Sanyo's Eneloop Portable Solar panel can charge mobile devices on the go.
(Credit: Sanyo)
If you plan on walking through the desert with a cell phone anytime soon, you might want to check in with Sanyo before you leave.
Its new Eneloop Portable Solar panels can charge portable …
Originally posted at Crave
Do you sweat like a hog, making your mouse totally slippery and near-unusable? Well the Mouseblisters are designed to stop that from happening while also making your mouse look really ugly.
The little stick-on nubbins soak up all your sweat, keeping your mouse from becoming a slippery little puck. They also increase its size if you have big hands, and apparently help reduce RSI. But really, they just make your mouse look stupid. As long as you’re OK with that, go nuts.
Mouseblisters via Gizmodo
You’ve heard about the old lady who lived in a shoe, but now you yourself can live in a computer mouse. That’s because the MercuryHouseOne, a project by multinational firm Architecture and Vision, is shaped just like everyone’s favorite input device.
Despite its name, the MercuryHouseOne is actually more akin to a living room than a house. It’s designed to be easily transportable with an interior that’s a snap to rearrange for different uses and a shell made out of Carrara marble. If you happen to be in or around Venice this September, you could even check it out for yourself.
See more of the MercuryHouseOne in the gallery below.
The Watergate is a design by Michael Tatschl, Sascha Mikel and Martin Schnabl that would replace turnstiles with a different solution when it comes to keeping people out: water jets. While it doesn’t present a serious physical barrier, it does allow for both the handicapped and people lugging around bags and bikes to pass through easily. All others? They get drenched.
Still, it seems like I could just walk on through whatever the Watergate is trying to protect if I thought ahead and wore my swimsuit. Then again, it’d be easy for officers to spot the drenched man in the crowd and stop me. I’d still sue for the gate killing my cellphone, though. Hurrah for frivolous lawsuits.
They should really just make this thing spit acid.
Via Yanko Design
There’s good reason why this bicycle is called The Contortionist. One of the frontrunners for a James Dyson Award, this innovative folding bike by Dominic Hargraves collapses to a package that’s the height of one of its wheels. And, it’s not nearly as dorky looking as most folding bikes.
Three companies are already interested in cranking out thousands of copies of this compact cycle, and it might not even be exorbitantly expensive, perhaps less than $700.
Maybe a bike like this would encourage people to bike to work, giving them the ability to easily bum a ride home, fitting their bike easily in any trunk.
Via Treehugger
At first, I thought I had misread the numbers, but Sony’s not kidding when it says there are 2TB memory sticks on the way. That’s right, we’re talking about terabytes here, in a thin, narrow flash drive shorter than your little finger (that pic above is a simulation of how the product might look). Besides some of the varieties of the new drives using a much more efficient file system called exFAT, there are no other details about how Sony manages to shoehorn such an ocean of data onto such a tiny form factor.
Sony bragged about monster memory sticks like this at CES 2009, but now the company has finalized specifications for this Memory Stick XT series. This means these products might soon see the light of day, but Sony’s not talking about any release dates yet. We’ll believe it when we see it.
More good news: The Memory Stick XT line will probably be backward-compatible with those devices that use Sony Memory Sticks. And to think, less than three years ago, we were impressed with the possibility of a 32GB Memory Stick. Remarkable.
Sony Insider, via Engadget
This intense motorcycle looks like something out of a Sci-Fi movie, but it’s perfectly real. Created by the Confederate Motor Company, these bikes certainly will stand out from the Harleys and Ninjas at your next motorcycle gathering.
Presenting is hard. This palm-sized Logitech Professional Presenter R800 makes it easier, and brings along unusual features for a wireless presenting device. Besides having an LCD display showing you a handy countdown timer indicating how much time is left in your presentation, it vibrates when you have five, two, and zero minutes left. No more furtive glances at that watch, cell phone, or clock on the wall.
Of course, this $100 remote aims to please with the usual presentation accoutrements, such as a green laser pointer and transport controls, letting you advance PowerPoint slides from 100 feet away. And given its elongated, streamlined shape and vibration capabilities, maybe some of our more creative readers can imagine other possible uses of the R800 for a lonely road warrior, far from home.
Via Businesswire
Nothing will get you out of bed faster than Darth Vader staring at you in bed. I mean, it’s just hard to feel comfortable under the covers when you know the Sith Lord is staring you down.
If that sounds pleasant to you, the Darth Vader clock radio might be right up your alley. With the time displayed in the eyes, you’ll have to look right into his dark soul to see if it’s time to wake up or not. Even better? Darth will wake you up with his trademark James Earl Jones voice. And if that doesn’t get you out of bed, well, nothing will.
Sakar via Gadget Lab
(Credit: Sandbag)Part environmental watchdog and part social-networking site, Sandbag
lobbies the United Nations and European Union for tighter caps on carbon emissions and permits, while buying up carbon credits.
The U.K.-based not-for-profit community organization, whose motto is “real action on climate change,” launched in September 2008. It …
The Department of Energy on Wednesday announced which U.S. companies have been awarded grants to build manufacturing plants for electric vehicle batteries.
The $2.4 billion program, established as part of the stimulus plan, sets aside funds for auto battery manufacturing and related components, such as electric motors. (Click …
Assuming you don’t live in one of the world’s major concrete canyon cities that regularly block sunlight, a new portable solar energy array has arrived that just may change your life. The Eneloop Portable Solar is a stylishly encased set of solar panels that allow you to gather energy while working outside or traveling.
Introduced by Japan’s Sanyo, once the unit is charged it can be used as a power source for laptops, USB devices, handheld games or cell phones. Although no price has been announced on the Sanyo website, the Eneloop Portable Solar is set to go on sale in Japan next week .
Via Impress Watch
Fresh from Ohio, the SmartMeasure jug is a mighty clever addition to your kitchen. What makes it so clever is its angled, backlit LCD display on the handle, which means no crouching down to make sure that you’ve got the right amount of ingredients for your recipes.
There are three buttons below the display, which allow you to change the measuring system from metric, through imperial and even units — which means no erroneous amounts of cream from those pesky internet recipes that don’t have US measurements. The SmartMeasure even has a bunch of pre-set measures for everyone’s favorite recipes.
Designers Ryan Eder and Chris Daniels have even made the SmartMeasure dishwasher-friendly, as the jug slips out of the plastic casing that houses the display. It’ll be on sale in the fall through Taylors Kitchenware, who know a good thing when they see it.
Via Yanko Design
eSolar's demonstration plant in Lancaster, Calif.
(Credit: eSolar)
eSolar is doing what so many other solar start-ups wish they were already doing: feeding electricity into the grid.
The 2-year-old concentrating solar company on Wednesday will host an event in Lancaster, Calif., to celebrate the opening of a demonstration …
Among the Internet cognoscenti, Bill Gross is best known as the head of tech incubator Idealab. Now, as the CEO of solar start-up eSolar, he’s working in renewable energy, but he’s still putting his digital economy chops to work.
Two-year-old eSolar is having an opening ceremony for its …
Rollout of space shuttle Discovery was slow-going due to the onset of lightning in the area of Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida….
I guess Sony’s been a little jealous of all the attention the Amazon Kindle e-readers have been getting lately. The company just announced two new portable Readers, the PRS-600 and 300, a.k.a. the Reader Touch (left) and Reader Pocket, respectively. The Touch, available in red, black, or silver, replaces the current touchscreen Reader, discarding that model’s reading light for better touchscreen responsiveness. It has a 6-inch screen, packs a stylus and includes the Oxford American English Dictionary. The internal memory is a paltry 512MB, but it’s expandable via a Memory Stick/SD card slot.
The Reader Pocket has a 5-inch screen and a smaller casing, which comes in blue, silver or pink. Its sacrifices for that extra portablilty are legion, though: besides that extra inch, there’s no touchscreen, free dictionary or card slot. The biggest absence, though — on both models — is wireless. There’s no connectivity on either Reader (apart from the USB 2.0 port), but Sony says a Wi-Fi model is coming soon. Nice bonus in the meantime: The new models are Mac compatible.
Both readers are slated for the end of August; the Touch will be $299, and the Pocket just $199. Sony’s also reduced the price of bestselling books to $10, or about par with the Kindle store. Still, that lack of wireless is a killer. Does anyone really like touchscreens (or pink) that much to go with a Sony Reader instead of a Kindle? We want to know who you are.
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