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Wow, thanks for checking us out! We’re really excited about addressing big issues through cooperative empowerment of individual concerns.

We are currently working with people like YOU to publish and rate the socially responsible impacts of the chocolate industry.

In order to help you discover which brands of chocolate support your own unique values, we’ve created an online database to help you keep track of the reputations of various companies. Our goal is to create at least 200 reviews and 1000 ratings about the chocolate industry by August, 2008.

The overall idea is to get you quick, straightforward, and trustworthy summaries of how any product meets your own values. Our team has been focusing our efforts on designing a functional (and hopefully usable) interface for generating information on our site. So, with limited resources, we have put the cell phone access technology development on hold until we have enough data to collect. But following is a description of how it will work:

Click this button when you’re ready to browse and rate the reviews that are already in our system. You’ll be asked to create an account and then be taken to a listing of the companies and products that are listed in our system. Just click on “details” below a company to see its reviews. Don’t forget to fill out our survey so that we can continue improving our service.

Every packaged food has a label that tells you about the food’s nutritional value – in short, a label indicating how that product affects your body. But how can you learn how a product impacts the world around you?

BuyItLikeYouMeanIt allows you to discover whether the products you buy are socially responsible. All you have to do is scan a product’s barcode with your cell phone. Within moments we will send you a text message with your own unique overall responsibility rating, along with individual ratings on everything from the producer’s labor practices to whether the product is locally grown. It will even list suggested alternates and a follow up email will give you more information and a chance to get involved in further research.
Using the service is easy. It’s free. And it will change both the way we shop – and the way that products are made and distributed.

There are a lot of new technologies that are trying to send interactive messages to shoppers “at the point of sale”. We’re creating something even more ambitious: a forum where people can communicate with each other and then specific exactly what they want to know at any point of sale! We’ve defined a new kind of focused, peer reviewed system for sharing research so that we can all trust how a product is rated. The system will also allow you to customize how the ratings you receive are determined. The technology is here, and we’ve been hearing about how the web can change the world and make everything more populous, right? This is how that happens.

There’s a lot more information on the other pages and posts in this blog. Soon we’ll be posting a prototype of our technology for you to play with and give us feedback. Then we’ll begin researching the real world effects of the chocolate industry together. In no time at all you’ll be earning status in our system by doing research, rating company behaviors, or evaluating what your friends have been doing. Think of it as a new way for you to meet other passionate people who are interested in a practical way to make progressive change. Stick with it and you’ll soon be known as a trusted expert.

Let us know if you have any suggestions as we go forward ok? You can make comments on all of our postings and you can also reach us through email.