Want your phone to sound like a woodpecker? Got’cha covered… that and more at this week’s green tech finds.
Scots get paid to recycle: British supermarket chain Tesco has been testing out Tomra recycling machines (which “pays” recyclers with reward points) at one branch in Edinburgh, and is so happy with the results that its expanding its offerings to another store… with more planned.
Research product sustainability right in the store:GoodGuide has released an iPhone app that “…lets you scan bar codes for what the guide calls “impartial” health, environmental, and social responsibility ratings of not only the products you are scanning but their companies, too.” (via CNET Health Tech)
Bricks, robot fish, and eco-warriors… this week’s green tech finds!
Find a green business… and a coupon:GenGreen Digital Media has just added a new feature to its Find Green iPhone app: coupons. Find a business that has what you want (and shares your values), and save some money in the process.
Online carbon reduction for builders: the Rocky Mountain Institute has just released Green Footstep, an online tool that allows builders to assess (and reduce) that carbon emissions of building and retrofitting projects.
From a green ride to a clean (hand-cranked) shave, it’s all here: this week’s green tech finds.
Solar that doesn’t stand out: Or, not as much, anyway… Iowa’s Powerfilm has developed “thin, flexible solar sheets that can be integrated with architectural building materials.” (via Springwise)
Eco wifi: Australia’s D-Link has announced its Green EthernetTM technology which “automatically detects link status and network cable length, then adjusts power accordingly.” It’s also allows a user to schedule wireless up time (like thermostats).
Where do climate change and Sudoku come together? At your weekly green tech finds, of course…
What’s the best computer out there for a student in Cambodia? One that sips energy… and the Open Institute has installed 400 such computers for Cambodian students and teachers.
Water heats and cools new classroom building: Michigan’s Saginaw Valley State University showed off its new Health and Human Services building yesterday, which features the state’s largest aqua-thermal heating and cooling system.
Want to see what climate change might look like?Google Earth is launching a new series of layers showing “…potential impacts of climate change on our planet and the solutions for managing it.” See the introductory video (narrated by Al Gore) above. (via EcoGeek)
Because everything’s big in Texas: E.ON Climate & Renewables (EC&R) announced the completion of one of the world’s largest wind farms around Roscoe, Texas. (via CNET Green Tech)
California mandates cool cars: By 2012, the state has mandates that “vehicle windows must prevent 45 percent of the sun’s total heat-producing energy from entering the interior and the windshield must reject at least 50 percent.” (via Cleantechnica and Greencar.com)
Got flowing water? Make electricity!: The Hydro-Electric Barrel uses a simple design to make micro-hydro power generation more efficient. (via Blue Living Ideas)
Will “radical collaboration” produce the world’s coolest green iPhone app? That’s what 3rdWhale and GenGreen hope as the one-time competitors merge to form GenGreen Digital Media.
Got other green tech news? Let us know… share it in the comments.
Beer and gas? Sound like a National Lampoon movie… but it’s your green tech finds for the week.
Fart-powered fuel cells? Sort of… Danbury, Connecticut-based FuelCell Energy recently installed two fuel cell power plants at food processor Gills Onions that “…create electricity using old onions and a process that mimics how the human body expels gas”
Solar-powered parking: Austin, Texas is replacing traditional parking meters with “pay stations [that] are solar-powered, take credit cards, debit cards and coins, and will replace the 3,800 outdated single-space parking meters around the city.”
The St. Petersburg Times sent photographer Melissa Lyttle on an assignment to capture the “kitschy culture and places along the gulf beaches of Pinellas” using just her iPhone’s built-in camera for a very pleasing result. And as the paper’s editors pointed out, the New York Times recently published on their website a gallery of cell phone photographs submitted by readers. For more terrific iPhone photography check out the rather brilliant snapshots at Chase Jarvis, Fiona Conrad’s gallery documenting her life in New York City, and Lisa Wiseman’s photographs with what she calls “the new polaroid.”
THE FIFTY FOUR is a short little film created by Richard Hernandez entirely on his iPhone. He gave himself fifty four days to shoot fifty four images with his iPhone during his daily commute on the 54 bus in Oakland for this project.
Techies rejoice! Here’s your weekly run-down of some of the cooler green tech stories out there…
Free energy? There’s a ton of it out there — 7 quadrillion BTUs — in the form of wasted heat. The Department of Energy has announced funding opportunities for R&D on how to tap this massive source of energy. (via Cleantechnica)
NYC — the wind energy capital? It seems counterintuitive, but the Carnegie Institution and California State University have found that high-altitude winds, which are concentrated over the Big Apple (among other places), “contain enough energy to meet world demand 100 times over.” (via Green Living Ideas)
Wearable lighting?: That’s one potential use envisioned by art students for GE’s planned “flexible, paper-thin lighting panels” featuring organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). (via OLED-info.com)
Elephant poop, chicken feathers, and iPhone apps… that’s the stuff of good green tech stories!
Smart water: You’ve heard all about smart electrical grids… now Rotterdam, in partnership with IBM, is working on a smart water management system. (via Fast Company)
In honor of today’s launch of the iPhone 3G S… this video, which purports to show a demo of a hacked Mac running the iPhone operating system using a giant touch screen, is a hoax, but it’s still fun to watch:
The Unofficial Apple Weblog writes, “How’d they do it? It’s most likely just a movie running on a screen, with a guy pretending to control it. But even so, it’s a compelling idea — if you could find a multitouch monitor that worked like that and ran the iPhone OS with it, wouldn’t it work exactly that way anyway?”
And that’s one of the reasons why the video is so compelling: We’ll probably be interacting with our computers in a similar way within just a few years.
From a green ride to a clean (hand-cranked) shave, it’s all here: this week’s green tech finds.
Beer and gas? Sound like a National Lampoon movie… but it’s your green tech finds for the week.
Elephant poop, chicken feathers, and iPhone apps… that’s the stuff of good green tech stories!
