Category Archives: Gadgets and Tech
Wind chimes soothe the soul. Meant to drive away negative emotions and depressing energies, these traditional Japanese bells jingle away gloriously in the breeze. Inspired by these aural garden ornaments, designers Chen Yan Zhuang, Zhou Li, Peng Qixuan, Liu Huan-jung, Ke Qi Ling & Zhong Zhida came up with the Hope of Breeze concept. Essentially a wind-powered lamp, the Hope of Breeze uses energy harvested from the flow of wind to light up the LED lamp instead of producing those customary clinking tinkling sounds. Also, the Hope of Breeze’s LED board on the bottom works as a wishing board with touch technology, enabling one to pen down their wishes and blessings by moving their finger across the board.
[yankodesign]
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Earlier, the batteries used in EVs and those used to power up homes were a mile apart in design and execution. Now, Toyota Motor Corp has come up with a way to reuse nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries used for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) in homes as stationary batteries. With field tests for the same currently being carried out, Toyota has been disassembling NiMH batteries, and with reduction treatment, the company has been sticking these into HEVs. All in all, these tests will prevent batteries from HEVs landing up in landfills, giving them all a better retirement in people’ homes.
[techon]
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Disposable diapers aren’t really too gracious with the environment and the eco-system. These diapers pose a threat to the environment, given the fact that they take substantial amounts of time to disintegrate in landfills. That’s not all. To manufacture these, loads of energy and resources are used, making disposable diapers an enemy to our environment. Now, designer Iven Dieterle has come up with an innovative way to deal with the issue. Called the Swish, this standalone spherical washer keeps reusable diapers clean, enabling you to use and reuse cloth diapers time and again, in a sanitary way. Using solar energy and thermal energy to power up and heat the water inside, the Swish makes cleaning reusable diapers easier and more hygienic. A brilliant way to keep those ecosystem-choking disposable diapers away from landfills, the Swish washer encourages reusability.
[yankodesign]
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Intel has just turned the world of computing a shade greener with this latest release, a processor with a low-power solar-powered chip that will show up at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. And that’s not all. Intel has also announced processors with integrated Wi-Fi, for now, both of these have been developed on an experimental basis. The solar powered chip in particular runs at speeds between 3 MHz and 1 GHz and uses energy ranging from 280 millivolts to 1.2 volts. A development that could soon spread its wings around graphics processors, memory, and other PC components, computers in the near future could soon turn seriously-efficient, using energy from the sun to power up!
[liliputing]
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If you’re particularly butter-fingered or you simply love turning the sleeker things in life more rugged, this iPhone case is ideal for you! Called the Aqua Tek S, this is one of those cases you can slip your iPhone in and go fight a full-fledged war or have a tank run over you. Sculpted for the iPhone 4 or the 4S, what makes this one green is the fact that it packs a solar panel on its backside, good enough to trickle in juice while you’re outdoors. Waterproof and battery-powered, the case is currently a concept seeking funding on Kickstarter and could cost anywhere up to $130 if it does it production lines.
[engadget]
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Data centers have been known energy suckers and tend to suck the living daylights out of electricity grids. Various firms around the world have striven hard to turn data centers green before and now, NTT Facilities Inc will try its hand at the same. Installing a container-type data center in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, NTT has begun testing stages for wind-powered data centers. This marks the first field-test of a wind powered data center in Japan and NTT is looking to test technologies for combining a high-voltage direct-current power supply system with the wind-powered data center. A development like this could help turn data centers around the globe green and decrease the stress on the world-electricity grid as a whole.
[techon.nikkeibp]
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It is a known fact that LED bulbs use lesser energy to power up than the conventional bulb and using these help shorten electricity bills substantially. Now, Toshiba has unveiled two new LED lamps, a daylight-running lamp and an incandescent lamp with brightness levels of 600 and 485lm respectively. These LED lamps matchup to the brightness levels of a 40W incandescent light bulb and use just 7.4W of power. These are the first T-type (cylindrical) LED lamps by Toshiba and will be included in the E-core series.
[techon.nikkeibp]
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K-TOR has come up with an innovative way to help you workout and create some green juice too. Behold the Power Box! This efficient contraption is portable and can be carried to work or used at home. Essentially a charging device that uses pedals to charge up your gizmos including tablets, smartphones and media players, the K-TOR Power Box sports outlets enabling you to simply plug in your device adapter and have it juice up as you pedal away to glory. This works as a fantastic way to exercise your legs and burn some calories in the bargain too. Measuring 4.5 x 4.5 x 8.75 inches and weighing in at just 4 lbs. (1.8 kg), the Power Box is your answer to an eco-conscious healthy living.
[gizmag]
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Hip Hop has been accused of ruining people’s vocabulary before. However, the pumping thumping music that usually lacks the need for great lyrics does have its benefits too. Those deep and heavy bass notes for one could pretty much help power these new implantable sensors being developed at Purdue University. These biomedical sensors uses acoustical waves and particularly those of lower frequencies found in house, hip hop and trance music. The researchers found hip hop to work best however, and these implants could pretty much change the way we live in the near future.
[inhabitat]
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Computer peripherals have long since been destined to go green sooner or later. The day’s here, starting from the mouse. The conventional two-buttoned pointer device could soon turn obsolete with designs like the Leaf Wireless Mouse showing up. Designed by Lu Hairong and Zhang Xuehui, the Leaf is a self-powered mouse that converts the kinetic energy generated from its movement into usable electricity that in turn powers this device. Also, this pretty much makes battery-powered wireless mouse devices seem silly, given that the conventional device requires a fresh set of batteries every now and then.
[yankodesign]
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