The good news is that Sam from Humm is actively working on making the Adobe Air upload application work under Linux. So, how does the process of uploading your data to the service work?

All in one

The Application is a real "one click" experience. It autodetects your SD card, sees which files are there, and sends them straight to the server after you click the button.

Here we go...

So, after waiting a few hours for the data to process - what do the graphs look like.

Monthly Electricity Usage (click for bigger)

Well, they're a little underwhelming and a bit of a mess. Now, in fairness, I've only uploaded a few weeks' of data - no doubt the graphs will be richer when I've uploaded more data. This is a beta service and it's clear that there are a lot of improvements being made.

Weekly Comparison (Click for bigger)

Annoyingly, you can't compare two different Plug Bugs - so I've no way of knowing if my computer is more energy efficient than my laptop.

There doesn't seem to be a way to go into historic data

There's no graph to show my gas usage. I've questioned the wisdom of a gas monitor - it only looks at hot water so doesn't measure cooking or hot air systems.

Overall, this is a pretty good start. I can see my hourly, weekly and monthly usage and compare how I'm doing.  It could do with some spit and polish to make the graphs more intuitive and useful.  I wonder if there's any way to get the data into Pachube or something similar.

In order to visualise the data, I have to manually upload the files to the Green Energy Options MyEnergy site.  Rather than a simple web based uploader - GEO have decided to go with Adobe Air as their platform for uploading and viewing the data.

Here are the steps I had to take to get the service working - as you will see, it wasn't easy and ultimately failed.

The site asks me to install some software in order to upload the files.  My Operating System is Ubuntu Linux - I was afraid this software would be Microsoft Windows only and I'd have to use WINE.

Let's go!

Then the site tells me I'll need to install Adobe Air.  Luckily, this can be done through the browser.

Nice and Easy?

The installation through the browser was fairly swift and painless.

Installation of Air

The installer popped up some fairly scary warning messages.  If you're going to be asking people to install your software, you need to make it as easy as possible to get.  Signing and certifying your software will reduce "error" messages like this and increase confidence in your product.  Without it, I've no way of knowing that your site isn't compromised.

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON

True to the installer's word, I ended up with an icon on my desktop.

Desktop Icon

So, I double click...

This looks hopefull...

The software has a think before popping up this helpful error message.

...DENIED!

I know what you're thinking.  "The silly sod has forgotten to plug the SD card in."  Ummm.... nope!

SD card inserted

The SD card is inserted - using the supplied reader - and my system has identified and mounted it correctly.

At this point, I'm stuck.  So I give up.

What's so frustrating is that it doesn't have to be this way.  I've no idea what the benefits are of Adobe Air - but asking your users to install something new is always problematic.  Plain old Flash - which has its fair share of problems under Linux - allows you to upload multiple files - take a look at the standard WordPress image uploader.

WordPress Multiple Select

As with everything - Keep It Simple and Stupid.  Do your users really want to install extra software for your product? Do they really need to? Is there another, simpler way which gets the same results?

I'm sure - uber-hacker that I am - that I'll figure out a way to make it work. But the point is, I shouldn't have to.