Category Archives: Gadgets and Tech
Most of us carry plastic table-ware on trips to the outdoors that can be disposed off quickly. Well, since the world’s turning into a plastic waste-land gradually, it’s better late than never to begin trimming the use of plastic. Designer David Stockton has come up with a pretty impressive way to carry out your table-ware to the outdoors and have them washed too! Portable and easy to use, this dishwasher and dinner-set holder combined works just fine and kicks the use of plastic disposables out. To power it up, all you need to do is set the crank-shaft rotating, helping you pack a bit of muscle at the same time too!
Continue reading 
We’ve come across smart-building energy-saving technology by IBM before. Now, General Electric has teamed up with German technology company EnOcean for yet another intelligent building-energy monitoring system that will help boost building energy efficiency. Targeted at commercial and residential buildings, the system uses a bunch of automated technologies to keep close tabs on energy usage. Also, the technology requires no batteries and wires whatsoever, allowing it to be placed in inaccessible areas of buildings, out of the way of residents. Called HabiTEQ system, this one runs a building’s lighting, heating, ventilation, blinds and security wirelessly.
Continue reading
Emirates, one of the largest airlines, has just thought of a pretty unique and feasibly practical way to save a load of paper from ending up in the waste. The airline is now offering digital boarding passes, using internet-enabled mobile devices instead of paper. Currently available only to passengers flying out of Dubai, the system allows passengers to log on to the airline website, and receive a mobile boarding pass, either via email or SMS that shows up as a barcode on the display screen of the mobile device. The barcode is then read and works as a boarding pass, instead of using traditional paper boarding passes.
Continue reading
We’ve had a bunch of green screens before, and the Sunflower Monitor design just jumped on the bandwagon of eco-friendly computer peripherals. Designed by Marko Vuckovic, this concept screen design uses solar energy to power on. From the outside, it looked pretty standard, with an added touch of curves and a sleek-as-hell stand. The insides though took our breath away. The Sunflower packs solar sensors, four in all, that track the sun to generate energy. Also, this one hooks on to a joint design, allowing it to be turned around in just about any direction. And the fact that it uses solar energy to power up will help reduce electricity bills too, particularly if used in those large glass-walled offices instead of energy-sucking CRTs.
Continue reading
Tired of your newly unboxed iPad running out of juice every now and then? Here’s the perfect way to keep your shiny new tablet all charged up in the outdoors, without having you to skip around for a charging outlet when away from home. Pixel Qi has taken into consideration the woes of tablet-users who run out of juice when outdoors and has come up with a pretty feasible way to charge up tablets outdoors, using solar energy. The concept tablet platform was on display at Computex 2011 using a small $3 solar panel that generates 1W, enough to power on the Pixel Qi display screens well as an ARM-based motherboard, enabling this tablet to stay on so long as the sun shines down on it.
Continue reading
In a bid to help those stricken by the natural calamities that struck the land of the rising sun, Toshiba is busy rolling out OLED lamps that are being donated to evacuation centers in Japan. The company plans to produce about 100 lamps like these, 50 of which have been sent to Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture. And to charge these up, Toshiba has also sent out solar-powered rechargeable batteries, making these lamps sustainable and powered by renewable energy. Using four AAA alkaline batteries this OLED lamp will not however be mass produced for consumer sale for now. The battery pack can also be hooked on to other devices to juice them up via USB.
Continue reading
Water conservation is essential indeed, and so is hygiene. Putting these two indispensable needs together, water management firm Iqua has come up with an innovative way to keep your hands squeaky clean, without wasting too much of water, using a bit of technology. The Electronic Lavatory Faucet design by Iqua uses electronic sensors to automatically switch on and off, keeping away the need to use your hands to manually turn on the flow of water, which adds to hygiene. Also, a tiny screen keeps users informed regarding water temperature and the usage of water helping you keep tabs on just how much water flows out of the faucet.
Continue reading
Why plug in your laptop when you could juice it up with the sun instead! Designer Andrea Ponti’s design called the Luce, which in Italian sums up to “Light”, powers up with solar energy, using the two solar panels integrated on its body. Well, the solar panels on the top sure seem a clever idea, though we couldn’t figure out why Ponti stuck solar panels on the bottom of this one too! The bottoms of our laptops are usually covered up the moment we place it on table surfaces or our laps for that manner. An entry at the Fujitsu Design Competition 2011, this solar powered laptop could do well with solar panels covering the surface of its keys instead.
Continue reading
After stumbling across this, we sure aren’t going to be tossing out the next pizza box we end up with. High school students Edward R. Murrow and James Madison came up with an innovative and awesome way to put old pizza boxes to use. Using the carton boxes, the duo created an oven of sorts with three sides and a base. Topping it with aluminum foil to reflect the sun, Murrow and Madison also layered the sides of the oven with black paper below the aluminum foil, allowing it to absorb the sun’s heat. And finally, covering the open section with plastic to keep unneeded elements away from the food, they then took these hand-made recycled ovens into the open at the North Plaza of the Union Square, there they showed off their creation, good enough to heat up food without electricity, using the ever-abundant sun’s rays.
Continue reading
We’ve come across quite a few eco-friendly and energy-efficient lighting sources before. None of them however stood out as much as this one, or stood within a yard of its aesthetic beauty. Measuring roughly about 144 x 144 x 162 mm, this chandelier is a masterpiece of energy-efficient lighting, using sapphire-blue solar panel cells to absorb solar energy that it turn illuminates it. These cells have each been crafted into four different butterfly breeds, visually fluttering around the center of illumination, a glass bulb. Called the Virtue of Blue, this one’s an eye-popper and is sure to grab a load of attention too!
Continue reading