Green
HMK 561 electric bike concept seats you on the battery, makes you significantly more attractive
Most electric bikes are fairly sordid affairs, little more than an ordinary bicycle with a motorized hub , a strap-on battery pack and regenerative braking capabilities (if you’re lucky). Not this HMK 561 electric bicycle concept, which took home an iF Design Award for some seriously forward thinking
PowerHouse eMonitor lets you manage power use down to the circuit
As energy prices increase, so does our desire to understand and actively manage household power use.
Motorola i1: we’ve seen it, it runs Blur, and it’ll likely be out soon
Well, that was quick: thanks to some new information we’ve received, we’re now able to confirm that the Motorola i1 is indeed the so-called Opus One that the company has been rumored to preparing for its iDEN carrier partners with Android on board — and it’s exactly the leaked device we saw back in December .
Caltech gurus whip up highly efficient, low cost flexible solar cell
Solar cells are cute and all , but let’s be real — these things are far too inefficient for mainstream use. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology are working hard to remedy that very issue, and they’ve recently concocted a “new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons.” The solution relies on arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded onto a polymer substrate, which uses just a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells. According to professor Harry Atwater, these cells have “surpassed the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials” for the first time, and we’re told that the arrays can convert between 90 and 100 percent of the photons they absorb into electrons, and yes, that does mean that they have a near-perfect internal quantum efficiency.
Melbourne’s decommissioned Observation Wheel re-imagined as energy-making windmill
A Melbourne icon was shut down recently due to damages that were apparently too severe to bother fixing, but thankfully for the otherwise stunning Southern Star Observation Wheel, a few good men and women have their gears going about what to do next.
Solaroad’s CubeTube adds solar panels to your cubical, lowers the cost of you working there
It’s 2010, which means there’s a significant chance that your cubical work could be done from absolutely anywhere. For those still stuck under the burden of old-school management, here’s an idea that might just nab you that raise you’ve been longing for: the CubeTube
