An App That Helps Retailers Steal Each Other’s Customers

Cash Dash, the new feature from Find&Save. Wanderful Media

Holiday shopping, that happy American pastime, seems to get a little more cutthroat with each passing year.

Those already insane 4 a.m. door-buster deals have now given way to retailers opening up on Thanksgiving night. And the price-gouging war between retailers has become so extreme that even Walmart, with its bargain basement prices, is vowing to match Amazon’s prices so it won’t lose customers to its e-commerce adversary.

But this was just a prelude. Thanks to Ben Smith, things are about to get even nastier.

Smith is the CEO of Wanderful Media, the company behind a couponing app called Find&Save. The app was originally designed to serve you coupons for nearby stores—and it still does. But on Wednesday, Smith and company announced that they’ve added a new wrinkle. It’s called Cash Dash, and basically, it lets retailers push you promotions the minute you walk into a competitor’s store—or merely past it.

In other words, when you’re at Walmart, Target could offer you $25 to visit one of its stores within the next 24 hours. Yes, the goal is to help retailers steal shoppers away from the competition. “When you’re walking into a Home Depot on Saturday morning, your intent is clear,” Smith says. “You’re in home repair mode. That would be a very valuable audience for Lowe’s.”

The smartphone has become the smart shopper’s best friend in the last few years. According to a recent survey by Accenture, 68 percent of consumers say they are likely to check out prices in-store and then search for lower prices online, a phenomenon now commonly referred to as “showrooming.” But retailers are now catching onto the trend and looking for ways to use the proliferation of mobile technology to their advantage.

In other words, when you’re at Walmart, Target could offer you $25 to visit one of its stores within the next 24 hours.

In many cases, they’re using geolocation technology to pitch deals at shoppers who are near their stores. But Cash Dash inverts that model.

It too uses GPS to track your location, but instead of offering better deals at the store where you are, it tries to send you somewhere else. Once you accept the deal and complete the purchase, you submit a photo of your receipt using the Find&Save app, and the cash reward gets sent to your PayPal account. Smith says the next version of the app will connect to users’ credit cards, and subtract the dollar amount automatically.

The Dash for Cash Dash

Cash Dash has only been live for three weeks, and already, some 50 retailers, from Walgreens to Macy’s, are paying Find&Save to send these notifications. About 100,000 alerts have been sent out every day since the feature launched, and Smith says about 30 percent of shoppers who receive an alert actually click through and accept it.

What’s more, Cash Dash has completely changed how users feel about allowing the app to track their location. Before it launched, only 20 percent of users opted into geolocation. Afterward, 80 percent did.

In many ways, experts say, this is an evolution of what Amazon has been doing all along, enabling users to do online price checks. Now, brick and mortar retailers can play that game as well. But this doesn’t mean Amazon is no longer a threat. It still offers shoppers all the convenience that physical stores can’t.

“There’s a travel cost for consumers to go from one store to the other,” says Raj Venkatesan, a professor of business administration at Georgetown’s Darden School of business, “but if you’re on Amazon it’s on your phone.”

The Power of Discounts

The Cash Dash promotions become less appealing if, say, you’re standing in Walmart, and the nearest Target is 15 miles away. That’s why Venkatesan says the deals work best in densely populated shopping areas. They will also have to be substantial enough to compel people to get in their cars and drive to another store.

But that doesn’t mean the deals can’t work. In that Accenture survey, a whopping 96 percent of respondents said discounts would be important to their purchasing decisions this season.

Meanwhile, Venkatesan points to research that’s been done on traditional coupon circulars, which has found that the right deal will, in fact, drive shoppers to different stores. “If you think about that fact, then, yes, this app could have the potential to switch consumers to another store,” he says.

Smith, however, admits his biggest competitors are the retailers themselves, many of which have built apps that already push promotions directly to shoppers. And yet, he says, even those promotions can’t reach competitors’ audiences. “For Walgreens to do what we’re doing, they would have to get everybody to install their app, including people who aren’t Walgreens customers,” he says. “They can’t do that. I can do that.”

Disclaimer: Wanderful Media is backed by Advance Publications, WIRED’s parent company, which has no editorial input.

NYC’s New Pay Phones Will Provide Super-Fast Wi-Fi—And Super-Smart Ads

LinkNYC’s plan is to replace New York City’s pay phones with sophisticated internet pylons. LinkNYC

By this time next year, if all goes according to plan, there will be a new fixture on streets of New York: hundreds of slim aluminum pillars, each providing some of the fastest free internet available anywhere in the world.

The kiosks are part of the ambitious initiative LinkNYC, which earlier this week was chosen to replace the city’s aging and all but forgotten pay phones. Beyond blanketing Gotham in crazy-fast Wi-Fi, the pylons are designed to let people charge their gadgets and look up directions on touch screens. Eventually, they could broadcast emergency messages or provide a place where New Yorkers can provide civic feedback on various topics.

Just as novel is the plan for how city dwellers pay for it. They won’t have to dig into their pockets for spare change or put up with still more taxes. Instead, they must endure advertisements. It’s the same deal we tacitly accept when we use great free apps like Gmail, but IRL: a first-rate service in exchange for having people trying to sell us stuff in ever more precise, ever more determined ways.

One Tower, Designed for Three Screens

LinkNYC is the work of Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation and CityBridge, a consortium that includes Qualcomm, Titan, Comark and Transit Wireless. It’s a bold vision but not yet a sure-thing. The plan awaits approval by a handful of city boards, and many logistical questions remain unanswered. If the plan ultimately is approved, however, there could be as many as 400 of these high-tech monoliths—or “Links”—in the Big Apple by the end of next year. The goal is to erect some 10,000 throughout the five boroughs.

The New York firm Control Group was responsible for the design of the pillars (it’s also doing the touchscreen slabs being deployed in NYC subway stations). Partner Chris O’Donnell says one unique thing about the pillars is how they tie together interactions across three types of screens: one public, one private, and one somewhere in between. That is, the screen beaming ads from the pillar, the screen on your phone or laptop, and the touchscreen you use on the pillar itself.

Slimmer pillars, without ads, are proposed for residential areas. LinkNYC

That last screen is what links the new structures to phone booths of yore, making them touch points for one-to-one interaction. Passersby will use an Android tablet built into each Link to consult interactive maps, for example, or report broken stop lights. A tactile keypad will let people place free phone calls to anyone in the U.S.

Relying on Android will make it easy to refine apps on the fly and add new ones, O’Donnell says. He sees polling as one possible future use case. “Think about how labor intensive it is to go to a town hall meeting,” he says. He imagines a scenario where you could walk by a Link and answer a few questions about an issue in your neighborhood. Maybe not the ideal model for the future of civic engagement, but potentially a practical one.

Bringing Disruptive Connectivity to the City

Just as phone booths were shared telephones, O’Donnell sees these touchscreens as a shared computer. But the Link’s other two screens are what make it an entirely new infrastructural beast. First are the large displays placed on the sides of those Links installed in commercial districts to project advertisements. (Those in residential neighborhoods will be slimmer, with no screens.) This updates an old idea—telephone booths often were wrapped in ads, and many cities have billboards and ad kiosks. What’s new is that these ads will pay for internet on your phone.

So, about that Wi-Fi. If the plan goes through, LinkNYC’s gigabit connection would be among the fastest public internet available anywhere. Though today’s phones can’t yet take full advantage of such bandwidth, CityBridge claims each pillar will be able to support 250 people within a radius if 150 feet without dipping in speed. Specific logistical details are vague, but the idea is once you’ve signed up, your devices will automatically join the network and stay connected as you move throughout the city.

A prototype Link being set up in Manhattan. Control Group

This, O’Donnell says, is the real mission of LinkNYC: bringing connectivity to all of New York. “And not only accessible connectivity. I’d say disruptive connectivity,” he adds. He insists LinkNYC is commitment to building a first-rate network, not the sort of last-resort free internet you’d expect from an airport, for example.

Though it remains to be seen if LinkNYC can deliver on that promise, the city is keen on the prospect. The mayor’s office says the plan could help “close the digital divide,” freeing lower-income people who primarily use phones for internet access from relying on pricey data plans. It’s a step toward looking at the internet as a service that a city can provide its citizens. As infrastructure, it could give rise to new types of apps and city services that don’t make sense with today’s connectivity.

The Price? Next-Gen Ads

So what’s the catch? Ads. Specifically, those on the sides of the kiosks. Those advertisements are a hugely valuable asset, O’Donnell says. “The real reason why it’s going to work in New York City where it hasn’t elsewhere is because New York is the biggest, most valuable media market in the world.”

Beyond the valuable real estate they occupy, the Link ads will be unprecedentedly sophisticated. The plan, as ever, is to use technology to make them more relevant, more engaging, more contextually-driven. A particular kiosk could change the ad it’s displaying based on what time of day it is, for example, or what events are happening nearby, or even potentially what sorts of people are walking by it, at least in a broad demographic sense.

The system will make way for more contextully-driven ads—and potentially new advertisers. LinkNYC

Such a system could provide new avenues for local businesses. O’Donnell sees a future where Joe’s NY Pizza could buy space on the five kiosks in the surrounding neighborhoods, and even program them to deploy when business is slow. The average New Yorker might even get in on the action; one day, you might be able to pay, say, $20 to propose to your spouse on the internet tower outside his or her office. Welcome to the weird world of hyperlocal advertising.

O’Donnell says using lucrative ads to pay for ambitious public services is a new, potentially radical, idea. “I don’t think it’s ever been done before,” he says. At least, not in the real world. On the internet, we’re quite familiar with this arrangement. It’s how we get our free social networks, our free video sharing sites, and our free inboxes.

Some will undoubtedly see this as a Faustian bargain. We’ve sacrificed our personal data for great software, but letting that model seep into our cities somehow seems more pernicious. There was a flare-up recently when it was discovered that Titan, an ad company and LinkNYC partner, was installing Bluetooth radios in existing phone booths in New York City. The tracking involved in this next-generation system could potentially be far more invasive.

And yet, from another perspective, LinkNYC could just be a smart approach to delivering a potentially transformative city service. Infrastructure is hard. Taxes are unpopular. And New York’s been aglow with ads for decades anyway, so what’s the difference? If the plan does go through, and the network is as robust as LinkNYC promises, there’s a good chance many people will see it just like they see Gmail: as a really good, free thing.

NYC’s New Pay Phones Will Provide Super-Fast Wi-Fi—And Super-Smart Ads

LinkNYC’s plan is to replace New York City’s pay phones with sophisticated internet pylons. LinkNYC

By this time next year, if all goes according to plan, there will be a new fixture on streets of New York: hundreds of slim aluminum pillars, each providing some of the fastest free internet available anywhere in the world.

The kiosks are part of the ambitious initiative LinkNYC, which earlier this week was chosen to replace the city’s aging and all but forgotten pay phones. Beyond blanketing Gotham in crazy-fast Wi-Fi, the pylons are designed to let people charge their gadgets and look up directions on touch screens. Eventually, they could broadcast emergency messages or provide a place where New Yorkers can provide civic feedback on various topics.

Just as novel is the plan for how city dwellers pay for it. They won’t have to dig into their pockets for spare change or put up with still more taxes. Instead, they must endure advertisements. It’s the same deal we tacitly accept when we use great free apps like Gmail, but IRL: a first-rate service in exchange for having people trying to sell us stuff in ever more precise, ever more determined ways.

One Tower, Designed for Three Screens

LinkNYC is the work of Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation and CityBridge, a consortium that includes Qualcomm, Titan, Comark and Transit Wireless. It’s a bold vision but not yet a sure-thing. The plan awaits approval by a handful of city boards, and many logistical questions remain unanswered. If the plan ultimately is approved, however, there could be as many as 400 of these high-tech monoliths—or “Links”—in the Big Apple by the end of next year. The goal is to erect some 10,000 throughout the five boroughs.

The New York firm Control Group was responsible for the design of the pillars (it’s also doing the touchscreen slabs being deployed in NYC subway stations). Partner Chris O’Donnell says one unique thing about the pillars is how they tie together interactions across three types of screens: one public, one private, and one somewhere in between. That is, the screen beaming ads from the pillar, the screen on your phone or laptop, and the touchscreen you use on the pillar itself.

Slimmer pillars, without ads, are proposed for residential areas. LinkNYC

That last screen is what links the new structures to phone booths of yore, making them touch points for one-to-one interaction. Passersby will use an Android tablet built into each Link to consult interactive maps, for example, or report broken stop lights. A tactile keypad will let people place free phone calls to anyone in the U.S.

Relying on Android will make it easy to refine apps on the fly and add new ones, O’Donnell says. He sees polling as one possible future use case. “Think about how labor intensive it is to go to a town hall meeting,” he says. He imagines a scenario where you could walk by a Link and answer a few questions about an issue in your neighborhood. Maybe not the ideal model for the future of civic engagement, but potentially a practical one.

Bringing Disruptive Connectivity to the City

Just as phone booths were shared telephones, O’Donnell sees these touchscreens as a shared computer. But the Link’s other two screens are what make it an entirely new infrastructural beast. First are the large displays placed on the sides of those Links installed in commercial districts to project advertisements. (Those in residential neighborhoods will be slimmer, with no screens.) This updates an old idea—telephone booths often were wrapped in ads, and many cities have billboards and ad kiosks. What’s new is that these ads will pay for internet on your phone.

So, about that Wi-Fi. If the plan goes through, LinkNYC’s gigabit connection would be among the fastest public internet available anywhere. Though today’s phones can’t yet take full advantage of such bandwidth, CityBridge claims each pillar will be able to support 250 people within a radius if 150 feet without dipping in speed. Specific logistical details are vague, but the idea is once you’ve signed up, your devices will automatically join the network and stay connected as you move throughout the city.

A prototype Link being set up in Manhattan. Control Group

This, O’Donnell says, is the real mission of LinkNYC: bringing connectivity to all of New York. “And not only accessible connectivity. I’d say disruptive connectivity,” he adds. He insists LinkNYC is commitment to building a first-rate network, not the sort of last-resort free internet you’d expect from an airport, for example.

Though it remains to be seen if LinkNYC can deliver on that promise, the city is keen on the prospect. The mayor’s office says the plan could help “close the digital divide,” freeing lower-income people who primarily use phones for internet access from relying on pricey data plans. It’s a step toward looking at the internet as a service that a city can provide its citizens. As infrastructure, it could give rise to new types of apps and city services that don’t make sense with today’s connectivity.

The Price? Next-Gen Ads

So what’s the catch? Ads. Specifically, those on the sides of the kiosks. Those advertisements are a hugely valuable asset, O’Donnell says. “The real reason why it’s going to work in New York City where it hasn’t elsewhere is because New York is the biggest, most valuable media market in the world.”

Beyond the valuable real estate they occupy, the Link ads will be unprecedentedly sophisticated. The plan, as ever, is to use technology to make them more relevant, more engaging, more contextually-driven. A particular kiosk could change the ad it’s displaying based on what time of day it is, for example, or what events are happening nearby, or even potentially what sorts of people are walking by it, at least in a broad demographic sense.

The system will make way for more contextully-driven ads—and potentially new advertisers. LinkNYC

Such a system could provide new avenues for local businesses. O’Donnell sees a future where Joe’s NY Pizza could buy space on the five kiosks in the surrounding neighborhoods, and even program them to deploy when business is slow. The average New Yorker might even get in on the action; one day, you might be able to pay, say, $20 to propose to your spouse on the internet tower outside his or her office. Welcome to the weird world of hyperlocal advertising.

O’Donnell says using lucrative ads to pay for ambitious public services is a new, potentially radical, idea. “I don’t think it’s ever been done before,” he says. At least, not in the real world. On the internet, we’re quite familiar with this arrangement. It’s how we get our free social networks, our free video sharing sites, and our free inboxes.

Some will undoubtedly see this as a Faustian bargain. We’ve sacrificed our personal data for great software, but letting that model seep into our cities somehow seems more pernicious. There was a flare-up recently when it was discovered that Titan, an ad company and LinkNYC partner, was installing Bluetooth radios in existing phone booths in New York City. The tracking involved in this next-generation system could potentially be far more invasive.

And yet, from another perspective, LinkNYC could just be a smart approach to delivering a potentially transformative city service. Infrastructure is hard. Taxes are unpopular. And New York’s been aglow with ads for decades anyway, so what’s the difference? If the plan does go through, and the network is as robust as LinkNYC promises, there’s a good chance many people will see it just like they see Gmail: as a really good, free thing.

Amazon Vows to Run on 100 Percent Renewable Energy

Kristoffer Tripplaar/ Sipa USA via AP

Apple made the pledge. So did Google and Facebook. But Amazon stayed silent.

Over the past few years, Apple, Google, and Facebook pledged to run their online empires on renewable energy, and considering how large these empires have become—how many data centers and machines are now required to keep them going—this was a vital thing. But despite pressure from the likes of Greenpeace, the environmental activism organization, the other big internet name, Amazon, didn’t budge.

That all changed on Wednesday. With a post on its website, Amazon’s cloud computing division—Amazon Web Services—said it has a “long-term commitment to achieve 100 percent renewable energy usage for our global infrastructure footprint.”

Amazon is the largest cloud computing company in the world, providing services where developers and business can rent computing power. Many popular websites and services, such as Netflix, Spotify and Pinterest, all use the Amazon cloud. If Amazon cuts its emissions, it could have a significant impact on the tech industry’s carbon footprint.

But don’t celebrate too much. Like other companies committing to switch to 100 percent renewable power, Amazon will likely take many years to complete the transition. Facebook, for example, estimated in 2012 that it would actually increase its use of non-renewable energy over the next year, even as it adds more renewable power to the mix. The company estimated that only 25 percent of its power would come from renewable sources by 2015.

In a statement sent to WIRED on Wednesday, Greenpeace IT analyst Gary Cook pointed out that, unlike its peers, Amazon hasn’t published a roadmap outlining its plans to wean itself off dirty energy. That makes it harder to assess how serious the company really is.

None the less, with his statement, Cooks says that Amazon’s commitment is still a welcome sign of progress. “With the world’s largest public cloud apparently joining Apple, Google, Facebook and others in committing to power with 100 percent renewable energy, the race to build a green internet may be gaining a crucial new competitor,” the statement reads.

Greenpeace has often criticized Amazon for not following in the footsteps of rivals like Google. Amazon ranked among the worst companies in the organization’s Clicking Clean report last April.

Amazon runs a large number of data centers in Virginia, where Cooks says the vast majority of electricity comes from nuclear power, natural gas, and coal. Amazon has, however, added locations in other regions that it claims are 100 percent powered by renewable energy, starting with its Oregon-based data centers, built in 2011.

One of the biggest problems, Cook says, is that Amazon hasn’t been forthcoming about its energy use. For Amazon, more transparency will be the next step in proving that its future is green.

WIRED Binge-Watching Guide: The Office (US Version)

NBC

Nobody saw The Office sticking around for too long. The first season in 2005 was, if not a failure, then certainly a disappointment. The mockumentary about a paper company’s Scranton, Pennsylvania branch was based on the British series of the same name, but replicating its tone was a gamble for the show’s creator, Greg Daniels. Nobody does British humor better than the British, and mercilessly dark comedy proved to be a tough sell for mainstream network American audiences.

Over time, though, the show grew into its own skin, bringing heart to its humor. Soon, you weren’t just laughing at the characters and their workplace foibles; you were rooting for them, too.

Read More Binge-Watching Guides

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Freaks and Geeks

Party Down

Regional manager Michael Scott, played so perfectly by Steve Carell, is the comic—and often emotional—center of the show. (It’s no coincidence that the show’s final two seasons, filmed sans Carell, were a bit of a letdown.) An incompetent, offensive, but ultimately good-natured paper pro, Michael constantly seeks out new ways to entertain and motivate (usually in that order) his employees.

There are his many alter egos, including Date Mike (“Hi, I’m Date Mike, nice to meet me”), secret agent Michael Scarn, Blind-guy Mcsqueezy, who does pretty much what you’d expect him to, and Ping, Michael’s incredibly offensive take on an Asian. But better than his shenanigans is his sheer, unrelenting stupidity, which somehow crosses the line into charming. When he says things like, “Tell him to call me as asap as possible,” or “It’s incalcucable,” you can’t help but root for the guy. And I don’t know who actually invented the “that’s what she said” punch line, but I know Michael Scott gave the joke its teeth.

And then there’s the Jim and Pam saga. The spark between the goofy salesman and the suppressed receptionist was obvious from the pilot episode. But The Office was wise not to rush things, to let the characters explore other relationships (remember Rashida Jones’ criminally underrated Karen?) stand on their own two feet. In the end, it’s tough to think of a more realistic romance in television. From their awkward flirting to their surprise pregnancy, even their eventual marital rough patch, it all comes off as incredibly authentic.

But the great characters don’t stop there: there’s beet-farming quasi-Amish survivalist Dwight; oversized dolt Kevin; uptalker Kelly; weird old Creed, who might also be a serial killer. And the list goes on—the show’s greatest strength lay in its ensemble.

Even as the show fell off the last few seasons, it still retained its fascination with the mundane. Because ultimately, The Office is a show about the relationships we forge with those around us. It proves that sometimes, with only a conference room and a culturally tone-deaf boss, magic can happen. And somehow, against, the odds, they made magic in Scranton, PA.

The Office

Number of Seasons: 9 (201 episodes)

Time Requirements: Okay, 200 episodes is a lot. Even at four eps a night and 10 on the weekends, that’s still a solid week. You’re gonna want to save this one for the holidays; maybe start it over Thanksgiving, then hit the rest between Christmas and going back to work?

Where to Get Your Fix: Netflix, Amazon, Google Play

Best Character to Follow: It’s got to be Michael Scott. Yeah, Jim and Pam are great, and a case could certainly be made for a few other characters. But Michael wins out because, on a pure binge-watching level, he’s consistently funny and thus the most fun to watch. This is a guy who thought that you could literally declare bankruptcy. He also takes improv classes, dry-cleans his jeans, and wrote a memoir called Somehow I Manage.

The Three Podcast Episodes You Can’t Miss This Week

This week, Serial broke an iTunes record by becoming the fastest podcast to ever reach five million downloads and streams. Meanwhile, we learned that Spotify may be getting ready to launch its own podcasting service. Just more proof that podcasts are literally the biggest form of media to ever be invented. EVER! If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the options of great stuff to listen to, we humbly offer this weekly guide to shows you should check out.

The Treatment

Episode: “Christopher Nolan: Interstellar”

Elvis Mitchell is one of my favorite pop-culture interviewers. He’s got tons of love for—and encyclopedic knowledge of—film, music, and art. He’s a fan, but never overly fannish, and has a real talent for getting guests to reveal interesting details about themselves and their work. On Mitchell’s recent episode with Interstellar director (and WIRED guest editor) Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker talks about the sci-fi blockbuster kings who inspired him, the challenge of balancing human emotion with grand spectacle, and the importance of choosing the right car for each character. Mitchell has interviewed Nolan several times before, and the rapport between the two yields a fluid, insightful conversation. Listen here.

How Did This Get Made?

Episode: “Rhinestone: Live!”

Rhinestone, in case you missed it—and you probably did—is a 1984 musical comedy in which Dolly Parton tries to turn Sylvester Stallone’s rough-and-tumble cab driver into a country music sensation. Guess whether it turned out to be an abysmal, embarrassing failure for everyone involved. Yep, it sure did!

On its 30th anniversary, HDTGM hosts Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas tear the inane flick apart in their typically hilarious fashion. Matt Jones (the actor/comedian who played Jesse’s loyal, dimwitted pal Badger on Breaking Bad), joins in on the fun, in front of a live audience at LA’s Largo theater. As with pretty much all episodes of this podcast, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve actually seen the craptastic movie they’re dissecting; just hearing the hosts rant about it is more than funny enough. Listen here.

Slate Money

Episode: “The ‘Smoking Up Behind the Bleachers’ Edition”

I’ve been a faithful listener of Slate Money since its debut six months ago, and while I wouldn’t have expected a podcast about economic news to become such a favorite, it’s one of the shows I most look forward to each week. Business writers Felix Salmon, Cathy O’Neil, and Jordan Weissman are smart, clear, and entertaining guides to the world of finance. The show is just perfect for a dumdum like me who has watched many (many!) feature-length documentaries about the global financial meltdown but somehow still just baaarely understands WTFingF happened.

A great place to start: The trio’s recent episode breaking down Taylor Swift’s masterful business dealings (and what they mean for the music industry), and the possible economic implications of legal weed. See? Economics can be super fun! Listen here.

Amazon Vows to Run on 100 Percent Renewable Energy

Mike Kane/WIRED

Apple made the pledge. So did Google and Facebook. But Amazon stayed silent.

Over the past few years, Apple, Google, and Facebook pledged to run their online empires on renewable energy, and considering how large these empires have become—how many data centers and machines are now required to keep them going—this was a vital thing. But despite pressure from the likes of Greenpeace, the environmental activism organization, the other big internet name, Amazon, didn’t budge.

That all changed on Wednesday. With a post on its website, Amazon’s cloud computing division—Amazon Web Services—said it has a “long-term commitment to achieve 100 percent renewable energy usage for our global infrastructure footprint.”

Amazon is the largest cloud computing company in the world, providing services where developers and business can rent computing power. Many popular websites and services, such as Netflix, Spotify and Pinterest, all use the Amazon cloud. If Amazon cuts its emissions, it could have a significant impact on the tech industry’s carbon footprint.

But don’t celebrate too much. Like other companies committing to switch to 100 percent renewable power, Amazon will likely take many years to complete the transition. Facebook, for example, estimated in 2012 that it would actually increase its use of non-renewable energy over the next year, even as it adds more renewable power to the mix. The company estimated that only 25 percent of its power would come from renewable sources by 2015.

In a statement sent to WIRED on Wednesday, Greenpeace IT analyst Gary Cook pointed out that, unlike its peers, Amazon hasn’t published a roadmap outlining its plans to wean itself off dirty energy. That makes it harder to assess how serious the company really is.

None the less, with his statement, Cooks says that Amazon’s commitment is still a welcome sign of progress. “With the world’s largest public cloud apparently joining Apple, Google, Facebook and others in committing to power with 100 percent renewable energy, the race to build a green internet may be gaining a crucial new competitor,” the statement reads.

Greenpeace has often criticized Amazon for not following in the footsteps of rivals like Google. Amazon ranked among the worst companies in the organization’s Clicking Clean report last April.

Amazon runs a large number of data centers in Virginia, where Cooks says the vast majority of electricity comes from nuclear power, natural gas, and coal. Amazon has, however, added locations in other regions that it claims are 100 percent powered by renewable energy, starting with its Oregon-based data centers, built in 2011.

One of the biggest problems, Cook says, is that Amazon hasn’t been forthcoming about its energy use. For Amazon, more transparency will be the next step in proving that its future is green.

WIRED Binge-Watching Guide: The Office (US Version)

NBC

Nobody saw The Office sticking around for too long. The first season in 2005 was, if not a failure, then certainly a disappointment. The mockumentary about a paper company’s Scranton, Pennsylvania branch was based on the British series of the same name, but replicating its tone was a gamble for the show’s creator, Greg Daniels. Nobody does British humor better than the British, and mercilessly dark comedy proved to be a tough sell for mainstream network American audiences.

Over time, though, the show grew into its own skin, bringing heart to its humor. Soon, you weren’t just laughing at the characters and their workplace foibles; you were rooting for them, too.

Read More Binge-Watching Guides

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Freaks and Geeks

Party Down

Regional manager Michael Scott, played so perfectly by Steve Carell, is the comic—and often emotional—center of the show. (It’s no coincidence that the show’s final two seasons, filmed sans Carell, were a bit of a letdown.) An incompetent, offensive, but ultimately good-natured paper pro, Michael constantly seeks out new ways to entertain and motivate (usually in that order) his employees.

There are his many alter egos, including Date Mike (“Hi, I’m Date Mike, nice to meet me”), secret agent Michael Scarn, Blind-guy Mcsqueezy, who does pretty much what you’d expect him to, and Ping, Michael’s incredibly offensive take on an Asian. But better than his shenanigans is his sheer, unrelenting stupidity, which somehow crosses the line into charming. When he says things like, “Tell him to call me as asap as possible,” or “It’s incalcucable,” you can’t help but root for the guy. And I don’t know who actually invented the “that’s what she said” punch line, but I know Michael Scott gave the joke its teeth.

And then there’s the Jim and Pam saga. The spark between the goofy salesman and the suppressed receptionist was obvious from the pilot episode. But The Office was wise not to rush things, to let the characters explore other relationships (remember Rashida Jones’ criminally underrated Karen?) stand on their own two feet. In the end, it’s tough to think of a more realistic romance in television. From their awkward flirting to their surprise pregnancy, even their eventual marital rough patch, it all comes off as incredibly authentic.

But the great characters don’t stop there: there’s beet-farming quasi-Amish survivalist Dwight; oversized dolt Kevin; uptalker Kelly; weird old Creed, who might also be a serial killer. And the list goes on—the show’s greatest strength lay in its ensemble.

Even as the show fell off the last few seasons, it still retained its fascination with the mundane. Because ultimately, The Office is a show about the relationships we forge with those around us. It proves that sometimes, with only a conference room and a culturally tone-deaf boss, magic can happen. And somehow, against, the odds, they made magic in Scranton, PA.

The Office

Number of Seasons: 9 (201 episodes)

Time Requirements: Okay, 200 episodes is a lot. Even at four eps a night and 10 on the weekends, that’s still a solid week. You’re gonna want to save this one for the holidays; maybe start it over Thanksgiving, then hit the rest between Christmas and going back to work?

Where to Get Your Fix: Netflix, Amazon, Google Play

Best Character to Follow: It’s got to be Michael Scott. Yeah, Jim and Pam are great, and a case could certainly be made for a few other characters. But Michael wins out because, on a pure binge-watching level, he’s consistently funny and thus the most fun to watch. This is a guy who thought that you could literally declare bankruptcy. He also takes improv classes, dry-cleans his jeans, and wrote a memoir called Somehow I Manage.

The Three Podcast Episodes You Can’t Miss This Week

This week, Serial broke an iTunes record by becoming the fastest podcast to ever reach five million downloads and streams. Meanwhile, we learned that Spotify may be getting ready to launch its own podcasting service. Just more proof that podcasts are literally the biggest form of media to ever be invented. EVER! If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the options of great stuff to listen to, we humbly offer this weekly guide to shows you should check out.

The Treatment

Episode: “Christopher Nolan: Interstellar”

Elvis Mitchell is one of my favorite pop-culture interviewers. He’s got tons of love for—and encyclopedic knowledge of—film, music, and art. He’s a fan, but never overly fannish, and has a real talent for getting guests to reveal interesting details about themselves and their work. On Mitchell’s recent episode with Interstellar director (and WIRED guest editor) Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker talks about the sci-fi blockbuster kings who inspired him, the challenge of balancing human emotion with grand spectacle, and the importance of choosing the right car for each character. Mitchell has interviewed Nolan several times before, and the rapport between the two yields a fluid, insightful conversation. Listen here.

How Did This Get Made?

Episode: “Rhinestone: Live!”

Rhinestone, in case you missed it—and you probably did—is a 1984 musical comedy in which Dolly Parton tries to turn Sylvester Stallone’s rough-and-tumble cab driver into a country music sensation. Guess whether it turned out to be an abysmal, embarrassing failure for everyone involved. Yep, it sure did!

On its 30th anniversary, HDTGM hosts Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas tear the inane flick apart in their typically hilarious fashion. Matt Jones (the actor/comedian who played Jesse’s loyal, dimwitted pal Badger on Breaking Bad), joins in on the fun, in front of a live audience at LA’s Largo theater. As with pretty much all episodes of this podcast, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve actually seen the craptastic movie they’re dissecting; just hearing the hosts rant about it is more than funny enough. Listen here.

Slate Money

Episode: “The ‘Smoking Up Behind the Bleachers’ Edition”

I’ve been a faithful listener of Slate Money since its debut six months ago, and while I wouldn’t have expected a podcast about economic news to become such a favorite, it’s one of the shows I most look forward to each week. Business writers Felix Salmon, Cathy O’Neil, and Jordan Weissman are smart, clear, and entertaining guides to the world of finance. The show is just perfect for a dumdum like me who has watched many (many!) feature-length documentaries about the global financial meltdown but somehow still just baaarely understands WTFingF happened.

A great place to start: The trio’s recent episode breaking down Taylor Swift’s masterful business dealings (and what they mean for the music industry), and the possible economic implications of legal weed. See? Economics can be super fun! Listen here.

How Facebook’s Programming Tools Are Remaking Wikipedia, Baidu, and Box

Jon Snyder/WIRED

Facebook’s social network got so big, it had to build the thing an entirely new foundation.

It’s a story that shows just how far the giants of the internet must go to ensure that their services can reliably juggle traffic from hundreds of millions of people across the globe. It wasn’t just that Facebook had to replace the foundation of its social network—now used by more than 1.35 billion people across the globe. The company had to create a new kind of foundation.

This creation is called HHVM. Basically, it’s a way of more efficiently running the PHP programming language, the language that helps drive all the stuff you do on Facebook each day. That may seem like a small and geeky thing tagged with one of those computer-y acronyms that looks a lot like all the others. But this protect was vitally important to the continued expansion of Facebook—before HHVM, PHP wasn’t well suited to running such a massive website—and as it turns out, the project is now helping drive the future of other big-name online services as well.

On Wednesday, the file-sharing startup Box revealed that it will move its increasingly popular online services onto HHVM, following in the footsteps of Wikipedia and the Chinese search giant Baidu. Facebook, you see, has open sourced HHVM, freely sharing it with the world at large, as it so often does with the software it creates to drive its online empire. In the end, the tool could help juice many other sites as well, in part because WordPress, the popular website hosting software, was built with PHP too.

HHVM can provide a notable speed improvement for existing PHP sites, says Joe Marrama, a senior software engineer at Box, and it’s better suited to building and running large services along the lines of Box. But, perhaps more importantly, the tool could help move these sites move to a new incarnation of PHP called Hack.

Also developed at Facebook, Hack is designed to run atop HHVM, and it can improve PHP sites in other ways. It’s part of a movement towards programming languages that let you not only quickly build software and quickly execute it, but also better organize software code and more readily weed out bugs and other coding errors. “There are all sorts of wonderful things Hack brings to the table,” says Facebook’s Paul Tarjan, “and it’s only available on HHVM.”

In the past, programming languages were often divided into two camps: those, like PHP, that provided speed of development, and those, like C++ and Java, that provided speed of execution while making it easier to weed out bugs. Now, many languages, including not only Hack but also Apple’s Swift and D, another language Facebook has tinkered with, are striving to find a sweet spot between the two.

Marrama says that Hack can make PHP “much more attractive” option for developing websites, and though Box has yet to move to the new language, the company plans to consider it in the future.

David Chang Shares the Secrets Behind Momofuku’s Delicious Success

This talk is from WIRED by Design, a two-day live magazine event that celebrated all forms of creative problem solving.

How does David Chang, the chef behind the acclaimed Momofuku restaurant group in New York City, invent his wildly delicious dishes? He embraces the possibility of failure. As he puts it: “Taking risks leads to good, new food.”

At WIRED by Design, Chang talked about the delicate balance involved in culinary experimentation. First, there that need to take risks. How else do you find a dish that no one’s ever tried before? When Chang was opening his second restaurant, Momofuku Ssam Bar, he defied fine-dining orthodoxy at every turn. “All our bad ideas started to seem like good ideas,” he says. “Somewhere in that mess I knew we could find something really delicious.”

But equally important to experimenting, Chang says, is the need to be honest when a dish isn’t quite working. He mentions something chef served at one of his restaurants: a beef tongue sandwich on rye with bone marrow soup. The chef liked it; Chang did not. “It relied on nostalgia instead of actual appeal,” he says. “Worst of all, it was a safe move…It was not reaching for high or low. It was reaching for the middle, which I am vehemently against.”

For more, see live.wired.com.