MakeMeSustainable.com
Make Me Sustainable, LLC
Selected Portfolio
About MakeMeSustainable, LLC
MakeMeSustainable is an innovative high-technology start-up with an environmental mission: to enable individuals to participate in action-driven dialog about how to reduce our ecological impact on the planet. Launched with a focus on engaging consumers through social networking around visual analysis of each person's carbon footprint, MakeMeSustainable is steadily expanding their reach to include new kinds of users and new analyses of environmental effects.
About the software we built
MakeMeSustainable needed to build a lot of features, fast, and also needed to include some pretty complicated functionality in the application. They wanted to engage new users quickly, without overwhelming them with features and functionality, but at the same time they wanted to allow power users to dig deep into the details of the software, showing off the unique sophistication of their carbon footprint modeler.
GreenRiver.org answered these needs by building on a powerful platform of modern technologies:
- Ruby on Rails allowed us to deliver functionality with a minimum of overhead
- rSpec allowed us to write a complete specification for the complicated underpinnings of the software, with a built-in automated test suite to ensure accuracy
- Memcached keeps pages in memory, to ensure speedy page loads
- A full complement of RubyGems under the hood handle everything from geocoding to OpenID authentication
- Capistrano, CruiseControl.rb, Subversion, Jabber, and RT all let us quickly integrate new developers into the project, so that we could grow the team as the needs of MakeMeSustainable grew
This technology suite also helped us when it came time to build a new interface to the MakeMeSustainable software, in the form of a Facebook application for the brand new (at that time) Facebook platform. Without the flexibility of Ruby, the powerful MVC framework of Rails, and the rigor of rSpec protecting us against regressions, building a whole new interface to their core business logic would've been a daunting task.
Learn more
Explore the software by signing up at MakeMeSustainable.com.
Users see a detailed view graphical analysis of their carbon footprint and expenses, and can drill down to see the monthly contribution from heating, electricity, transportation, etc.
Public groups support community building, and even allow for friendly competition between informal interest groups (say, Red Sox Fans vs Yankees Fans)