Spagetti Measure keeps you fit

Spagetti Measure

JosephJoseph’s spagetti measure is an easy way for the always on the run guy. Measure for one up to four and put them to the boil.

This way you won’t have to get out of shape only because you can’t visually measure it properly. And

solar-powered gadgets, the next big thing in GREEN devices?

Solar Phones

AU (KDDI) Green Road Project and Sharp are going to present in june a Waterproof, Solar Powered Mobile Phone, targeted to the Japanese market.

Check it out in the UPDATED article.

solar-powered gadgets, the next big thing in GREEN devices?

Solar Phones

Finally the big players in the telecom industry try to step up and do something environmentally conscious and , of course, a little image campaign doesn’t hurt. Samsung as yet has the best shot with its Earth Phone that has a real solar-panel on its back and is made of recycled PETs. Seems like proving green is something  Samsung is really considering. What about bio-degradable plastic electronic circuits and cases? Well, for that one I won’t hold my breath just yet. But surely my hopes are high.

Moreover this phone doesn’t contain brominated flame retardants or beryllium and neither does it contain phthalates, all of them very dangerous chemicals you shouldn’t be exposed to.

Timeless Garden concept by Francesco Castiglione Morelli and Tommaso Ceschi draws electricity from wet mud

Electricity from electrochimic reaction in mud

The project of the two designers is inspiring. No batteries means no toxic materials, fire hazardous chemicals, landfill pollution at the end of the lifespan, transporting energy and many carbon released into the atmosphere during the production.

Built from two recycled plastic bodies fashioned as a pot/clock, the clock is powered by a reaction  between electrodes with bacteria in the wet soil. It is sustainable to a certain point, green juice from a natural reaction and recycled materials but the lawn advertised in the pictures is less fortunate.

discussion on home automation for the environmentalist

For the last week or more I’ve been flirting with home automation. I knew about it but never looked deeper inside its guts. Now I can say my knowledge on the subject is wide enough to be able to make some decisions and discuss it in an article. Anyway any responsible and knowledgeable comments are more than welcomed.

Home Automation Solutions, known as Domotics in Europe, is a way to control every bit of equipment and device in a home with the purpose of lowering energy bills (efficiency) and rising the comfort (quality of life).

zero-energy computer from Fujitsu saves the energy lost by the stand-by state

zero-energy computer from Fujitsu

Having all these devices around consuming power while in stand-by can make an environmentally conscious person feeling guilty but there’s nothing he can do, except always go and push the turn off button on all of them or manage to get a smart extension socket that can be controlled by remote or whatever.
To fight global warming some companies push the limits on technology and

test your walls for heat lackage with Gunnar Kramp’s hand scanner Thermal Torch

Thermal Torch concept by Gunnar Kramp

Gunnar Kramp’s Thermal Torch design for the Greener Gadget Top 50 got him a Semi-Finalist position but when you look a little deeper into the specifications of the device it gets really interesting. Being equiped with a thermal camera to get the

[Update: scam] India’s 10$ laptop one step closer to the masses

BIG SCAM from India (nothing resembling a laptop)

Remmember the initial rumour about an OLPC competitor that could put XO to shame? Some more good news surfaced on indiatimes.com. The 10$ laptop, which had to resemble somewhere the double price Negroponte’s 100$ laptop got to, actually costs $20, with efforts ongoing to get to the $10 target and is to be revealed in Tirupati

OneLessDesk is the hi-tech workspace for you

Sorta transformer but stylish and futuristic, MAC-inspired design of OneLessDesk fits perfectly in your room. Retracting input devices holder when you finish working you get a compact piece of furniture that doesn’t get in your way when you don’t need it.

I would have loved a way of lowering the monitor below and get all that space cleared but anyway for $900 you can have it as is or just watch it for inspiration and a free of charge DIY design:

ezVision video glasses: portable 50-inch virtual widescreen viewing

ezVisio video glasses: another step towards a confortable experience

It’s a fact that nobody likes watching movies on a 2.5-inch screen for a portable device and it seems that more and more companies start making progress in the video glasses area. Such a company is ezGears .

Stream video wireless to the TV

Yes, wireless video on my TV seems like luxury for me but the $349 Teq AV/IT’s WID110 wireless gateway / receiver is worth mentioning. It enables any display or projector to receive video signals without wires as long as it knows VGA and also “enables multiple computers to stream video to a screen without any cables,” and allows presenters to carry a few small pieces of hardware rather than a dedicated monitor.

Bling Bling: Fantachrome Paint – chrome your anything without chrome

A really interesting piece of news on Gizmodo will make happy those tunning wanna-be-s among you. I don’t have time to get inside the subject so I’ll paste here some info and make a link to the source. Here we go:

U Bend book rack makes book storage shelf-free

Another interesting book rack that brings some innovation is the U Bend. Very simple design, very ergonomic shape. The U-shaped bend at one end creates, when a book is placed inside, an ideal bookend to lean additional literary classics up against.

Universal AC Travel Adapter feeds hungry gadgets all over the world

For the often travelers across the oceans, where different AC standards are used, having an universal charger can be a big relief especially as one carries more and more gadgets and practically all day long something is plugged, whether the laptop, the phone for charging, the photo camera accumulators etc etc.

pipe-free shower shots water from the ground-up

If you take a closer look at the image below you will notice that this shower has no pipe and no shower head. Viteo Outdoor Shower from the designer Danny Venlet brings simplicity to what we know as a shower and might be great for small baths that can’t hold a bath tub or as a garden/ swimming pool cooling device. It’s 76 cm in diameter and it looks smart enough to shot jets at a proper height to fall down right on your head, so you don’t get everything around sprinkled (for the bathroom situation).