PickupPal Blog

Dear PickupPal Members,

Effective immediately, PickupPal will no longer charge drivers a 7% commission:

No fees, no accounting, nothing but 100% FREE enjoyment of PickupPal!

This also means that any and all commission amounts payable by drivers to PickupPal are canceled and no longer owing, period.

We are scrapping the 7% commission, effective immediately, because of the enormous environmental and user experience benefits that will result.

We have had such tremendous growth and are proud to be the largest internet ride sharing company in the world. We feel that by removing this commission PickupPal will be able to grow even faster and become one of the world’s leading green-house gas emissions reducers.

On behalf of everyone at PickupPal we thank you our valued members for your continued support.

So please, continue to have fun on PickupPal.com – and from now on, you keep the change!

Sincerely,

John Stewart
Founder – CEO

Ohhhh boy what a crazy couple days it has been. Starting things off with the Dave Matthews Band in Toronto on Wednesday! Special thanks to Josh from Reverb for the awesome tickets and the backstage passes and VIP treatment (having dinner with the band and crew - saweeet!). What Seats! What a show! What a night!

Then it was off to Calgary for the Virgin Festival and our booth in the eco-village - two days - thousands of fans! All part of the Rock-n-Roll Rideshare program in conjunction with our partnership to get fans to the festival. A ton of awesome interaction with hundreds of new members entering the “Win a Gibson Guitar” contest!

I got dash but special thanks to all of our partners and all of their support - what an amazing time and great meeting with everyone!

Cheers - Eric
P.S. Also I was able to meet Gord Downie - lead singer of the Tragically Hip - I have been a fan since January of 1990 - (yeah I am old!)

Greenwashing is a phrase that describes the act of pretending to be green just to look good. Greenwashing companies miss-lead consumers about the benefits of their brands, products and services. Generally, they will accentuate minor green attributes whilst downplaying bigger, environmentally damaging effects.

The practice of greenwashing is absolutely rife, most brand-name products are guilty. This is because green, eco-friendly and environmentally conscious ideas sell more units.

It’s fantastic that green issues are now front page news and part of public debate, but unfortunately this also means that companies are cashing-in on this valuable marketing spin.

My fear is not that people will stop talking about climate change. My fear is that they will talk us to Kingdom Come. ( Source: Monbiot )

It could be dubious claims of sustainability, clever use of terms like “green”, “eco”, “organic” or simply excessive use of the colour green. My own personal favourite is British Petroleums re-brand in 2000. At the time I remember thinking how blatant, but at the same time how powerful the effect is. Here is an oil company, the antithesis of green living, assuming the green guise with this bold sun flower logo.

Environmental marketing agency TerraChoice recently published the 6 sins of greenwashing:

1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off
   e.g. paper (including household tissue, paper towel and copy paper): “Okay, this product comes from a sustainably harvested forest, but what are the impacts of its milling and transportation? Is the manufacturer also trying to reduce those impacts?” Emphasizing one environmental issue isn’t a problem (indeed, it often makes for better communications). The problem arises when hiding a trade-off between environmental issues.
2. Sin of No Proof
   e.g. Personal care products (such as shampoos and conditioners) that claim not to have been tested on animals, but offer no evidence or certification of this claim. Company websites, third-party certifiers, and toll-free phone numbers are easy and effective means of delivering proof.
3. Sin of Vagueness
   e.g. Garden insecticides promoted as “chemical-free.” In fact, nothing is free of chemicals. Water is a chemical. All plants, animals, and humans are made of chemicals as are all of our products. If the marketing claim doesn’t explain itself (“here’s what we mean by ‘eco’ …”), the claim is vague and meaningless. Similarly, watch for other popular vague green terms: “non-toxic”, “all-natural”, “environmentally-friendly”, and “earth-friendly.”
4. Sin of Irrelevance
   e.g. CFC-free oven cleaners, CFC free shaving gels, CFC-free window cleaners, CFC-disinfectants. Could all of the other products in this category make the same claim? The most common example is easy to detect: Don’t be impressed by CFC-free! Ask if the claim is important and relevant to the product. (If a light bulb claimed water efficiency benefits you should be suspicious.) Comparison-shop (and ask the competitive vendors)
5. Sin of Fibbing
   e.g. Shampoos that claims to be “certified organic”, but for which our research could find no such certification. When I check up on it, is the claim true? The most frequent examples in this study were false uses of third-party certifications. Thankfully, these are easy to confirm. Legitimate third-party certifiers – EcoLogoCM, Chlorine Free Products Association (CFPA), Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Green Guard, Green Seal (for example) – all maintain publicly available lists of certified products. Some even maintain fraud advisories for products that are falsely claiming certification.
6. Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils
   e.g. Organic tobacco. “Green” insecticides and herbicides.
   Is the claim trying to make consumers feel ‘green’ about a product category that is of questionable environmental benefit? Consumers concerned about the pollution associated with cigarettes would be better served by quitting smoking than by buying organic cigarettes. Similarly, consumers concerned about the human health and environmental risks of excessive use of lawn chemicals might create a bigger environmental benefit by reducing their use than by looking for greener alternatives.



At PickupPal we’re very careful to manage the ecological benefits of our product. Fundamentally, our product can improve air quality and have an impact on CO2 emissions, but we need the help of our community to do this. As a company we work in a paper-less and office-less fashion, using technology to reduce our burden on the environment and when the team needs to meet face-to-face we do so in shared meeting spaces.

Nevertheless, our product does come under some criticism. This normally centers around the 7% fee that we charge to Drivers for using our website. We came up with this as a way to pay for and maintain our service, but in an effort to make our service as accessible as possible we’ve decided to abandon the 7% fee, making our website completely FREE for everyone to use. There will be an official announcement on this shortly, but I mention to here to further illustrate our commitment to building a product that is serious about green-issues.

- Jonathan

http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2008/06/official_launch.html

Thanks, Ross!

I must apologize for the brief intermission on posting to the blog - it is not because I don’t want to - more we are super busy and finding the time has been a challenge.

So we are off to hit the road - Tomorrow the Dave Matthews Band at the Molson Amphitheater in Toronto and then the Virgin Music Festival in Calgary over the weekend. Super excited about seeing DMB live and looking to meet up with our partners, Reverb at the show. Reverb has a crew that travels with the tour and helps take care of all sorts of greening events. We have been working with Reverb and the Dave Matthews Band by providing Ridesharing to all of the DMB concert dates. In any event - looking forward to that.

Then it is off to Calgary where we have a booth at the Eco-Village they will have setup there. O.K. some PickupPal honesty here - coming up with a booth idea that does not suck is a hard thing to do. We went through a ton of ideas and we scrapped them all and came down to a basic concept - the question I asked myself - what kinda mood am I in when I am at a multi-day festival - the answer is indulgence! So in that vain we came up with this concept - come by our booth - get your picture taken striking your best Rockstar pose in front of a massive backdrop of a couple thousand fans - then when you get home come by our website and enter your picture into our Rock-n-Roll Rideshare contest where you can win a Gibson Flying V. We are going to let all the members of PickupPal vote on who has the be Rockstar pose and the one with the most votes wins a Gibson Flying V.

The idea is that all of you PickupPal members are Rockstars - you are taking part and making a difference by doubling up and cutting down - it comes down to individual actions that make the biggest impact. Not to leave anyone out, those that are not up for posing but join in on the voting are automatically entered to win merchandise from our clothing sponsor Killthe8.com. It was awesome to get sponsored by Gibson and instead of an Ipod or something techie we went with what ever Rock and Roll maniac wants in their collection - a sweet Flying V - an Albert King, Jimi Hendrix, Randy Rhodes iconic symbol of flat out grind. So that is what we are doing in Calgary - if you are reading this and are going to be at the show come by our booth - we are between the beer tent and the food and we are facing the main stage.

One note - when STP are on stage on Saturday don’t bother coming by because the booth will be empty! Then on Sunday when the Tragically Hip take center stage - again I doubt you will see me at the booth.

NOTE: I am a huge Hip fan and I am heading out west with my bride and she is equally a huge Hip fan - so If I don’t lose here to STP definitely will have to drag her away from the Hip. Actually our first official date was seeing the Tragically Hip at Federation Hall in 1990 after I won tickets to the show on their “Up to Here” tour - so yeah I am a fan that goes way back!

Cheers - Eric
P.S. The Rock-n-Roll Rideshare “Gibson Grand Prize” is open to all PickupPal members - however I will post more details when the contest officially launches in the coming weeks.

One of my favourite features on our site is the Eco Counter (find it in the lower right hand side of our home page, and also in the side-bar on our partner pages), but it has taken us a while to refine this neat little feature.

The Eco Counter had been on the drawing board for a few months, as we knew we wanted to present our key metrics (mileage and potential co2 reduced) to our partners, but we weren’t quite sure how best to do this.

We put together the design and went for an odometer style look; this process was fairly straight-forward, everyone loved the look and the design was signed-off quickly.

We then built the working version in Flash, and this is when the serious iterations and rebuilds started happening. It was only once we started using the counter that we realised the need for changes.

1. Our ERP lander width was changed to work with lower resolution screens, so we had to squeeze the eco counter to fit.
2. We quickly realised that 4 digits were not going to be enough, so an extra digit was added.
3. Then it was modified it to allow all text to be passed in as parameters for localization purposes, eliminating the need for the imperial/metric toggle. The Eco Counter is now aware of what locale it is in and will use the appropriate measures.
4. Some other changes were made enabling us to switch-off the counter from the system.
5. The Eco Counter then started getting popular and internal pressure was mounting to get it on the home page. As the numbers kept on rolling upwards, we added another digit.
6. A timestamp was then added to the bottom of the counter to make it easier to check the data. This is also really handy for monitoring the launch of ERP landing pages, it’s fun sitting back and watching the the counter accelerating as events like Dave Matthews take place.
7. Two more digits were added as we hit yet more milestones.

Of course, we could have spent more time initially writing a long functional spec to catch all of these issues before we started building, but I would argue that we have built a better, smarter feature a lot faster by forging ahead and using it in the wild.

We now have a very versatile feature that can work on our home page and partner pages, providing users with a more tangible and measurable reason to use our site. I can see this feature evolving further in the future so that we can all track our contribution to reducing co2 with PickupPal.

It’s also really encouraging to know that most of these changes are the result of our rapid growth and sign-up rate, with any luck the next challenge will be designing a counter with 9 digits.

- Jonathan

I love maps, I love trying to find places i have lived or visited just by scrolling around Google Earth seeing if i can remember my way around… I look for places i have stayed on holiday like the little B&B whose name I’ve long ago forgotten but I remember that road up from the little beach on Ios, how the road veered left and it was at the top of the hill - following the road on a map and looking at the street names brings back great memories. Also, I love to travel, and in some ways looking at a map temporarily satisfies that hunger in me.

So imagine how thrilling it is for me to spend part of my day looking at points on a map, looking up our members’ routes and matches; helping them enter a pickup request or a driver route.

This brings me to the trusty PickupPal Globe icon. I want all our members to know and love the Globe icon because well, there’s a lot to love in PickupPal’s little Globe! What? This: when you are entering your start and stop addresses you can click on it and the glorious interactive Google map appears! It is awesome, you can see your start point or your end point, you zoom out and you see both points on the same map. You scroll a little to the right: you see where you went to High School - You scroll a little to the left: there’s that great beach!

So my PickupPal friends, you need to click on the PuP Globe! To see where you are and where you want to go, and if you have a minute, spend some time moving around the map, it is a really great way to reconnect to the places you live, work and play…. And all the while you make sure the route you are entering is not taking you from Portland, Oregon to Sydney, Australia!! Two Waldos - one little globe shaped stone.

- Suesan

We are proud to announce that Van’s Warped Tour has chosen to team up with PickupPal to get punk fans to all of their 46 festival dates. This is a huge honour for me personally because I was and still am a fan of punk music.

It started with Patti Smith and a bit of Iggy Pop then moved onto the Clash, Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedy’s and to round out to Black Flag, but that is old punk - some would say “Classic Punk”. I do have to qualify and say I was not as hard core as others because I could not really commit - I think it had to do with the fact that I had friends who were really committed and I just could not go as hard as they did. Out of all my “Punk Loving” friends from High School one still lives the Punk lifestyle, Shane Smith, (Vice Magazine and TV Go to 2:15 in the clip it is pretty funny).

In any event with such acts as: Norma Jean, All American Rejects, and Matisyahu - and tons of indie punk bands this years lineup is definitely awesome! For more info you can check it out on Van’s World Tour website.

Cheers - Eric

PickupPal and the Clean Air Foundation are very excited about the government of Canada’s recent commitment to make a difference in getting old cars off the road and recycled properly. Vehicles built before 1995 produce about 19 times more air pollutants than 2004 and newer modeled cars. In fact, one-third of the vehicles driven by Canadians are responsible for two-thirds of the smog created. Canadian Federal Environment Minister John Baird said today the government will give the Toronto-based Clean Air Foundation $92 million over four years to run a national vehicle “scrappage” program - (Details Here). As a Clean Air Foundation partner we want to send out our congratulation’s to the Car Heaven Program team for all of their hard work and we look forward to being part of the solution that helps to reduce harmful air pollutants.

PickupPal was on hand at the press conference this afternoon and we took some pictures - behind the scenes.

Notes: Federal Environment Minister - Hon. John Baird announcing the Canadian governments support of the Car Heaven project and the commitment of 92 million over four years to expand the program.



Notes: Photo Ops in front of the Car Crusher!



Notes: Ian Morton (Founder & Chief Executive Officer - Summerhill Group) and myself.

Notes: O.K. we are on the move people!

Notes: Talking to the guys at Sonshine Auto Parts - “Hey man where do you get those sweet hats with the flames on them?”



Notes: Adam Elliott, Myself, Suesan Danesh from PickupPal. [Notice how I was able to score a sweet hat! - yeah man flames and all!]

Read a nice little piece about ideas and the creative process on A List Apart yesterday:

There is great prestige attached to the word “creative.” Creative people apparently magic up ideas—wonderful solutions to the most complex problems—with the ease of a skilled magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The gathered crowd goes wild. What skill. How do they do it?

Well, I’m afraid I’m here to shatter that illusion. It’s not magic. These people are no different from you and I. They just have a different way of looking at problems and solving them. The good news is, they use tools that anyone can use.

Saving the Spark: Developing Creative Ideas