Carbon Grove
Since January we’ve been working hard on our third Jackson Fish experience. Today, on Earth Day, we’re proud to release Carbon Grove™.
Carbon Grove lets you sign up for reminders for small things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. Every time you respond to your reminders you can watch your own virtual tree (choose from nine species in three forests) grow a little bit. If you keep at it, local wildlife may even visit your tree. Climate change is a problem that affects everyone on our planet. As is often the case with problems of this magnitude, it’s hard to feel like one person can make a difference. In reality however, every little bit helps.
A special word of thanks to Carbon Grove’s inaugural sponsor – the folks on the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft. They were eager to create a special experience for their IE users as well as show one small piece of their commitment to the environment. Not only is Internet Explorer the exclusive way to take advantage of Carbon Grove, but Microsoft’s Silverlight technology helped us make browsing the three forests a neat experience.
We’d love for you to check it out and plant your own tree. Your feedback and comments are welcome of course. Thanks for giving it a moment of your time if you get a chance.
Join the discussion 6 Comments
Henning Kilset
April 24, 2008 at 5:32 am
How you could possibly call yourself web developers is beyond me if you knowingly BLOCK a site to everything but Internet Explorer. Especially when it’s made in Silverlight, a technology marketed under its cross-platform, cross-browser abilities.
There’s no reason this shouldn’t work in Firefox OR Safari, is there?? Oh, except the payoff you’re taking from Microsoft, of course. Way to go.
Squuiid
April 24, 2008 at 7:37 am
Why is this web site Internet Explorer only?! This is ridiculous.
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080424/microsoft-sponsored-site-carbon-grove-forces-users-to-use-internet-explorer/
About 125 million people use Firefox and they should not be excluded from your site should they?
Please fix.
sashika
April 26, 2008 at 8:10 am
Love your work, but seems like you do not want Mac users… IE only is a bit too much nowadays, isn’t it?
Eliza Olson
April 28, 2008 at 11:27 am
Planting a tree is nice but saving a bog or peatland is even nicer.
The UN report released Dec.7/07 at Bali pointed out that 10% of the world’s greenhouse gases is directly attributed to the destruction of peatlands. Further 10% of the world’s freshwater is filtered through peatlands.
This is really mindbogling! Only 3% of the earth’s surface is covered with peatlands. The last figures I saw for forests was between 26% to 36%.
What are you doing to stop the filling in of wetlands?
Not too far north of Seattle is the largest raised peat bog on the west coast of the America–Burns Bog in Delta BC. It is supposed to be protected but it is being threatened by a road called the South Fraser Perimeter Road.
Its destruction will affect people living in the state of Washington as well as loss of habitat of migratory birds and fish especially the wild salmon swimming out to sea from the world’s largest salmon-bearing river–the might Fraser.
Plant a tree, but for “peat’s sake, don’t use peat!”
Eliza Olson
President
Burns Bog Conservation Society
4-7953 120 Street
Delta, BC V4C 6P6
604.572.0373
T.F. 1-888-850.6264
Firefox User
April 28, 2008 at 11:57 am
I realize this is most likely a request from the client but the IE7 only issue makes your company look incompetent.
Also, as you guys appear to showcase Silverlight for your client, it doesn’t make their cross platform plugin look very friendly to the web development community.
Hillel
May 1, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Thanks everyone for the passionate and pointed feedback. :)
Those of you that pointed out that the site is exclusively IE are right that Microsoft is the sponsor and hoping to get folks to try their browser by making this small amount of content (Carbon Grove) available in IE only.
I understand your frustration, and am sorry for the inconvenience.
You may not agree with their call, but you can also understand that they are experimenting with mechanisms to try and get folks to check out IE (much like game console manufacturers get exclusive content for their consoles).
That said, we appreciate the critical feedback and comments. And for the folks who’ve decided to give Carbon Grove a try (and give Microsoft’s browser a try) we appreciate that too. :)