supersonic feet

A year ago, Marks & Spencer announced a 5-year plan to become carbon neutral. This was a good thing.

I have an M&S credit card, so every month they post me my credit card statement. The envelope is always quite thick, but not because of my statement - I rarely actually use the card - but because they invariably include at least 2 glossy leaflets for various other financial services like insurance and loans. This has been irritating me as a total waste of paper for the few months I’ve had the card (though I haven’t actually made myself call them to complain).

Today I received an email from M&S Money titled “Save paper. View your &MORE credit card statement online”. The content is basically as the title suggests - they’re asking if I’d like to stop receiving paper statements and just check online instead (a laudible plan, though I’m not sure whether to give up on paper records of something as important as financial information) in order to cut down on paper waste.

What I’d really love is an “I still want my statement, but forget the marketing nonsense and the return envelope which I never use” option. I’d choose that in an instant.

Reading about Thomas Baekdal’s cool new home office setup, one of the comments pointed to a cool app that lets you share your mouse and keyboard with other computers (Windows, Mac and Linux) called Synergy. You basically run a server on the computer that has the mouse and keyboard you want to share, then a client on the other computer(s) and it’s then as simple as moving your mouse off the edge of one screen and onto another.

I’d seen apps doing this just for Macs, but I have a Windows PC and an iMac, so this is great!

No more do I have to use the crappy Mighty Mouse or Mac keyboard (I know it has its fans, but it’s FAR too small for my liking). I was getting ready to order an extra Logitech MX Revolution and MS Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 for use on the Mac so as long as Synergy doesn’t fail me I’ve just saved myself a bunch of money.

Only thing I’ve noticed so far is that it tends to hang briefly every minute or two on the Mac (client), then catches up. Hopefully there’s a bit of config somewhere to help iron this out as that could get annoying.

EDIT: Forgot to mention: it also lets you copy & paste between machines too. Very nifty!

The entire bragster team is off to Austin, TX in early March for the South by Southwest Interactive festival. Should be fun!