Category Archives: Gadgets and Tech
We all see dreams of a greener future, a world that has left its carbon soaked past far behind, instead using cleaner and greener fuels. BIG’s entry in the Audi Urban Future Initiative, (Driver)Less is More, envisions a world with compact electric cars moving around on smart streets. BIG has been dreaming big indeed and brought forward the idea of computer-controlled cars, or driverless cars, which communicate with each other to efficiently do away with traffic jams and road accidents. Using sensor readings and swarm theory-based systems, these cars will gain information from smart streets powered by solar energy and integrating sensor tiles!
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So, you’ve completely lost faith in your weatherman after having walked on a predicted sunny day that turned into a cyclone of sorts. Well, you can now keep tabs on the weather yourself, without having to depend on the clairvoyance of your local weather reporter. This one’s sure to burn a hole in your pocket, with a price tag of $595. Called the Vantage Pro2, the device logs on to services like Weather Underground, and collects data from the internet wirelessly. The developers of the device currently are tracking 13,400 sites in the United States and almost 20,000 worldwide, enough to get accurate weather reports in the US for now.
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That fancy new ice machine that you’ve been showing off to every single visitor to your home, the newest addition to your bar, could just be the reason for that lengthy electricity bill the utility company just tossed at you! According to statistics by the California Energy Commission, refrigerators and freezers gobble up one sixth of all energy used by U.S homes, mainly due to the power hungry automated ice making machinery that forever chews on our electricity supply. Ice makers hook on to a water valve, heating unit, plumbing line, and electrical circuit and use an electric motor, sucking in a load of electricity, just to cool your beverage!
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Home appliances are going smarter and greener by the day. Now, LG has launched the first smart and eco-friendly appliance, the fore-runner of what will soon be a range of similar appliances all embracing green. To start off with, LG unveiled its smart refrigerator that offers updates and information that can be accessed via smartphones and tablets. Built-in features like Late Night Saving, Preferable Time Saving and Smart-Grid Ready make this one as energy-efficient as ever. The Smart Manager system keeps users informed about the life of products stores inside, their expiry dates and such. To access this, one can use a smart phone or a tablet with the Smart Access software. No longer do you need to write out grocery lists on shopping trips. The fridge itself tells you what’s needed!
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Just recently, we came across the Zen, an eco-friendly lighting solution that requires no grid connections. Graduation students at the Design Academy Eindhoven have designed yet another eco-friendly way to light up, LED lights that continue to glow long after being switched off. Designed by Gionata Gatto and Mike Thompson, the lamps do look somewhat creepy, shedding an eerie glow after being switched off. Using hand-blown Murano glass, these lamps use a layer of photo-luminescent pigments that soak in the light when the LEDs are switched on, and glow when switched off.
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Sony Corp has brought the world good tidings. The company has announced the shipping of its lithium-ion (Li-ion) rechargeable battery module using lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) as a positive-electrode material by April this year. The modules costing around ¥300,000 (approx US$3,639) per kilowatt hour boast a 1.2kWh capacity and will work best as back-up power supply systems for data servers and mobile network base stations and at the same time, serve as home back-up systems too. To be manufactured at the Tochigi Office of Sony Energy Devices Corp (Shimotsuke City, Tochigi Prefecture), these modules will add a greener edge to home-energy-management systems.
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Everyone loves a beautifully lit room, with aesthetically pleasing lighting arrangements. Designer Andrej Čverha came up with this beautiful lighting solution that, besides casting a pleasing glow, powers up with in an exceptionally unique way, with the use of magnets! Christened the Zen light, this lamp generates its own energy, without requiring plugging into an external power source. The lamp uses a sophisticated and state-of-the-art magnetic engine that spins the unit to generate enough alternative energy to power the Zen up. The lamp uses a series of energy-efficient LED diodes to light up.
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Sprint users behold! Your service provider now has a green phone to offer! the Samsung Replenish SPH-M580 is the carrier’s first environmentally friendly Android smartphone, all set to have you communicating green. The phone is partially built from recycled plastics, making it environment friendly. Also, this eco-friendly phone comes with recyclable packaging, pushing up the green factor. Complete with a 2.8 inch QVGA touchscreen display, full QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, access to Sprint ID Pack (including Green ID pack), 2MP camera, 600MHz processor, and a 2GB MicroSD card pre-installed, this phone packs in all the features you’d look for in a smartphone.
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Lending us a comfortable way to seat is the only role a picnic table is expected to play. Never before have picnic tables done much besides just sitting there, out in the open, basking in the sun. And what better place could there have been to set up a solar array of sorts than a picnic table, in a university campus! Well, most people would stick to setting up photovoltaic systems on rooftops. Six students at the Catholic University in Washington however, hooked these on to a picnic table, turning it into a charging station with renewable energy use! These students will receive a well deserved recognition by University President John Garvey himself.
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Haiti, being hit by a natural disaster that literally shook the land by its roots, is yet recovering from its nightmares, and people from all over the world are coming forward with aide, at times in the form of green and eco-friendly designs and solutions that could help the people of Haiti recuperate. One such solution was put for by the students of IIT, the Illinois Institute of Technology, who’ve developed solar charging systems particularly meant for schools in Haiti. The grid in Haiti was affected on a large scale due to the earthquake and with electricity lines snapped, accessing electricity isn’t all that easy. The solar systems work as a great alternative that create renewable energy that could help pull back the education system that has fallen to bits.
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