Today is apparently some kind of Blog Action Day for the environment. I don’t know how legit it is – I didn’t hear about it until today, and I’m not normally much of a “joiner,” but in my opinion it won’t hurt anybody if I talk a little bit about the environment.

I am not particularly educated about it, but I care about it. I confess that I leave most concerns to other people who are dedicated to the science of preserving it. Because I’m not particularly skilled or knowledgeable, I figure it’s not my business to spend too much time thinking about it. But I do spend time worrying about it.

I’m convinced that climate change is real, and it scares the bejeezus out of me. Many of you agree with me, so I’m not talking to you right now. I’m talking to those of you who don’t agree, or who are on the fence. Those of you who believe it’s an overreaction, or that it’s a deep liberal conspiracy. Who am I to tell you you’re wrong? After all, I just admitted I don’t know all that much about the environment. But still … what if you are wrong?

Say you live in a village that just happens to be situated under a large dam. If the dam breaks, the village dies. If the dam stays, the village lives. Half the village is convinced the damn needs renovation. There are small cracks and a tiny amount of water is leaking through. Some experts say the small cracks are indicative of a larger problem, and eventually they will turn to large cracks, before giving way completely and flooding the town. Others say it’s poppycock, and the dam is strong as ever.

So the village is left with two choices. Fix the dam, perhaps at unwarranted expense, or leave the cracks and hope for the best. When it comes to consequences like wiping out the village, I believe giving the benefit of the doubt to the worried half is worth your consideration.

What motivates the deniers of climate change? For some I’m sure it’s a momentum thing. They know a lot of people who are against it for possibly politically allied reasons, and so they go along with it. Truthfully, momentum and trust are large parts of the reason for my being convinced to believe it. For others I suspect a deeper psychological reason: they’re afraid like I am, but it’s easier to rationalize the problem away.

What makes me particularly comfortable with the idea of “doing something” about the alleged problem of climate change is that the prescription for the cure has positive benefits in any case. Reduce air pollution? We can benefit from that even if there isn’t a causal relation to climate change. So let’s use this potentially catastrophic situation as an excuse to clean up the air. We’ll have happier lives and if we’re lucky we might just save the world while we’re at it.

Update:I shut off comments because, as could probably be predicted, it is turning into a debate between pro and con readers. It’s not that I don’t think you all have a right to your opinions, but more and more the comments were debating the finer points of other readers’ opinions, not mine. Well, it’s my blog and I take seriously what you all have said in response to my thoughts. I think the comments that have come in so far do a good job of representing two sides of the issue, so there probably isn’t a lot more that needs to be presented here.

Editorial Note: I had originally posted this entry in the midst of feeling rather angry and foolish for having suffered a financial hit for a service I did not want. After some reflection I decided I was being too whiny and should just accept that I made a mistake. But it was too late, I had already published and the post had already gone out on the news aggregators.

So now I feel it’s more problematic to have deleted the post than it was to just leave it up in the first place. People keep asking “Where’s the Amazon Prime post?” so … here it is, in all its original fury. I guess the fact that I was even able to have the reaction I did is a sign that something could have been handled better at Amazon.

Amazon Prime Ripoff

A couple years ago Amazon introduced a club called Amazon Prime. If you pay $79/year you get free 2-day shipping. There may be other perks as well. I don’t know, because I don’t really care about the club. I don’t shop enough at Amazon to make it worth the money, no matter what the benefits.

I do shop at Amazon from time to time, and I’ve been a satisfied customer over the course of many years. So when they strongly encouraged me to “try it free for 3 months” while I was checking out, I looked at the shipping costs and decided I would be stupid to pass it up. Sure, I’ll take free shipping and try something free for three months. I’m not an idiot!

But I was an idiot. Stupid for implicitly trusting Amazon. While I’m normally pretty defensive about “deals” from other, less reputable companies, Amazon had been a faithful enough servant to me over the years, that I figured I could trust it to let me know if I was going to be charged. I must have missed some fine print. Heck it could have even been large print, but the bottom line is I got hoodwinked into paying money for a service I did not want.

Sure, I should have noticed the fees showing annually on my credit card statement. I should have noticed the free shipping on my (very) occasional purchases. But Amazon seems to always be offering something or other for free. That’s part of the reason I like doing business with them. I just figured they had popped me into another free trial – never a dull day on Amazon!

Today I discovered the unwanted payments. While Amazon has earned an extra $158 from me over the past 2 years, what they’ve lost is their place in the part of my mind where I file “companies I can essentially trust.” That’s where companies like Apple live. Now, Amazon has moved over to the part of my head where telemarketers, used car salesmen, and Columbia House Music Club lives.

The first thing I did was cancel my Amazon Prime membership (it will take 1-2 business days to go through!). Second thing I did was remove any saved credit cards I have in my account. The reason they were able to get away with this was because I had decided to trust them with my credit information.

Will I stop using Amazon? No, it’s a compelling service. But for the price of $158 I have been converted from a passionate user to a grudging user. Whenever a competitor’s service is as compelling, I will favor it over Amazon’s. Hope Amazon can use my $158 to find another trusting customer.

Business lesson? Make it really, really obvious to users when you’re going to charge them for something, and what they’re going to get in return.

Things have been hectic. Real hectic! Between acquiring two major applications this year, renovating and rebranding one, and building a significant 2.0 upgrade for the other, oh and getting married among other things, I’ve had very little extra time to work on anything else (or not work, for that matter!).

But I finally got a bit of time to address a few nagging issues with FlexTime. People have been complaining since very early on that the “reset” and “back” buttons should behave more like the familiar CD-players that the UI sort of roughly resembles. That is to say, pressing back should not skip to the previous item in the timeline, unless you’re already really close to the beginning. And pressing reset shouldn’t stop the playback, it should just start it over.

These minor usability tweaks should come as a great relief to people who have been fighting the unintuitive nature of the old behavior. Also, when I added the “Export to iTunes” feature, which is awesome for taking your routines on the road, I neglected to produce a toolbar icon for it. Now we’ve got a very cute, very obvious little iTunes button that you can install in the routine window:

The button will be present by default for all new users. If you’re an existing user you may have to customize the toolbar to drag it in, since your old preferences won’t include it.

My friend Tom Harrington from Atomic Bird Software is celebrating his company’s 5-year anniversary in a pretty novel way. 5 Years? Every 5th order is FREE! I love this idea. OK, I confess, I helped come up with it. But I still love it, and you should too. If you’re a customer it’s in your best interests to hop over to the Atomic Bird Store and see whether you’ll be taking home a free product today.