• Category Archives: Gadgets and Tech

    Logitech to Empower Consumers with Detailed Information on Products’ Environmental Impact Across the Portfolio

    Logitech today pledged to communicate the carbon impact of all its products on packaging and the company website. Logitech will be the first consumer electronics company to provide detailed carbon impact labeling on product packaging across the entire portfolio. In doing so, it intends to empower and collaborate with consumers, informing the purchasing choices they make. It also wishes to galvanize an industry-wide shift to dramatically lower the impact of carbon on the environment. Logitech expects the first carbon impact labeling to appear on its gaming products later this year, followed by a rollout across the full portfolio.

    As an award-winning design company, Logitech designs for sustainability across all its brands, looking for ways to reduce the impact its products have on the environment throughout the design process. Until now, the carbon impact has not been visible to consumers looking to better understand their individual impact on the environment. Logitech’s carbon transparent labeling will quantify that impact, communicate it to consumers, and empower them to make more informed purchasing decisions.

    Carbon transparency further extends Logitech’s commitment to sustainability across its products, packaging, and operations. In 2019, Logitech neutralized the carbon in its gaming product portfolio, announced its support of the Paris Agreement, pledging to limit its carbon footprint to support the ambitious 1.5oC goal and committed that the Company will be powered exclusively by renewable electricity by 2030.

    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on June 18, 2020
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    Toyota to Build A Prototype City Of The Future in Japan

    Today at CES 2020, Toyota revealed plans to build a prototype city of the future on a 175-acre site at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan. Called the Woven City, it will be a fully connected ecosystem powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Envisioned as a living laboratory, the Woven City will serve as a home to full-time residents and researchers who will be able to test and develop technologies such as autonomy, robotics, personal mobility, smart homes, and artificial intelligence in a real-world environment. 

    The city is planned to be fully sustainable, with buildings made mostly of wood to minimize the carbon footprint, using traditional Japanese wood joinery, combined with robotic production methods. The rooftops will be covered in photo-voltaic panels to generate solar power in addition to power generated by hydrogen fuel cells. Toyota plans to weave in the outdoors throughout the city, with native vegetation and hydroponics. For the design of Woven City, Toyota has commissioned Danish architect, Bjarke Ingels, CEO, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

    Residences will be equipped with the latest in human support technologies, such as in-home robotics to assist with daily living. The homes will use sensor-based AI to check occupants’ health, take care of basic needs and enhance daily life, creating an opportunity to deploy connected technology with integrity and trust, securely and positively. To move residents through the city, only fully-autonomous, zero-emission vehicles will be allowed on the main thoroughfares. In and throughout Woven City, autonomous Toyota e-Palettes will be used for transportation and deliveries, as well as for changeable mobile retail.

    Both neighborhood parks and a large central park for recreation, as well as a central plaza for social gatherings, are designed to bring the community together. Toyota believes that encouraging human connection will be an equally important aspect of this experience. Toyota plans to populate Woven City with Toyota Motor Corporation employees and their families, retired couples, retailers, visiting scientists, and industry partners. The plan is for 2000 people to start, adding more as the project evolves. The groundbreaking for the site is planned for early 2021.


    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on January 7, 2020
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    Prototype of Fugaku Supercomputer is Worlds Greenest supercomputer

    Fujitsu and RIKEN today announced that a prototype of the supercomputer Fugaku being jointly developed by the two parties took No.1 in the Green500, a global ranking based on the energy efficiency of supercomputers. The Green500 ranks the world’s top500 fastest computing supercomputers by power consumption and efficiency among the TOP500 supercomputers. The system that topped the Green500 was manufactured by Fujitsu as a prototype of Fugaku. Fugaku is a system equipped only with a general-purpose CPU, which can process various applications without using accelerators such as GPUs.

    Prototype of Fugaku Supercomputer is equipped with 768 A64FX CPUs that support the Arm SVE (Scalable Vector Extension) instructions for the first time in the world. This performance measurement demonstrated that Fugaku technologies have the world’s highest energy efficiency, achieving 1.9995 PFLOPS (petaflops) in calculation speed for simultaneous linear equations (LINPACK3) against 2.3593 PFLOPS in a peak performance, and 16.876 GFLOPS/W (gigaflops per watt) in a performance per 1 watt of power consumption.

    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on November 19, 2019
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    Five reasons why you need a PC diagnostics software

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    Computers are complex machines with different hardware, software, and a multitude of other components and systems that work in harmony. However, just like all complex electronic devices, PCs can also malfunction, experience technical glitches and other issues.

    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on November 8, 2016
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    What to look for in an Open Source POS system

    A web-based Point of Sale system that uses PHP language script and uses MySQL as the back-end data storage. Everyone knows the definition of an Open Source POS system. However, choosing that one great open source point of sale system perfectly moulded for a particular business can be a perplexing, daunting task, for new and experienced business owners alike.

    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on October 29, 2016
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    Solar-powered ebook will make unlimited reading a reality

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    Picture this, reading a book out there on the mountains, reclining against an ornate bench, with not a bother about the charge of your ebook reader running out. Before you compare the experience with reading an actual book, remember that we’re talking about reading book volumes in a single device. It’s all good and possible with the Cybook Ocean ebook reader from Bookeen that offers battery charging via the power of the sun. You can continue reading for days on end and not go hobbling for a charging point. The reader is equipped with invisible solar cells at the back of it, with dedicated solar modules that add to the overall reading time. All a reader would have to do is read while outside in the sun, braving some serious tan and sun-burns and voila, you have a fully charged device to read even more.

    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on February 26, 2016
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    World’s first robot-operated farm to be operational next year

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    We were rather fascinated about the robot-operated farm from Japan when we heard about it. This is the world’s first such farm and aims to minimize the effort in cultivating basic crop. The idea has been put into practice and has a start date to it as well. Set up in Japan’s Kyoto, the farm aims to harvest 500,000 heads of lettuce a day. This will be the first such farm to leverage robots and create a large scale growth. Called ‘Spread’, this facility is based in Kameoka City within the Kyoto Prefecture. Human intervention is not completely cancelled though. Human planters will still sow the seeds but the rest of the farming operations will be handled by robots. The machines will handle transplanting, watering, harvesting and trimming.

    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on February 25, 2016
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    Elgato Eve Energy guilts you by sharing your energy usage stats

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    There’s nothing better to convince you to conserve energy than a monitor that keeps updating you with your usage stats. Elgato has introduced the Eve Energy, a device that plugs into your wall and connects with your smart device. The HomeKit-compatible device can be controlled with the accompanying Elgato app or via Siri. It updates you on the amount of energy consumed by the device that is plugged into it making you aware of which devices are the biggest energy hogs in your home. It consumes close to no energy itself. “Eve Energy was carefully designed to make your home smarter, not more complicated,” said Elgato’s CEO, Markus Fest in a press release. “It is ready to use out of the box in seconds and consumes virtually no energy itself. Eve Energy is the most elegant way to control and monitor your electrical devices.”

    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on February 19, 2016
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    This LED lamp is powered by a lit candle

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    Who would’ve thought that tea light candles would go on to power LED bulbs. Well, in the light of this epic discovery we marvel at the existence of an LED lamp that doesn’t have a cord or battery pack to illuminate. A single candle can set the lamp aglow for four hours. It leverages the thermoelectric Seebeck effect that generates electricity from the heat generated by the candle. The miracle is the fact that a 1 lumen candle can put out light of 15 lumens via the LED, which means it is brighter, greener and in some cases even cost effective. It’s called the Lumir C lamp seems to be the future of green lighting. It offers amplified lighting for a regular candle, something that could be considered to be very eco-friendly given that beeswax candles are eco-friendly to start with.

    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on January 28, 2016
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    This smartphone charger doesn’t need an electrical outlet

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    The future of smartphone charging ought to be more conducive to be more than dependence on an electrical outlet. The idea that there could well be a scenario where we do not have people at a house party crowding around the nearest electrical outlet is exciting. Swedish startup MyFC has come up with JAQ that was shown off at the CES. Basically a fuel cell charger, the contraption uses saltwater and oxygen to convert chemical energy into electricity. This power is then used to charge your phone’s battery. A card-like container holds the saltwater while the port is present on the hollowed outer shell. The JAQ presently manages to conjure power as high as 118 mAh worth of electricity. This can completely charge an iPhone 6S. These are great for a single use, post which, the stop producing chemical energy.

    Posted in Gadgets and Tech on January 18, 2016
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