We're Not So Bad, After All!

Europe wins approval from David Pogue of The New York Times.

Two extracts from Pogue's Post:

1. Genius in Helsinki!

A departures monitor in the Helsinki airport.

I wrote the other day about some of the technological advances that are commonplace in Europe, but not yet in America. As I flew home, I had a layover in the Helsinki airport, where I saw one more really smart idea.

On the standard Departures monitor, you’ll notice at least two other bits of useful information. First, there’s the little walking-person column; it tells you how many minutes away your gate is, by foot. Genius!

Just to its left, there’s an actual arrow that shows you which way to walk. Further genius! The monitor knows which way you’re facing, of course, because you’re looking at it; why not use little arrows to point you to your destination?

This design shows that the monitor designers don’t just care about displaying the gate information; they care about you getting there in time for your flight.

Thank you, Finland.

2.

Americans like to think that conserving power and water is a huge inconvenience. But in Europe, it’s just the way things are, and somehow people survive.

Toilets have two buttons: a big one and a small one, depending on how big a flush you need.

In public buildings and hotels, motion sensors turn the lights on when you enter a hallway, off again once you’re past.

Hotel showers tend to have wall-mounted shampoo dispensers, to prevent millions of small plastic bottles from winding up in the landfill every year.

And most controversial (to Americans) of all, your room key has to be inserted by the hotel-room door to turn on power and air-conditioning.

Yes, it means that your room takes a couple of minutes to cool when you return in the summer. But it also means that you can’t leave for the day with all lights and chillers blazing. (As a handy by-product, you can’t misplace your room key, either.)

* Speaking of room keys: the hotels we stayed in all had stripeless key cards. That is, you just place your key card next to a sensor rather than inserting it into a slot. The beauty of this system is that there’s no magnetic stripe to get demagnetized by a phone in your pocket.