Tropophilia

Welcome to the new and improved Tropophilia. Same great taste, but now 86% crunchier. The redesigned site (which, by the way, we’re still scrambling to de-bug), will give us a lot more flexibility than our old platform. We’ll be unveiling and developing new features in the coming weeks, so be on the lookout for those. Jarred and I are hopeful that the new product is more like Diet Coke than Clear Pepsi…fingers crossed.

How about a few links:

• Via the Guardian (UK) and TreeHugger comes an interesting snippet of news:

“US airlines must pay for their carbon dioxide emissions or face a curb on flights to the European Union, the EU transport commissioner warned [...] Barrot said negotiations on a second phase for the treaty will include a demand that US carriers join the EU emissions trading scheme or an equivalent system in the US.”

• techPresident has a great interview with Mitt Romney’s former Director of eStrategy. They (politely) avoid the obvious question of ‘how do you manage to spend $105 million, including $42 of the candidate’s personal funds, and lose?’ but they do cover online strategy in a way that’s only possible in retrospect when the campaign staffer can speak (more) openly. Teaser quote:

Q: Anything you wish you could go back and do differently?

A: Well sure. I would have introduced more interactive elements — contests, grassroots tools, live webcasts — earlier in the campaign to keep our email supporters engaged and active.

• While we’re on the topic of politics, NPR introduced a cool variant on their “This I Believe” style of listener-generated content with “Get My Vote.” Hat tip to EchoDitto for spotting this.

• I was recently equal parts shocked, excited, and sort of concerned to see my childhood house in vivid detail on Google Street View when they expanded coverage to my hometown of Chapel Hill, NC. With such an extensive project (driving around in a car with panoramic cameras cataloging everything), there were bound to be a few hiccups. Thanks to the internet, those funny bloopers are all in one place. My favorite is the guy climbing a fence in San Francisco…first crime documented on Google Maps? Hat tip to Mental Floss on this one…as with nearly any funny links I post.

• Lifehacker points out this nifty link for online shoppers; let’s be serious, at this point we’re all online shoppers, right? Well, then we can all benefit by checking FreeShippingOn for money-saving free shipping deals with online retailers. I like saving money…and this is starting to feel like an (unpaid) advertisement. Moving on…

• Finally, in all of the Tropophilia chaos this weekend as we switched systems (serves us right for claiming to “love” change…), you may have missed some great new material from Jarred. Be sure to check out a post on Google Sky, a review of the movie Helvetica, and a reflection on unconventional typing form (a bad habit I share…and for which I’m called out in the comments).

Plenty of new material to come this week, so stay tuned. And thanks for your patience as we complete the transition to our new platform.