green mission statement

Smartphone field guide applications are paperless and do not require physical distribution.  They can also be (and Tangled is) environmentally sound in other ways.

• Local storage saves time and energy.
  One of today's technical marvels is flash memory, in particular its high storage capacity and its low cost.  The Tangled field guide is designed to access field guide information locally, from flash memory (e.g., SD card) instead of the Internet.  The result is faster access and a lower drain on the battery because the Tangled field guide does not require a wireless connection.
  
  
• Differential updates save time and energy.
  Typically, paperback field guides are not updated for years, possibly decades.  The Tangled field guide components are designed to be independently updated and then linked together.  Updates to the components of Tangled can come from a variety of sources and the updates can occur frequently.  The FileZilla FTP client application can differentially download the Tangled multimedia directory, and therefore avoid downloading hundreds of megabytes of previously downloaded multimedia.  Similarly, the Tangled differential update (a.k.a., TDU) utility differentially copies the multimedia and the phenotypic directories from a PC's /tangled directory to the SD card's /tangled directory, and therefore avoids rewriting hundreds of megabytes of information to the SD card.
  
  
• The reuse of hardware saves money and natural resources.
  World wide, over one billion cell phones are sold every year and then retired after about 18 months.  More than 15% of retired cell phones are smartphones capable of running third party applications such as a field guide application.  Compounding the churn through smartphones in the U.S. is the lack of a standard for high speed wireless data: switching to a different carrier often requires switching to a different phone.  Eduneer LLC will support Tangled running on as many platforms as possible, including orphaned operating systems (e.g., PalmOS).
  
  
• Better environmental monitoring promotes better environmental policy.
  Of course, smartphones can be used to acquire field information as well as dispense it.  If you are involved with environmental monitoring and you are thinking of ways a smartphone application might help, let's talk.