Joe Levi presents Greener Living through Technology

• The Eco friendly street lights by Sharp 

• More options with solar shingles

• Solar Powered Gadget Bag at CeBIT 

Part of the problem with solar panels is they’re so big; you have to have a large surface area to produce any respectable amount of power (yes, I could go on a tangent about how we need to be working for better efficiencies and low-power consumption, but that’s a topic for another post). Putting solar panels on a roof or a mast are good ways to "get them out of the way," but what about using them in other, more practical applications?

Sure, you’ve seen solar bags and backpacks that have a flexible solar panel on one side or the other.

You’ve got application specific solar panels (on yard lights, gable/attic fans, or car fans, etc.), and even "solar trees."

Now, you’ve even got the solar table, take a look.

• NJIT Researchers Develop Inexpensive, Easy Process To Produce Solar Panels
• Solar Shingles
• Solar Powered Mini Race Car

Not really solar, but green:

• DIY Sprinkler

Let me preface this article by indicating that I’m an honest guy. Yes, I do have some hacker tendencies, but they’re all white-hat. That said, it’s somewhat difficult for me to categorize my feelings regarding what happened last night at my local Smith’s grocery store (a Kroger company)… So let me do so in an open letter to Smith’s:

Dear Store Manager:

Yesterday evening (12/27/2007) I stopped by your store, picked up a few items, then swung by the Deli on the way out.

I picked up three sour-cream and chives baked potatoes, priced $2.50 each; a "couple handfuls" of potato wedges; and a "couple handfuls" of chicken tenders. The deli attendant was friendly and helpful. She put all 3 baked potatoes into a plastic container and printed three barcodes which she stuck to three sides of the box. She weighed the wedges, printed its barcode and stuck it to the side of a deli bag. She put the chicken tenders in the same deli bag as the wedges, and printed another barcode which she stuck to the other side of the bag. With me so far?

I went to checkout and opted for one of the self-checkout lanes (shouldn’t we get a discount for using those?).

If you’re unaware of how these work, you walk up, select your language on the touch-screen, and pass your item’s barcodes over the scanner, the scanner reads the barcode and adds the item to your receipt. It then tells you to place the item in the bagging area. That’s really where the "magic" happens: the bagging area has a very sensitive scale under it, the computer knows how much the item you just scanned should weigh, and it waits until your item is in the bagging area. This prevents people from just putting items in the bagging area without scanning them first, so that’s a good idea.

I scanned some of my regular items and bagged them per the procedure mentioned above, then I came to my potatoes. I scanned the first barcode and tried to scan the second barcode. That didn’t work, because I had to place the item just scanned into the bagging area. I couldn’t easily take the potato out and toss it in the bag, so I put the whole thing in the bag (all three potatoes), which got me past the nagging prompt to "please put your item into the bag." Unfortunately, the weight didn’t match — rightly so! So another nagging prompt: "please wait for attendant." The attendant looked over at me and said "go ahead" so I pulled my potatoes out of the bag to scan the next one. That didn’t work: "unexpected item removal from bagging area!" Okay, okay! Fine, I’ll just leave it in the bagging area! I haven’t paid for the other two, but the attendant says to "go ahead" and the computer panics when I tried to ring up another of the three potatoes… I haven’t paid for them, but your computer and your human attendant both told me to go ahead, and scolded me when I tried to be honest… Okay, it’s your store… whatever you say.

I continued ringing up other items in my cart without much problem (it had a hard time weighing a package of adhesive velcro strips, but I pulled it out and tossed it in hard and that seemed to work).

Then I came to my potato wedges and chicken tenders, both in the same bag, a barcode affixed to each side. I scanned one side, had to put it in the bagging area (remember, I can’t scan anything else until that’s registered in the bagging area), but it weighs too much, so "please wait for attendant" who cooly says "go ahead", tried to remove the bag to scan the other side but the computer panics "unexpected item removal from bagging area." Okay, OKAY! I’ll leave it in there!

I finished scanning the rest of my items without a problem, put in my credit card (I pushed the button for "credit" on the touch-screen, but the pin-pad assumes debit and I have to "press OK/ENTER for credit" — I just told the computer I wanted credit, there was a separate button for debit… sheesh…). "Credit card accepted, please take credit card to attendant for your receipt." "Please sign this," he said. "You know, those pin-pads can capture signatures, too," I quipped. "Yeah, I don’t know why they don’t program them to do that."

So, I ended up getting two baked potatoes from the deli for free, and I didn’t pay for either my potato wedges or my chicken tenders. All in all, that was less than $10, but still.

Maybe that was my discount for using your automated checkout machine? Or maybe you’ll want to take a look at your policies.

Anyhow, I’ve posted this on my website (www.JoeLevi.com) as an open-letter to you. I (and my readers) await your response.

– Joe Levi, www.JoeLevi.com