Category Archives: Gadgets and Tech
If you are a travel-freak who loves keeping electronic gadgets close at hand and working, here’s something just for you, a portable solar charger. Now going out needs a whole lot of planning, and if your destination is he center of a forest or atop a mountain, you certainly won’t find a charging port to juice up your devices. So, these two new portable solar chargers come to the rescue. We’ve seen quite a few of the type before, including the one by Kiwi Choice and the Sundrive solar charger. Well, the Chinese have come up with two more, the Portable Solar Charger I2911 and the Power Pack N2682 Black 12000 mAh. The former, by Aigo, is a universal charger, juicing your devices with a mini-USB with a capacity of 200 mAh and weighing around 2.2 pounds.
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Samsung have come up with a greener option to those bulky old energy sucking CRT monitors we’ve been using all along; an energy efficient and eco-friendly LED back-lit monitor. You might’ve stumbled across the 22 inch monitor Philips came up with a while back. Well, Samsung have gone a step further with their baby, opting for LED technology instead. The 50 Series monitors are available in four different models, the 20″ BX2050, 21.5″ BX2250, 23″ BX2350 and the 24″ BX2450. Measuring just three inches of a quarter thick, these monitors are sure to take the PC market by storm. Out of the four, the BX2050 is slightly different, with a 1600×900 pixel resolution, a 5ms response time, VGA and DVI inputs. The rest are slightly advanced with 1080p resolutions, a faster 2ms response time, VGA connector, two HDMI inputs and audio output.
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What do you do to create maximum impact on people around to motivate them about energy efficiency? Put together a dishwasher, an application, a fridge and a clock. Well, that’s exactly what the guys at Carbon and Artefact thought of while putting the bits and pieces on these together. Energy efficiency, in a smart, innovative and highly applicable way, the Impact range is here to stay. All the stuff here, going under the Impact name tag, look futuristic and are highly energy efficient. The Impact Dishwasher uses a light-up control panel that switches on with a finger touch and boasts an energy bar with a green light, that works somewhat like those energy bars you have on your video game screen for your fighting superhero. You can set the time by which the dishes need to be cleansed and it automatically sets the start time and the energy expenditure.
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We’ve heard of Dr Pepper’s plans to set up eco-friendly vending machines around. The Japanese have been looking around for and using greener vending machines too lately. Topping the list of green vending machine initiatives taken is Cola-Cola Japan, who has come up with some pretty sweet prototypes that might soon replace the old existing ones. The I-LOHAS and Plant Bottle are green packaging that Coke has adopted. The latest vending machine, ecoru/solar, by Coke looks like one you’d probably find in an alien airship, with solar panels on the top. The company will install 1,500 units of these around the country.
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We’ve seen solar power used for charging homes, vehicles, ships, mobile phones and loads of other stuff before. The sun is being squeezed and juiced like never before today, and a future increase of solar powered applications is obvious. Well, here’s one solar powered application which sure seems weird and extraordinary, the world’s first solar powered football. Now why would you need to power up or fill up a football with anything but air? If that’s what you’ve been wondering, get a hold of this. This football wasn’t designed for the normal football playing folks. It’s made to help the visually impaired play their favorite sport, football.
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Now here’s something we’ve never really seen or thought of before, temperature adapting windows. The RavenWindow is an answer to energy efficiency in the United States where buildings consume approximately 39% of the country’s energy and 68% of its electricity. This innovative and intelligent window changes automatically according to the temperature, deciding how much sunlight to let in. Using windows like these could up the efficiency scales of buildings to 40%. On hot sunny days, this chameleon window changes color, turning into a darker tint and turning into completely transparent windows on cooler days.
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Heating water could be a greener affair in your home, if you turn to the EUROSTAR Solar Water Heaters by SOLE that were displayed at the Intersolar 2010 in Munich, Germany. These water heaters are eco-friendly and are environmentally safe, super-efficient and reliable. Installing them isn’t rocket science, and you can fit one all by yourself. The EUROSTAR also has the lowest possible installation height, meaning that it can be mounted on tiled roofs without breaking, drilling and hammering, keeping away the mess, noise and damage.
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No longer will you need to leave your beloved EV (electric vehicle) charging for hours together, forcing you to walk or spew carbon, using your gas-powered four-wheeler. Here’s a quicker way to get your EV up and running every time its batteries rattle around for juice, the “super-rapid charging system” by JFE Engineering Corp. The concept for this design was disclosed at the Smart Grid Exhibition 2010 in Tokyo on June 16, 2010. This battery charger can do the needful much more quickly, 50% juiced in three minutes and 70% capacity in five minutes.
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Intimidating though this may sound, future wind turbines could have blades larger than the London Eye itself. And this isn’t a way to scare the neighborhood. An increased blade size on wind turbines increases efficiency, resulting in a maximized power output. A colossal wind turbine like this could soon find its roots off the shore of Britain, standing around 500ft tall with a diameter of 475ft in the next two years. Christened as the Britannia, this project will generate around 10 megawatt and could be one of the many wind turbines of its type.
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So, you’re environment conscious and decide not to squeeze the grid of its juice, hooking up air conditioners all around your crib. Well, that’s a great step indeed, though the ultimate sufferer is you. Well, you can stick your tongue out at the weather and hug the environment at the same time with an air conditioner like this one, developed by researchers, the “DEVap”. This air conditioning system is 90% more efficient than the ones your neighbor has just brought, and is eco-friendly, keeping away a lengthy electricity bill.
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