." Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar.
So that's us: processed corn, walking.
*
One way to look at the breeding work going on at ranches like the Blairs' is that the contemporary beef cow is being selected for the ability to eat large quantities of corn and efficiently convert it to protein without getting too sick. The species is evolving, in other words, to help absorb the excess biomass coming off America's cornfields. But the cow's not there quite yet, and a great many feedlot cattle -- virtually all of them to one degree or another, according to several animal scientists I talked to -- are simply sick.
Cattle rarely live on feedlot diets for more than 150 days, which might be about as much as their systems can tolerate....
What keeps a feedlot animal healthy -- or healthy enough -- are antibiotics. Rumensin buffers acidity in the rumen, helping to prevent bloat and acidosis, and Tylosin, a form of erythromycin, lowers the incidence of liver infection. Most of the antibiotics sold in America today end up in animal feed, a practice that, it is now generally acknowledged (except in agriculture), is leading directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
*
Though it was only the third week of June, the pasture beneath me had already seen several rotational turns. Before being cut earlier in the week for the hay that would feed the farm's animals though the winter, it had been grazed twice by beef cattle, which after each day-long stay had been succeeded by several hundred laying hens. They'd arrived by Eggmobile, a ramshackle portable henhouse designed and built by Salatin. Why chickens? "Because that's how it works in nature," Salatin explained. "Birds follow and clean up after herbivores." And so during their turn in the pasture, the hens had performed several ecological services for the cattle as well as the grass: They'd picked the tasty grubs and fly larvae out of the cowpats, in the process spreading the manure and eliminating parasites. (This is what Joel has in mind when he says the animals do the work around here; the hens are his "sanitation crew," the reason his cattle have no need of chemical parasiticides.) And while they were at it, nibbling on the short cattle-clipped grasses they like best, the chickens applied a few thousand pounds of nitrogen to the pasture -- and produced several thousand uncommonly rich and tasty eggs. After a few week's rest, the pasture will be grazed again, each steer turning these lush grasses into beef at the rate of two or three pounds per day.
More...
Best documentaries ever
This is version 2 of my reviews of the best documentaries and factuals available. This time I review 150 of the best true films and list two dozen others which I deem only "good." For each film I present 4 or 5 screen shots, and captions, which I snagged from the film to give you some idea of their texture. As before I only review films that are easily available at consumer prices. That means films in theatrical release or locked up in "educational" pricing schemes are not included.
You have about 5 different ways to get this book. I designed the book in color, but you can buy a black and white softcover version from Lulu.com, where it is the cheapest, or for a bit more from Amazon, where it is the easiest to order. Or you can buy a luxurious 156-page full color softcover version from Lulu. Or you can buy a dirt cheap color version as a PDF download, and get it instantly. In a few weeks you'll be able to get versions for e-book readers and PDAs.
Now here is the thing. In each mode, I make exactly the same profit: $1.50 per book. In an experiment in new publishing I have priced each version $1.50 above my costs. So the different prices merely reflect the different costs of that venue. This means I don't care which edition you choose! Whether you buy the $2 PDF version, or the $30 color Lulu print version, or order from Amazon, I make exactly the same $1.50 per book. As I add other options for purchase the same process will apply: my total markup will be $1.50 above my costs.
Do I need to mention there is the free website version? Not as handy as a book, but updated with my latest additional reviews. However, I'm partial to the book version. It is a great browse, very concentrated and accessible and as it says on the cover "Perfect for Netflix."
-- KK
PDF Download
$2
Available from me via PayPal
$1.88
Available from Lulu
Black and white softcover book
$10
Available from Lulu
Black and white book
$20
Available from Amazon
Color softcover book
$30
Available from Lulu
TrueFilms website
Free guides to geeky gift stuff
Since I'm in the gear business, I pay attention to the many End of the year Gift Guides that pop up now. Most of these collections are filled with stuff that doesn't interest me. For some reason editors, and maybe consumers, are entranced by gear that looks cool. You know, very design-y. These fashionable objects don't work better, and often work worse, than what is already out there. As utility objects they are junk. Most often the editors haven't even handled, let alone used, the object they are listing. It's inclusion is simply based on the clever look and concept. And what is not fashionable, is electronic. Most holiday lists are full of all kinds of the latest cell phone/camera/DVD player/PDA and so on. As far as I can tell these items are selected for their features -- as listed on the product's spec sheet -- and not by any trial or use. Their supposed advantage in reality has a half-life of about 3 months, as their feature list is topped by the next model.
There are a few seasonal lists that don't get sucked in by these temptations and actually try hard to uncover new cool tools. Here are a few that I find have a high ratio of hits to junk. The primary quality they share is that the reviews have used the thing and demonstrate some passion and intelligence for it.
-- KK
Uncle Mark 2007 Gift Guide & Almanac
Mark Hurst runs the Gel Conference in NYC and every year writes up his personal recommendations of what you should get -- along with some other tips. He offers this advice in a very smart, succinct and well-crafted PDF, which is a joy to read.
*
Wired's TEST
It's a lot more work than you'd think, but Wired actually tests the contenders in two dozen gadget catagories and comes up with clear suggestions of the best gear to get. You'll get the magazine-like issue if you subscribe. If you don't, you can get the web version for free here.
*
NPR's Great Gadgets
NPR's daily All Things Considered program has a small segment where gadget experts rave about their own favorites. Called "Great Gadgets" it lets various gadget aficionados rave about their favorite things. You can listen to those segments online. [Thanks to Gregg Lewis for the suggestion.]
*
2006 Street Tech Holiday Gift Guide
Gareth Branwyn collects the best of the stuff he had seen in a year of reviewing gear for his online site Street Tech and distills the best for the year. It is a personal selection, of (mostly) stuff that he uses, which gives the recommendations some clout.
Austerity minder
I come from a long line of women whose lives were one long austerity measure, and I understand a lot of the basic principles for getting by with a smile: save cash, spend downtime increasing household efficiency, make your own stuff, and hang tight.
But it can be hard to change any habit, including habits about how we spend money. It's easy to slip into a rut of buying the same stuff all the time at the grocery store without noticing weekly price fluctuations. Using the Handy Adder is an effective and weirdly fun way to reconnect your attention with every item and not get hosed or miss big price increases. It's the grocery store version of Be Here Now.
Onward, Mighty Bargain Hunters!
-- Lisa Williams
Handy Adder
$5
Available from The Five and Ten
Landscaping tools
The source for all your nursery, grounds-keeping, and landscaping needs. Pages and pages of every variety of rakes, rows of shovels, more carts than you knew, sprinklers, clippers, pruners, and so on. These tools are aimed at pros, but creative and diligent amateurs will find plenty of interest here.
-- KK
|
|
|
Super Pole Saw, $153;
|
Toolite Shovel, for working in mud, $53
|
A. M. Leonard
Really smart yellow pages
Yokel makes finding local "things" less time-consuming and more cost-efficient (especially with the gas prices these days). Similar to GoogleMaps and YahooLocal but with more relevant results. And the Yokel search engine helps comparison shop online for things you want to buy offline at local stores. All you need to do is type in what you are looking for and the city or zip code you want to buy it in and Yokel provides the results. It seemed really helpful for items you wouldn't want to ship or more abstract items like a motorcycle trailer.
-- Kate
Yokel
DVD Online Publishing Service
This on-line DVD publishing option just changed the world of self-distribution of videos and documentaries. Put a DVD online at Lulu. They take orders and professionally print, package, and mail the dvd. They automatically calculate royalties and send them to you. Their cut is 20% of royalties, or a minimum of 20 cents per DVD whichever is more.
After setting it up, all you need to do is give your potential buyers a web address and lulu takes care of everything else. I'm going to put a short hospice documentary on Lulu in a couple weeks, where it should sell for about $8, shipping included. That's about the minimum cost for a single DVD.
You don't have to manage the copying, packaging, shipping or billing.
-- Tony Levelle
[Kevin Kelly's recommendations for self-publishing on Amazon.com were distributed in a previous Cool Tools dispatch, archived here. Amazon takes a bigger percentage than Lulu, however. -- CP]
$ price varies
Available from
Lulu
Cool tools for others
A few readers have asked for Cool Tool gift ideas. Here are a few recommendations from the past year:
Bugzooka
Elegant bug removal
20Q
Ten dollar AI
Genographic DNA Testing
Personal genetic literacy
Hoky Carpet Sweeper
Quicker than a vacuum
How to Cook Everything
Best Basic Cookbook
Wedgits
3D tangrams
MouthSounds
Special effects by mouth
Smartwool Socks
Superior outdoor socks
Genuine aviation surplus
I weld, build, and purposely tangle myself up in lots of computers/servers. I discovered two surplus stores that not only provide material fuel for all of the aforementioned activities but at a great discount no less. Both stores are open to the public and offer everything from large precision machinery to fiber optic cables to airplane leather by the roll (!). I spotted a Herman Miller Eames molded office chair at the Boeing store (sold tag on it) while I was walking out with my $15 in purchases, an IBM M-series (clickety) keyboard, and a portable DIGITAL anti-static electronics workspace circa 1970. If you are a grade school science teacher with a dwindling budget for demonstration instruments, or an art teacher in need of found objects for your class on sculpture or still life drawing, these places might be useful. Perhaps you're just in need of milling equipment, pneumatic tools, safes, drafting tables, powered work carts, or raw sheets of aluminum, mild and stainless steel, titanium even. It's there if you ask. Oscilloscopes are often for sale at less than $50. I recently acquired another Sun Microsystems Ultra-x, which was one too many, and I saw that the laser printers which I ought to have bought instead were on sale for $10 that day.
Too good to be true? Sometimes. While there are online listings, there is no online purchasing so one is bound by geography and you have to go often as the good stuff rapidly departs. Take your time on a nice day to explore both the inside hanger and outside lots for things. Bring a truck and some friends to help you move the stuff. The large equipment goes quickly and the electronic and computers/peripherals are usually untested. Drill bits and calipers are plane- and submarine-building size, though great candidates for creative adaptive reuse reincarnations into your latest robotics project. The best finds are sometimes boxes of widgets that, when asked what they are, the staff smirk, shrug, and tell you they can't remember. Respect that most of the people there, at P&W certainly, seem to know what everything is to insure that the stuff gets priced accordingly and, more importantly, to make sure nothing whose purpose was previously classified, is marked or misplaced.
The Boeing store is the larger of the two and Pratt & Whitney is only open 3 days a week. I'm sure there are more of these shops around but I've only just found these.
-- Shin Ae
Boeing Recovery and Surplus Sales
Kent, Washington
Pratt & Whitney
400 Main Street
East Hartford, CT
06108
(860) 565 6850
Tues, Thurs, Sat 8-4:30pm
860-557-1255 fax
[There is currently no website for the P&W Surplus Store]
There are indeed other great surplus stores. Ebay is great for everything, but sometimes you just need to wander around a huge warehouse full of old junk just to see what's there. The most comprehensive listing of large and unusual surplus gear stores state-by-state can be found below. (If there is a better national list, please let me know.)
Also, a tip I heard: Almost any college or university has a place for getting rid of old stuff. A well-known sculptor who was often asked to lecture at various schools across the country, always made sure he requested to see the school's surplus facilities while he was visiting. At one university where he had just given a paid talk he found his usual request led to a large closet filled with steel balls that NASA had rejected after testing, but were ideal for sculpture. "Needless to say I spent my whole paycheck there."
-- KK
National listing of surplus stores by state
Special metal working tools
Eastwood is primarily an auto-body parts and tools supplier, but oh what tools. For example, welding equipment. You might not need TiG welding equipment, but you might find use for the gloves (fireplaces) or the jeweler's torch. Or painting equipment. You probably don't need to powdercoat brake calipers, but you *could* powdercoat your grill, lawn furniture, whatever.
Or maybe you need shop tools. Specialty tools like garage wheel alignment on the cheap, or your own garage lift (user-installable!). Wheel dollies for moving cars in your multi-car garage laterally. I first encountered the catalog because I needed tracer dye for a head gasket leak; I ended up buying hard-to-find 3M abrasive pads for removing the old gasket material as well as the dye and the UV lamp. Best thing about it? Buy something once and you get the catalog for well over a year. There's always something in it if you're a handy kinda person....
-- Christopher Wanko
Eastwood has long been one of my favorites. I have found their stuff to be just what they say it is, and their service all one could ask. I have especially liked their lineup of tools that are very hard to find elsewhere. Many times, just seeing items in the catalog has enabled me to come up with design solutions, and let me make the parts I need. Yummy Yum.
-- J. Baldwin
Eastwood catalog
Sample item:
I released a small number of this self-published book on Amazon, but they are now sold out. Because of the demand for the book, I've now made an inexpensive PDF version available.
What it is: "True Films" contains the best 100 documentaries I've reviewed here as of December, 2004. I winnowed some from the larger list, and came up with an alphabetical collection of 100 documentaries I feel are worth your time. Most people will enjoy the majority included. There's been one private film club launched around this list.
What you get for your $3: a downloadable PDF file of a color version of the book (which was printed in B&W).
Enjoy, and let me know what great documentaries or factuals I've missed.
-- KK
True Films 1.1 -- PDF version
2004, 52 pages, 15 MB
$3
Available via PayPal
Hacking iron
I love this catalog. It takes DIY to a new level. Lindsay is the mother-lode for information about making your own stuff, including tools, from scratch. They publish recipes for melting metals in your backyard -- and then bootstraping the metal into a lathe which can make all other tools. Now that is cool! They've got it all covered: Amazing shop books from the past (metal hasn't changed much), and how-to-manuals from contemporary eccentrics who cobble together blast furnaces. They specialize in hacking metal. But why stop there? The same skills apply to hacking with chemicals, electricity, and home-made versions of big science equipment. In fact, if it is big, heavy or dangerous, Lindsay will tell you how to do it.
-- KK
Lindsay Publications
Free catalog
Sample books:
Building Small Cupola Furnaces
"A book on home metal casting and building your own foundry."
Now here's an excellent self-published book about melting iron in a cupola. It's a bit on the expensive side, but Marshall knows what he's talking about. And the book is worth every bit the price if you're serious about melting iron. It's one of the best I've seen. There are no photos, but lots of informative drawings, and most important, lots of operational detail. In other words, you get hints and tips that can only come from someone who has done it. If you want to melt iron, you must have this. Expensive, but it delivers. Get one! 8 1/2 x 11 wire spiral binding 100 pages
No. 1442 ... $25.00
Metal Lathe
Build a 7" capacity metal cutting lathe accurate to .001". 12" between centers. 5" swing over saddle. Uses castings produced by the charcoal foundry. Cost only about $50 (fifteen years ago). Some incredible lathes have been built as a result of this classic book. You can do it, too. Detailed, proven how-to. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 softcover 128 pages
No. 177 ... $9.95
Build A Carbon Arc Torch
Put a large electrical current between a slightly separated pair of carbon electrodes and you get a 9000 F flame useful for melting metal, welding and brazing. Meador will show you how to build a carbon arc torch using wood, tubing and commonly available carbon electrodes. You really don't need much money or expertise to build an excellent working torch. You do need a source of high-amperage current such as an arc welder, or use the simple water resistor below. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 booklet 30 pages
No. 1349 ... $6.95
Outdoor tool supermarket
The most he-man cool tool catalog I've come across yet. Gemplers began by supplying the hardware needs of commercial farmers. It now also serves gentleman farmers and dude ranchers, and anyone else working outside -- like contractors, surveyors, landscapers and groundskeepers. The catalog is huge: 563 pages of outdoor gear and heavy-duty tools that real men covet. Many of these tools are specialized or little known. Not just another industrial supply catalog, it's the ultimate backyard wishbook. Their service is good.
-- KK
Gemplers
Catalog free with order
Gemplers
Their 2003 paper catalog is reproduced at
Google Catalogs
Micro-niche, long-tail publishing
For several years I've been producing books, CDS, and DVD in small quantities for small audiences. Micro-publishing. Or to use the apt phrase of Chris Anderson at Wired: mining the Long Tail, a place where the little that sells a lot is equaled by a lot that sells a little.
I've had numerous requests from readers for the secrets of getting their self-published material on Amazon. It's no secret, but here is what I have learned in the last few years about how to get your book, CD or DVD listed on Amazon.
First, why? I began listing self-published material on Amazon because I wanted a way to reach the wider public with my stuff but I did not want to have to deal with shipping out copies to each customer who ordered on my website. For a small-timer like me, mailing out, and keeping track of onesies and twosies is very disruptive for my day job. By having my stuff on Amazon, Amazon's mighty enterprise became my shipper (they are very good at this), so the only place I have to ship my copies to is to their warehouse.
More importantly, as popular as my website may or may not be, it doesn't compare to the traffic headed to Amazon to search for books and DVDs. By having my stuff pop up among the big publisher's offerings for "similar books" or even in reader's lists and guides, my titles gain a greater chance to be seen and ordered. In a certain way, unless your stuff is available on Amazon, it ain't available. In fact for better or worse, the only way you can purchase my books is via Amazon. As a side benefit, by focusing all my sales via Amazon, tiny advances in sales are magnified by Amazon's sales rank, which garner it more attention, more links via recommendations, which increases sales in the hoped for virtuous circle.
The cost of using Amazon is high. They take 55% of the "official" price (not the sale price but the price you originally determine). That means that even if they discount the book (good for sales), the discount is coming out of their half. But it means you are only getting 45% of your listed price. In addition you pay for shipping books there, and of course for printing them, so the math does not encourage fortune making. Most self-published books are in the "long tail" zone, selling only a few copies per month. I've done better, selling several thousand copies over a couple of years, but still: This is not a way to make money; this is a way to distribute your message.
In 8 easy steps, here is how to get your book, CD, or DVD listed on the long tail of Amazon:
1 Get an ISBN (for a book), or a UPC (for a CD or DVD). For one book it costs $125, for one CD, $55, for one DVD, $89.
2 Get a bar code based on the ISBN or UPC. Costs $10, or may be included in UPC.
3 Sign up with Amazon, $30 per year.
4 Duplicate your stuff; include the bar code on the outside.
5 Ship two copies to Amazon
6 Send cover scan
7 Track sales
8 Resgister it (optional)
-- KK (with Michele McGinnis)
The full details, with how-to tips and links to recommended sources, are as follows.
More...
Old book; new cheap digital version
For $3.50 you can get a full-color, indexed, hot-linked version of the Cool Tools book.
This 140-page collection of cool tools very much resembles the old Whole Earth Catalog in style and substance. If you liked those old Catalogs, you'll find this one just as invigorating and chirpy. It's compiled from evaluations taken from this site.
But with a copyright date of 2003, some reviewed items are now stale, outdated or obsolete. However, many more -- probably most -- remain the best things to use and won't be easily superceded. I still use the book myself. If you want a black & white version you can order one from Amazon (below).
But I have a better offer: a digital download. Halfway between a book and a website, PDF digital books are pioneering a third way. With this Cool Tools PDF you get several things the printed version does not have (but the web does): an index, clickable active hyperlinks in the text, and glorious full-color. At the same time the PDF version retains the easy to browse design and rapid navigation of a book, which the web does not have. And it is a lot cheaper than a book, immediate in its delivery, and smaller to store. I find myself reading a lot of PDFs and growing comfortable in their habits.
The form is still experimental; I'd love to hear your feedback.
-- KK
Cool Tools
2003.1 PDF version
146 pages, 24mb
$3.50
Available via Pay Pal
Cool Tools
$17
Amazon
Bargain tools
Both a web presence and a store chain with a mail order catalog, Harbor Freight imports really inexpensive machine, automotive and woodworking tools from the People's Republic of China. It's the first place to go for tools which are needed for one project but you don't anticipate a huge use for afterwards. They also have beguiling assortments of clamps, safety equipment, casters and consumables. Not everything smacks of first rate quality but the tools generally are sturdier than the lightweight offerings from the likes of Black and Decker, and still significantly cheaper.
-- Thayer G.
Harbor Freight
The satisficing approach to shopping
Costco is the Ur warehouse club store. They have a decent choice of one model for each type of product, but at jaw-dropping prices.
My allegiance to Costco is a running joke between me and Stewart Brand. He finds it funny that I buy almost everything I can there. Let's see, I recently got a fine leather jacket I wear all the time ($89), a DVD player, batteries by the score, an okay digital camera, and real Vermont maple syrup by the gallon ($12).
Costco has become my personal shopper. I do some research, then I buy what they sell. Like all discount chains they have professionals working full time looking for deals/quality. But what I like about Costco is their niche -- which is my niche. They consistently find a bargain in the "highest common denominator" bracket. What they seem to aim for, and what I am happy with, is the highest quality common quality. Not the very best, not the cheapest, and not mediocre either, but a good brand-name bargain in the high middle. They consistently deliver a great price on a very popular and competent item. It's neither optimization (the top model with the most features), nor is it minimization (cheapest per feature) nor plain thriftiness. Rather Costco aims for some sort of consumer satisficing, to use Herb Simon's term: a high quality that is just good enough, but at a low-end price.
They make shopping easy by eleminating the tyranny of non-essential choice. You don't have to waste cycles trying to scrutinize similar models or brands. They do that for you: "here's the good enough one you need" they say. The typical Wal-Mart store will have 80,000 unique stock items; the typical Costco will have only 3,500.
Right now I shop there almost weekly. Costco has a reputation for bulk food items, but many of these are slow perishables, and many items are not that bulky. Since we have a large household, their food prices are simply too inexpensive to ignore; we buy 25 lb. sacks of flour and rice by for almost nothing per pound. Milk in 2 gallon cartons, eggs by the 18, fruit by the crate, drinks on pallets, etc. We get our eyeglasses and contacts there. I buy film and get it processed way cheap on Kodak paper. And car tires! It's crazy to think about getting tires anywhere else. Plus they increasingly have great tools, and if you are willing to adopt the satisficing mode they excel in, you can get the best deals on electronic gizmos like walkie talkies, refrigerators, vacuums, kitchen gear, office furniture and so on. If the store sells gasoline, they price it a dime cheaper per gallon than anywhere else in town. Some of their best deals are one-offs; items that appear briefly and then are gone forever: over the years I've seen fantastic (not corny) authentic stain glass windows for cheap, great wet suits, new hot tubs about half off, and I kid you not, funeral caskets (where I would hope "good enough" would suffice).
One other thing about Costco which they don't advertise. They will take any item (except computers) back any time. People do abuse this, but it makes shopping there a no brainer.
-- KK
Costco
$45 per year membership
Global Amazon shopping
This little site is an international Amazon stores comparison engine.
Amazon has 6 stores in the world: USA, UK, Germany, France, Canada and Japan. A lot of products are offered in all the stores, or many of them. Well, prices vary A LOT between stores. If you are from the US, you can get cheaper products from Canada (music, dvs) or UK (import music mainly). If you are from somewhere else, it's even better! People tend to think that the best store to order from is the nearest one. Well, that's absolutely false. Europeans can usually get stuff cheaper from the US (including shipping) than from any other European store. And for other countries, this site shows you many Amazon stores to check and it sure can have nice surprises.
The site gets prices, puts them in your currency and then adds shipping cost to your country (looks like they get it from your IP).
Pricenoia has a couple of nice add-ons. A bookmarklet that lets you compare prices when you are looking at a product page at Amazon, and a graph of the price evolution over time for every product in every store.
A great tool for the holiday season, and a good reference for the rest of the year!
-- Leon C.
Pricenoia
A Wired Consumer Reports
Wow! What a treat. TEST is a trial publication from Wired magazine featuring Consumer Reports' type testing on fast-moving electronic gear. TEST comparatively evaluates a surprisingly thorough range of gear, and their judgements seem to be reasonable, rather than just fashionable. The best surprise of all is that TEST does the one key thing so many magazines dare not do -- that is, they actually say: we tried all of these and this one is the best. Why is that so hard to do? Because it steps on advertiser's toes. So, may the force be with TEST. Out of all the many year-end holiday lists of gadgets I've seen online and in magazines, this is the only one I think has any merit as a trustworthy guide. Great job.
BTW, this special issue should not be confused with the annual roundup of gadgets and gifts in Wired's December TOOL issue, although it will be. And I had absolutely nothing to do with TEST's creation and no foreknowledge about its appearance. I'm just a happy reader.
This first issue of TEST was printed in limited quantities, but Wired's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has made a PDF of its content available online exclusively for Cool Tool readers in case you can't find it on your local newsstand, where it should be until the end of the year.
-- KK
Wired TEST
PDF download
If that site is overloaded, I have a mirror of the PDF here.
Better than the yellow pages
It's still in beta but I find it indispensable. You tell Google where you live. Then you type in what you are looking for locally -- say Indian food, or passport photos, or chair rentals -- and then it gives you the shops and services in your area, with links, displayed on a map. You can narrow the range you want to travel. That's where most yellow pages stop, but Google Local goes further. Like in Froogle, you can type in very specific items like balloon helium, or garden topsoil, or ski boots -- not just the thousand common headings found in the yellow pages -- and Google Local will steer to you it in your city or county. (It still has trouble finding products by brand in a store, but maybe it will someday.) When you click on a source, Google gives you the reference pages on why it suggested that company, which is often helpful in evaluating whether they do indeed have what you want. Unlike the yellow pages, they include all stores,not just paying clients (although they have advertisers, too) so you get a much broader selection. It is not foolproof by any means, but it is now my first stop for local shopping.
-- KK
Google Local
Meta review site
Consumer Search isn't a review site per se but rather a metareview site, similar to Rottentomatoes.com. They spend the time running around the net, digging up reviews of items, rate those reviews on objectivity and completeness, then correlate them all.
It's not as up-to-date as I'd like it, nor does it cover every item that I'd like to buy. Nevertheless, it's always worth a quick driveby when considering any item over $100.
-- Joshua Keroes
Many Cool Tool readers alerted me to this fantastic supermarket of comparative reviews; I somehow missed this essential site in my previous roundup. They do all the hard work I wish I had time to do for Cool Tools. For each kind of consumer product (say bread machines, or roller skates) Consumer Search aggregates all the reviews that appear elsewhere on the web, and then extracts and unifies the results. Their final report is pretty comprehensive, although quality varies according to topic: The entry on home furnaces is (not surprisingly) thin compared to say, home sound systems. When they are good, they are very good.
-- KK
Consumer Search
Scattered throughout the web are small islands of sleepless enthusiasts who have much to say about their passions for new stuff. They aim their opinions into review sites of varying quality.
There are two kinds of review sites: ones run by know-it-all individuals, and one powered by the peer review of a community of users. Of the first type: The advantage of a single voice is that -- at their best -- they make outright recommendations. The downside is that they have trouble keeping up with an expanding or fast-moving field with tons of new gear.
The advantage of the second kind built on peer reviews is that the collective can keep up with change; the fault of user reviews, however, is that they often have narrow experience and no sense of what else is out there. This is the chief weakness of Amazon and Epinion reviews; they judge too much on an item's own merits and not on how it compares with similar products or substitutes. Clear recommendations are scarce.
What I want from a review site is an informed judgement. Ideally I'd like a very smart friend online who can give a single word answer when you asked him/her what you should buy: "Get this," they would say. The wider the range of uses, the more choices in models, and the faster the innovation in that area, the harder it is to get a definite answer.
My model of the ideal review site then is one built on a broad base of user reviews, in addition to a field of experts conducting uniform and comparative reviews, and ends up with an extract of top picks or other recommendations of what to get. I have not yet seen a perfect site. What doesn't work for me is a site sporting a vast matrix of all products and their features, or a site recommending a few products --ones that they happen to also sell, or a site with evaluations of gear they happen to get free from cooperative manufacturers, or heaven forbid, a site that has a few feeble reviews and is supported by a zillion ads.
There are some wonderful review sites. I found the following to be useful. For the most part they have what the weak review sites don't have: a minimal ad environment, no direct connection to sales, a means to extract recommendations and not just feature lists, and users with enough experience to indicate how tools live up to others like it. I've ranked these "best of reviews sites" from 1 to 5 stars, listed here in descending usefulness to me.
I believe I have only touched the tip of all that must be out there. Where is the ideal review site for coral aquariums, horse riding, knitting, woodworking, cooking gear, kites, scuba diving? Not to mention a fair and practical review site for your own current obsession.
Send 'em to me and I'll add the ones that work to this page on COOL TOOLS.
-- KK
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