1) The Justice department says it can save $573,000 through fiscal year 2010 by switching to double-sided printing.
2) Google’s Chrome browser saves ink by defaulting to extra wide margins. Hat tip: Wayne Smith.
3) Paul Sweeney notices that “big kids” slide on the playground has about a two foot gap to the first step, ensuring that you have to be a certain height to get on it in the first place. “Then I noticed that the swings were very low to the ground, and i noticed that the bigger kids were milling about but not sitting in them. Yeah, because their legs were too long, and it would be too uncomfortable. Thus leaving the swing available for the smaller kids (both play areas were right next to each other, thus ensuring that smaller kids and bigger kids had separate play areas).”
4) Stephen Hentrich reads at night. To limit his reading, he set up a switch to disconnect his bedside lamp from the power supply. The lamp reconnects a half hour later just in case he needs to find his way to the bathroom.
5) Chris Peterson wants an online bank account that takes the many “mental accounts” he has in his head for food, rent, iPod stuff, etc. and put them onto his banking homepage. The single checking account look just isn’t doing it for him.
Tags: bank, default rules, printer, saving
Nudge blog 
August 9, 2009 at 11:03 pm |
[…] chris on Aug.09, 2009, under general I don’t normally post about pingbacks, but I got a shoutout from the Nudge blog today about my “Saving with Shoeboxes”>/a> post describing design […]
August 10, 2009 at 12:42 am |
Um, the Chrome thing doesn’t seem to be a useful default but rather a problematic glitch that makes printed documents unreadable. Seems like a normal-sized-text/teeny margins default to save paper would be more useful.
August 12, 2009 at 4:54 pm |
I can see how extra-wide margins (extra-narrow margins?) can save paper, but not sure how it would save ink. Aren’t all the words printed at the same font size?
August 14, 2009 at 8:43 pm |
I agree with “sara” about the Chrome default. It might mean printing more pages, too, if the margins are wider and there’s less space available in the printing area. I’d rather have narrower margins to get it all on one page. I already have to call up a preview and check to see what will print and what I don’t need, then specify pages “X through X.” I hate the “follow-up page” with nothing but links or the URL that lapped over to the next page–which invariably prints if I don’t check!
August 16, 2009 at 6:41 am |
I believe ING Direct has a banking feature that allows segmented accounts like the one described in five.