Category Archives: Gadgets and Tech
Paper use is one of the main causes related to trees disappearing from the face of the earth. Recycling and reusing paper is indeed the need of the day and Toshiba has come up with a new way to do so. The company has come up with a copier that produces erasable documents. Here’s how it works. The eco-friendly copier machine produces printouts that can easily be erased using heat and a special device. Using a special toner that loses its color when heated, these printouts can be reused five times and helps reduce carbon emissions by a whole 60%. With capabilities of producing as many as 20 to 30 copies a minute, this one will be a bit more expensive than the usual photocopy machine though, about 20% to 30% more.
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Not a lot of phones can carry of a solar panel as well as the Double phone. Designed by ZTE Corporation, this awesome phone won the Red Dot Concept Design too. The well placed solar panels on the surface of the phone make it look beautiful with a rugged sort of appeal. Also, the lime green hinge is eye-catching and keeps the Double together. This phone comes with a 3.2 inch LCD screen, touch interface and transparent panel. Also, it doesn’t sport a camera, which probably would have ended up spoiling the phone’s look too.
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Ever wondered just how much energy that computer you’re currently sitting in front of consumes? Here’s a way to figure out just that! Developed by Egretcom Co Ltd, this energy measurement device will release sometime in January 2011 in Japan. You can hook this one up to your home electric appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners, office automation equipment while it measures the data through the power line. The data collected can then be taken into account using dedicated software on the PC. Using HD-PLC technology, this one contains a power line communication module and requires the appliance’s plug to be connected to it. Data is transmitted using Wavelet OFDM modulation.
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That rectangular slab of metal in your computer that works as a virtual brain is destined to go green. And Seagate have started off with the Barracuda Green, which is also the world’s highest performance eco-friendly desktop hard drive. Basically, this one is the successor of the precious Barracuda LP. With a 3.5 inch internal
HDD with a sweet spin speed of 5,900RPM, this one also uses the SmartAlign technology enabling it to make use of the 4K sector standard. Besides all its green qualities and great performance, the Barracuda Green also is as quite as a mouse! Available with memory spaces ranging from 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB, the most expensive of these costs $120.
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Mexico’s streets were destined to green ever since the announcement by Quintana Roo’s Estate Governor Félix González Canto at the UN Climate Change Conference surfaced. The municipality of Othón Blanco will now put away those old energy gobbling street lights and replace 25,507 of them with energy efficient LED lights instead! This will be the largest LED street lighting project in Latin America. The initiative is part of the 2010-2012 Climate Change Program that aims to cut energy usage by 29,218,980 million watts a year. That’s almost the equivalent of kicking off 40,000 cars from the Othón Blanco for a whole 10 years!
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A short while ago we came across a school in Punjab, India, where the students used recycling to create handmade paper and set a world record for it. Students of the Lincoln Elementary School are now taking their recycling cases a bit seriously too and as part of the pilot program for Utah Cooperative for Acquiring Resources Efficiently, have started using a thermo compactor. Costing around $9,700, the school is now using the machine on a two week trial basis before actually buying it. The compactor will increase the electricity bill by a good $30 to $40 a month though. Styrofoam trays after use will be fed into the machine that will compress them into little blocks to save space and make it easier to transport and dispose of at landfills.
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Remember those sea buoys were so used to seeing, with the little clinging bell and a lamp to warn sea-farers at night? Buoys have saved loads of ships and water vessels from danger in the past, and were invented for the purpose which they’ve been dutifully fulfilling. Its time the good old sea buoy got a makeover too, and designers Tae Hoon Lee and Sung Yong Kim have done just that, with the Bloom, powered by energy from the waves. Using the EPAM that generates an electric induction due to a waves force, the buoy uses all the energy created to power up its radio systems, GPS systems and those bright LEDs that alert ships at night.
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Casio are pretty renowned for their G-Shock and Oceanus series of wristwatches. The company has now come up with a new time keeping device, powered by energy right from the sun. The watch was shown off at Casio’s booth at the Eco Product 2010, and uses a solar panel strategically placed just behind its face. The watch uses up just 6.2W of energy! Unlike the other wristwatches we’re so used to using, and relying on to keep time for us, the Casio solar powered watch uses no batteries whatsoever, and just keeps functioning on and on, till you probably end up losing it, damaging it, or till the sun dies out.
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The nature lovers from WWF, the World Wildlife Fund seem tired of people who just won’t stop printing. Now we know that printing indirectly brings down trees, meaning lesser patches of green on the earth. So, WWF came up with a novel way to keep those trees rooted in the soil. The organization came up with a new file format similar to a PDF, with a twist though. This one simply doesn’t print! No matter how hard you try, a file in the WWF format just won’t turn into a hardcopy. For now, the file format is only readable on the Mac. Windows users will have to wait a short while longer till they can use it too.
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Crossing the road at a stop light will soon be a lot more than just pushing a button and crossing over, like it is now. Designer Psychic Factory came up with the Droplet Traffic Light, an organically shaped traffic light that does, besides just displaying a bunch of red and green LEDs, also shows the current temperature and fresh news, when inactive. And the best part, also the reason why it’s being featured here is that it’s solar powered! Using up energy from the sun to power up all its systems and gadgetry, the Droplet Traffic light sure will make crossing the road somewhat interactive.
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