I saw this site: proquo.com, and it's free, but requires downloads for forms that you have to send in. I'd prefer something "fire and forget". Part of the frustration is the effort required to get people to stop sending you garbage.
I was thinking about this a bit more and was thinking maybe you could have a site where people can enter email addresses for individual companies (macy's, banana republic, etc), and then one submission would send to all of the listed addresses in the system, asking for no more junk mail. So it would be a community effort for people to root out the individual opt-out emails, but afterwards the whole community would benefit. As far as I'm concerned, given the fact that it's pretty invasive to pile someone's mailbox with physical garbage, I could care less if we ended up putting personal emails (individual marketing directors, etc) in the database record for the company - not sure if there could be legal issues, though. The nice thing is there would only be a few pages to design (company record entry/edit form, personal account entry/edit form, send page), but there might also be some tricky questions to address or larger sections to build out (who can enter new company info, is there a community component to discuss results/desired target companies, reports generated, etc?) I can think of a few urls that are available. If we get far enough that it appear like it will happen (through wireframes at least), I can provide the hosting. M On Dec 8, 2007, at 5:09 PM, Brianna S Roberts wrote: > I also marvel at the wad of catalogs that I have to pry out of my > overstuffed mailbox this time of year. greendimes.com has already > jumped into the junk mail fray with a service that you admittedly > pay for, but is supposed to help reduce the flow as well as plant > trees to make up for some of the waste. They have a few bulleted > factoids about the amount of junk mail generated but I think they > could probably use a more engaging representation of those numbers > (but that's just me - I'm a sucker for visuals that show piles of > mail bigger than my house). Another site that tackles an enviro- > issue is reusablebags.com and they have a ticker-style counter to > illustrate just how fast and how many plastic bags pile up. But I > think what is so great about the junk mail idea is that it feels > like the kind of project that any average person can participate in > and feel good about, which isn't always true for some of the > environmental solutions that one sees in a magazine article. > > Since this field can be so technology-based, perhaps bringing to > light some of the impact that technology has on the environment > would be an interesting exploration. I've seen folks throw old > printers, monitors, computers, etc in dumpsters - they didn't > realize there are options for recycling or donating equipment like > that. So although there are often services or options for > 'technology', people I've spoken with either did not know about > them or did not see the value in effort or cost of some of these > options. Maybe it's not necessarily creating new services but > instead improving the exposure and benefits of some of the ideas > that are already out there. > > Brianna Roberts > > On Dec 8, 2007 1:25 PM, Michael Tuminello <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > * define a "big problem" and see what we could do to help fix it - one > that comes to mind offhand in the holiday season is all the junk mail > and catalogs that are mailed out. no one wants them, but it is really > difficult to avoid. We could somehow make it visible how much waste > this produces, or try to develop a system that enables people to > easily and freely opt out, or maybe a site that rates companies on how > much junk mail they send. ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
