Designed by DIY Kyoto, Wattson helps you do more for the environment. And, as DIY Kyoto says itself: Do that in style. With Wattson, the company claims you can save up to 25% on your annual electricity bill. Together with the accompanying web platform, called Holmes, the system monitors the energy your home is using, shows you usage in graphs and charts, and helps you figure out ways to save electricity.

The physical part consists of a sensor clip, transmitter and the actual device. The sensor clip attaches to either of the mains electricity cables leading from your home’s meter box to your fuse box. The sensor clip and transmitter measure the electricity coming into your home. The device shows either in watts or in cost how much electricity your home is using. Coloured lights underneath the device indicate the same in a more ambient way. When the lights glow blue, you’re using less electricity than normal. When there’s a purple glow, you’re using the average for your home. And when they’re red, you’re using more electricity than usual.

The web part (Holmes) was created to interprete Wattson’s information and give you more indepth insights by means of graphs. They show you how you’re doing on energy use over hours, days, weeks or months. It also lets you set a target for electricity use reduction, so you have something positive to work towards.

Last year I attended an Adobe User Group meeting at which Rick Williams from AKQA gave a presentation about their project eco:Drive for Fiat. This application helps a Fiat driver to improve his or her driving efficiency. It analyses the driving style and recommends the driver how to reduce CO2 emmisions and save money at the same time.

Apart from owning a Fiat with integrated Blue&Me system, really all you have to do is to download the app on any kind of USB stick and then plug it into the car port. During your ride it will automatically store your driving data. Back home, you can upload the saved information to your online Fiat account and start looking at the statistics. eco:Drive communicates your driving technique in a so-called Eco Index. Online tutorials help you improve your Eco Index score along the way. Furthermore, you can monitor stuff like your total number of miles, the money you’ve been saving and set yourself some challenges as well. An interesting add-on is Ecoville, a community of all eco:Drive users where you can share your experiences and do many other things.

Fiat eco:Drive is a nice example of a Class 2 Meta Product, and as Rick put it during his presentation: “With services like eco:Drive, we’re making the web just a little bit more meaningful”. We think so too.