As published on Social Media Today
Sustainability “Green” Mobile Movement?
This year has been full of great conferences featuring new technologies in the mobile application space. The convergence of Social, Local, and Mobile (SoLoMo) into a unified approach and integrated technology has been called “the proverbial Holy Grail of marketing” by some analysts. Next month in San Francisco, in fact, we have a conference focused on mobile-local, and the mobile convergence of brand, advertiser and mobile.
This got me thinking: Is there such a thing as GreenMo? The convergence of technology, sustainability and mobile?
Enterprise GreenMo
Case in point, you can now manage home appliances and energy usage from your mobile phone. True story. I’ve seen it myself. General Electric’s Nucleus Brillion system gathers energy usage data from your home and enabled appliances, and displays the information on your computer or mobile phone. I met with the company’s product team at last month’s ExactTarget Connections 2012 event in Indy.
GE’s new iPhone app is designed to interact with the Nucleus program. This enables you to monitor electricity usage in your entire home, down to a specific appliance. On top of that, you can also connect seamlessly to a programmable thermostat to remotely adjust the climate in your home.
The technology has arrived. The GE guys put this new-age hot water heater on stage for everyone to see. And the whole setup enables users to manage appliance energy usage and estimated costs, wirelessly.
So what’s all this mean to sustainability and green technology? With GE even joining the fray, is this the sign of a larger movement? Mobile and web-based applications like GE’s Nucleus are aiding in the area of managed energy consumption and efficiency.
Green Mobile Apps
Marketing Green reports how mobile apps are helping reduce the environmental impact of shopping. Today, many are touting the benefits of buying locally produced products because — all else being equal — these products have less of an environmental footprint because they travel shorter distances to market.
In another example, an Apple iPhone application called A Real Tree is linked with organizations like Sustainable Harvest International and Trees For the Future. These organizations plant trees in several nations, including Nicaragua, Haiti, India and Honduras. Every time someone purchases A Real Tree, one of these organizations will literally plant a tree.
You can even make your mobile device more sustainable! Green Phone by MobiMonster 2.0 helps increase your mobile battery life by monitoring the backlight, WLAN, Bluetooth and charger. The app alerts the user when a feature is not in use.
All this points to one thing, the essence of green technology and renewable energy is here to stay. And these mobile apps are a viable approach to consumption.
So if there is such a thing as GreenMo, General Electric is part of it.
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