garbagescout blog

Looking at the list of web 2.0 companies, I’d put garbagescout in community, but maybe also in search. Garbagescout is a search application, except that it indexes ephemeral, physical objects. Incidentally, the term search used to refer mainly to the act of seeking a physical object, though sometimes it was used in metaphysical discussion.

In the end, I’m happy to end up in “ecommerce”. When you throw stuff away, that’s not the end of its life as a commodity.

The New York Times today quotes me in a piece about a woman whose thing is found clothing.

Still, for Ms. Apple clothes off the rack are less interesting than those off the street. “If there’s a philosophy behind this, it’s to keep my memory in check,” she said. “These clothes are like tab markers for memories. They help me remember certain walks, or where I was living.”

I can dig it. I’ll have to take a picture of the suit I found (Dior) and send it to her for her blog.

Garbagescout was mentioned on yesterday’s episode of Off the Hook, the hacker radio show from the people at 2600. The mp3 of the show is available for download. They mention garbagescout about 12 minutes in to the show, though it’s worth it to listen to the whle thing, especially if you are a hacker.

This is truely an honor, as 2600 is the biggest hacker magazine in the world!

Also, the New York Times!

That’s the Sunday Business Post of Ireland, and the correspondent is Roisin Finlay.

Because I have some time, though I should be working on the fallback geocoding, I’d like to respond to this.

Kickstart70, if there were such a thing as the webiverse, it would seem strange to have no interest in its center, it it had one.

longsleeves, the site is updated using a cellphone camera, from the street.

celerystick, I’m working on it! I just happen to live in New York City and thought it an appropriate place to start. There’s a good deal of grass-roots effort at this point going in to getting people to use the site. It’s taken off in the blogs, but few people are actually posting stuff. Also, debugging the map stuff, and address-to-geocode lookup is hard, and requires a knowledge of the area on the map. For instance, there are many North 3rd Streets in New York City. How do I get the geocoder to choose the right one?

Citizen Premier, no, the site is for interesting garbage only.

Bucket o’ Heads is correct about FreeCycle, though the goals are somewhat different.

smackfu, I don’t know. I tend to agree with PeterMcDermott.

stbalbach, now it only works in NYC, but soon elsewhere.

scottreynen points out something I didn’t know. Alerts will be a part of GarbageScout some time, too.

nickyskye is a true garbage scout.

DieHipsterDie, that is true. Since there are 8 million New Yorkers, we are not unique, by definition. However, this city is unlike the rest of the US in many ways. It is the largest city, for one thing.

chrominance, definately. The ‘burbs often have the large-item trash day that is a boon for gleaners, and people have cars. Most people in Manhattan don’t own cars.

eustatic, there are some places where even the smallest bottlecap is picked up, not because people are virtuous recyclers, but because they are so poor that almost anything can be of value. I am thankful to live in a place of plenty. It saddens and astounds me, too, that there is so much waste.

Thanks to all for your comments.

It’s anyone’s guess.

At this point it’s still receiving some excellent press, and I’ve gotten a lot of very insightful comments and suggestions from users and bloggerz. A lot of people want to see it expand to other cities, but that probably will have to wait until I have more than 3 or 4 regular posters on the New York City site. I think the concept’s good but it won’t be useful until the user base expands.

After that, there are other directions to take the basic concept of immediate, geographically specific, anonymous or semi-anonymous communication. So many!

Thanks very much especially to those posting stuff to the site. I don’t know who you are, but you rule. For me, at this point, posting is more motivated by my interest in trash than by a sense that people will actually find stuff through the site. I have to post stuff. It’s a compulsion that replaces my hording compulsion.

I think, though, that at some point soon this site can become a useful tool. For instance, I could use a monitor right now. Doesn’t have to be fancy…

Canadian Broadcasting Co., Curbed, Gawker, We need money not art, What’s here?, kartentisch: Sperrmüll-Scout and GlowLab.

Thanks very much for the comments and mentions. Photographing trash is like celebrity stalking for cheap nerds.