Webware

GoodGuide, the service that tells you how environmentally friendly your bottle of shampoo or other household product is, now tracks food items. And not just nutritional content either. The site puts food items up against the same microscope it does for all the other products in its database, showing you how a food item stacks up against others in the same category, and what kind of score the parent company has.

Essentially it's all the things that makes GoodGuide really work, like finding out if your laundry detergent is killing polar bears; something you can now check for your breakfast cereal.

For now, the database of food products is right around 5,000 items, a number which GoodGuide founder Dr. Dara O'Rourke says will be growing by "tens of thousands" in the next few weeks. In the meantime, something that's noticeably missing is junk food. This is by design and meant to encourage people to search for and discover healthy food items. This means that Oreo cookies, Easy Cheese, Hostess Twinkies, and a good number of candy items are nowhere to be found, which I found slightly disappointing. While it's great to know what a good job you're doing by buying locally-grown organic cereal and free-range beef, half of the fun of the site can be discovering which products are an absolute scourge both to your body and the earth.

GoodGuide now tells you how good or bad your favorite foods are. In this case you should stay away from this mac and cheese.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

GooseGrade, the service that lets your blog readers correct any mistakes you've made, has a new plug-in for WordPress users that makes it easier for blog administrators to approve and implement corrections suggested by readers.

Once installed, corrections get sent directly to WordPress' dashboard, where administrators can then make a fix just like they would approve or deny a user comment. Because the plug-in is given privileges to write over your content, it then goes back into the post and makes the edit, without the administrator having to do it manually. Best of all, it shows you a before and after preview of what the correction would look like, so you can eyeball it without having to visit the post in full.

To aid in the correction process the plug-in supports multiple administrators, meaning a multi-author blog can decentralize who has to take a turn at the copy desk, and can pass off the responsibility if one of the members is out of the office. The plug-in also throws in a few nice tweaks like a complete history of suggested user corrections, and a summary of your blog's accuracy rating, which gets updated with each user-requested fix.

GooseGrade is working on a public API so others can come in to make similar tools, so expect to see similar plug-ins for other blogging platforms in the near future.

Now that the winter break is over, college students are inundated with work and need to worry again about classes, studying, and tests. So, of course, they'll spend time on Facebook instead. But there are other useful and entertaining sites worth the student's visit.

This is a brief list of four outstanding resources that can help students in college. No student should miss the opportunity to use these sites.

DormNoise
If Facebook isn't good enough for college students, they can try out DormNoise, which is another social network designed specifically for them.

DormNoise is centered on a calendar system, which provides students with a visual look at upcoming campus events, student group meetings, and personal engagements. That calendar is the central hub for the site and others can see what students are up to at any time. It's a unique way to connect with others and it actually works quite well to simplify that process and keep abreast of campus events.

That said, the site isn't open for anyone to join--users must be between the ages of 18 and 24 and sign up with a ".edu" e-mail address. If the school is not recognized by the system, you can't sign up for the service. In fact, my alma mater isn't supported by DormNoise. DormNoise should eventually support every school. We hope.

Once I finally signed up for DormNoise with a different address, I found it to be a unique service that will help college students manage their lives. But there's one catch that can't be overlooked: the community is small, which means few people find reason to use it instead of a site like Facebook.

HotorNot.com, the infamous social rating site that made it through the dot-com bust has a new, and free iPhone app out. As you'd expect it lets you pass judgment on others by scoring them anywhere from 1 to 10. It also lets you tap into its "Meet Me" network where you can get in touch with other registered users to set up dates.

The software makes use of a few of the iPhone's hardware features, including GPS. This lets you hit a button to narrow down where the results are coming from. This works both for the meeting portion of the site as well as the rating. Likewise, registered users can take snapshots of themselves using the phone's camera and post it straight to the site.

Many of the application's features cannot be used without registration. For instance, you cannot bookmark favorite users, send them virtual gifts, or upload pictures without a log-in ID. My guess is that most people will download it if only to start viewing and rating photos, then feel the need to register to continue using the app to its full potential. Keeping many of the more interesting features under wraps until users register seems like the smart way to go.

HotorNot.com's iPhone app gives you most of the functionality found on its site, including 1-10 rating and inter-network messaging.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

(Credit: CNET)

Despite being a fan of Zagat's restaurant surveys, I've never been overly impressed with the mobile applications for Windows Mobile Smartphone and PocketPC, BlackBerry, and Palm.

Regrettably, Zagat To Go '09 for the iPhone and iPod Touch ($9.99 per year) isn't markedly different.

The components to a great mobile app are all there--venerable content, click-to-call, a Web site link, OpenTable reservations for some restaurants, and search and sorting filters--but the whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

Stability is a major concern, the app cries for an in-app browser, and Zagat To Go calibrates your location twice every time you open it, a repetition that quickly wears thin. Providing advanced search options to find, for instance, sushi restaurants nearby for under $30 would make the app immediately more winning.

iTunes App Store reviewers have also thoroughly picked a bone with the app over a "cheesy" link to other apps created by Zagat's mobile publishing partner, Handmark, and "frustrating," "misleading" information about the cities and countries covered. It's true that Zagat Survey is strongest in metropolitan US cities, with passable international coverage in the UK, Italy, and France, and some world cities, like Tokyo, Toronto, London, and Rome. Handmark should more explicitly list those cities to minimize the backlash.

It's also true that Zagat To Go will best serve the foodies who want to "cut through the garbage" found on Yelp's and Urbanspoon's iPhone apps and be funneled to finer dining. Big-city diners dedicated to Zagat's yearly survey have in this iPhone app a slightly more economical and much more convenient and interactive option than toting the book with them on travels near and far, or viewing the cramped mobile Web site from the Safari browser.

Update: 12/2/08 at 3:40 PM. Handmark commented in an e-mail that a new release being submitted to iPhone's App Store for approval today will request location access upon launching the app for the first time. A button on the main search screen will let you manually update your new location.

We all make mistakes. To err is what makes us humans. But at the same time, it can be pretty embarrassing when it's something that's seen by many--like a blog post. A new service called gooseGrade is trying to change that by crowd-sourcing blog copyediting to readers. The hope is that they'll help fix your mistakes instead of filling up the blog's comments or your e-mail in-box with correction recommendations.

To get the system working on their blogs, blog owners must insert a few lines of code into their template. This adds a small gooseGrade rating stamp that users can click when they want to correct you. While in this correction mode they can simply highlight things that need fixing, make a recommendation, then send it your way. The moment they do that, the post's gooseGrade, which starts at 100, begins to drop incrementally. Each user recommendation takes it down a few points, and it will not go back up until you've addressed it, either by accepting the change or simply declining.

As the blog owner you get a notification for each edit, and you can then go in and see what the suggested change is and have it fixed with one click.

Making a correction on someone else's blog is as simple as highlighting it. You then get to choose what you want fixed in one of four categories.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

What makes the service particularly attractive to publishers is that it tracks these errors and corrections in a central location. If you're part of a group blog, this system helps you figure out who on your team needs the most development or hand-holding before hitting the publish button.

Greener One, now in early beta, is a very interesting and timely idea. The CEO, Zoli Piroska, wants to build a "crowdsourced database of green attributes for consumer products." The benefit for consumers is that they'll be able to tell what the environmental impacts are of products they are considering, from TVs to laundry detergents--and users will be the ones to build the database of attributes.

On the input side, Greener One is a structured wiki. Consumers who want to add information to the database are directed to look up certain info on products, and there's a database of enviro contacts at major consumer companies, with a list of pre-written e-mail templates for gathering info that's not evident in a product's packaging or on its Web site.

Each product gets its own green rating.

Most consumers won't enter information, of course. They'll just consume it. What they'll get from the service is a green rating, and data underneath it, that will tell them the comparative impact of the product they're looking at. The database will consider the entire lifecycle of the product, from raw materials used to recyclability, and will also include include environmental issues that pop up during a product's use (for example, outgassing due to chemicals used during manufacture). The data isn't just about a product's carbon footprint, as it also considers safety issues.

The system encourages users to contribute data from which the score is calculated.

Piroska is convinced that this user-generated green database will be a game-changer in consumer behavior, especially since, as he told me, the price of an item does not correlate with its environmental impact. Expect, perhaps, in the case of Apple: The MacBook Air, he said, is one of the first laptops that doesn't use heavy metals in its screen; and Apple as a company is "greener" than most computer manufacturers. Overall, Piroska said, the manufacturer of a product is a good indicator of greenness: In mobile phones, Nokia is generally good. Motorola is not.

Greener One isn't going to open up its own testing lab (there are plenty already) because, "it doesn't scale," Piroska says. He believes a dedicated cadre of users and activists will do the heavy lifting.

Ultimately, Piroska would like the Greener One rating stamped on product boxes or running alongside reviews (like those on CNET). He thinks most consumers will get exposure to the concept from such relationships, that a small number will dive into the Web site for deeper details, and that an even smaller number will contribute. Given the growing awareness of green issues and how they impact consumer safety, cost, and climate change, I would not be surprised to see this idea get some traction.

BadBuster gives a quick glimpse of "green" ratings of businesses you run across while reading searching, or shopping online.

BadBuster took a few quick minutes for me to download and set up, although it stalled on one of two Windows XP machines. Once installed, BadBuster underlines on Web pages the names of brands and goods it has ranked, with colors indicating the level or lack of "greenness." For example, green underscores the BP oil company, known for its "Beyond Petroleum" campaign, while glaring red marks notorious polluter Exxon. Yellow is the middle rating.

Roll the mouse over a highlighted name, and a BadBuster mini-window pops up with details. Click that, and a new Web page provides more information, pitting that brand against close rivals. BadBuster turned up surprises. For instance, Google's rating was lower than Microsoft's, despite the search giant's well-publicized green initiatives.

BadBuster gives a red alert on ecologically sketchy companies.

Badbuster's 0-100 scale rankings are based upon various reports. Sources include Climate Counts, BusinessWeek, Calvert, KnowMore, and the Carbon Disclosure Project. It does not appear to use ratings from Alonovo, Sustainlane, FiveLimes, and other dedicated sustainability scores.

I like ratings services like BadBuster that are built into the browser, since they allow you to stay on the page where you're surfing. Palore, for instance, flags restaurants that serve organic food. Services like these that aggregate ratings from multiple sources might provide a more balanced view than a single source. At the same time, though, you'd be better to visit Alonovo if you want to tailor ratings according to your personal set of values.

BadBuster is in early beta testing and runs only in Internet Explorer 6 and higher, but a Firefox version is being built.

See also: Trusted Opinion, FiveLimes , Growing Green Friends

LinkScanner Lite warns against a hidden IFrame launcher in Megaupload.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Those of you who haven't yet installed a link scanning or Web site rating program for your Firefox or IE-based browser should hop to it--and consider using LinkScanner Lite when you do.

I've been using LinkScanner Lite and McAfee Site Adviser on both Firefox and IE browsers. Overkill? No way. Each program serves the greater goal of alerting you to dangerous links but differ in their approaches.... Read more