Search Results for: green

The Energy Detective – real-time electricity usage monitor

Gizmo of the Day, Home Automation / By /

In our time of higher energy and household costs, it’s a good idea to monitor those costs closely and see where we can cut back, not to mention that saving energy is just a good, green practice. For example, Kill-a-Watt has a number of products to directly monitor whatever is plugged into it, but how do you monitor usage in your entire house?

TED, The Energy Detective, is a real-time, electricity monitor. TED monitors your energy usage and displays the info in a simple, LCD display. It even jacks into your PC and lets you monitor historical usage with a custom software app (additional). It’s near real-time, with no more than a 2-second delay between events and reporting, and it updates every second.

So that your entire house is monitored, TED has to be installed directly into your home’s power circuits, so you’ll either need to be very familiar with electrical systems or hire an electrician for the 15 minute install. TED has a few different models. The base model (TED1000) is about $140 and the TED Model 1001 has a USB interface.

Gimme!

Price: TED 1000: $140, TED 1001: $145, TED Dynamics software: $45
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Get drunk – still send mail safely

Gizmo of the Day, Networking & Internet / By /

Oh yeah, you read that right. Let’s say you go out one night, and have a really good time, and then decided to come home and oh send some e-mails. I’ll bet you regretted those e-mails the next day. Wouldn’t it be cool if your e-mail client could stop your drunken e-mailing? Well, a Google employee named Jon came up with a little feature that you can find in the Gmail Labs section of Gmail called aptly enough, Mail Goggles. Love it.

It works simply enough – enable it, specify a time window, and then do some simple math problems before Gmail will let you send that e-mail. To enable, just head into your Gmail account and click on the little green beaker icon at the top of the page, and scroll down to Mail Googles.

iPod nano 4G – back to tall and slim and now in 16GB size

1 Comment / Miscellaneous / By /

Thank you Apple for bringing the iPod nano back in its very cool, tall, thin, original incarnation. Not only that, but for adding some bright, rad colors (9 total). Oh yes, it now comes in 8 and 16GB versions. So what else is new? For starters, it has a feature called Genius which auto-creates playlists based on what songs ‘go together’. It’s an algorithm developed by Apple. The other notable feature is the built-in accelerometer which allows you to shuffle the songs when you shake it!

The screen on this new nano is a bit larger and you can view your cover art in landscape mode (yes, automatically), as well as in Cover Flow (the moving album covers feature). And back to the accelerometer: this means that you can now play games based on tilting and rotation. To that ends, one of the built-in games is Maze; I’ll let you guess what that’s about.

Apple is also touting this as the ‘greenest’ nano as they’ve stripped most of the hazardous chemicals and plastics out of it. Kudos on that move Apple.

Gimme!

Price: $149 for 8GB, $199 for 16GB model.
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

BeatThat.com – submit deals, make money

2 Comments / Miscellaneous, Networking & Internet / By /

A new deals website pays you to submit deals on popular products (currently only in 6 electronics categories and 511 products). BeatThat.com also simply rates the vendors in 3 categories (green, yellow and red) based on their rankings at a few other big sites such as Amazon.com and Shopping.com.

No idea how much you get paid for submitting deals, so I’m guessing that they want to keep that quiet until you submit stuff, probably because it’s not that much!

Mercedes aims to get rid of gas-powered cars by 2015

Miscellaneous / By /

Kudos to Mercedes Benz for setting themselves such a lofty goal. No more petroleum in their automobile lineup. Alternative power sources include technologies like electric batteries, fuel cells and biofuels.

They may fail, but having set such a goal, they will in all likelihood make a great deal of progress and probably meet their goal only a few years shy.

mStation Stereo Orb

1 Comment / Audio/Video, Home Theater, Gizmo of the Day / By /

mStation Stereo Orb

Someone sent me a link to this cool little gadget. It is basically an awesome docking station for any iPod. For example, are you wanting to turn on some awesome music for a romantic dinner? Or, are you just wanting to have some awesome dancing music going on during a big party? This little thing will do the trick.

You just put the music on your iPod, dock it onto the Orb and then you can use the 10 key remote to adjust volume, bass, and treble levels. The mStation Stereo Orb has a built in subwoofer to pump out a nice sound. It is great for any area, whether just in the kitchen while you are cooking or in a office while you are working.

Another great feature of the mStation Orb is that you can get it in 7 different colors. You can get black, white, green, blue, pink, red, or silver. You will be able to match the color to fit the room you are in.

Gimme!

More info from the manufacturer

Price: $129.95
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Solar powered Apple i-devices in the making?

Computers, Portable / By /

MacRumors discovered a patent application that shows that Apple is looking into integrating solar power into their handhelds and laptops. The most interesting part of this, apart from the green benefits, is that the solar panel could be potentially integrated into the LCD screen themselves, laying right under the glass and LCD layers of the screens.

If Apple pulls this off, this could be the move that gets me to switch my laptop to a Mac. I’m hardly a Windows zealot, but application support has had me sticking to Win32 for a long time, and now that XP has proven its relative stability, I hardly care to switch (the pretty graphics don’t tempt me). However, I’m keenly aware of my carbon footprint, and if there’s a way for me to reduce that without a real decrease in utility, then I’ll gladly use the Windows emulation environment if I have to.

via MacRumors

Shadow Golf Caddy follows you around automatically

Sports, Health & Fitness, Outdoors / By /

Shadow Caddy

This is one of the coolest inventions for those who play golf. This little gizmo is the newest gold caddy available. The technology is not new, but the ability to commercialize the product is a first. What’s so great about it is that it will follow you wherever you go with out having to use a remote. You simply use a transmitter that attaches to your body.

The shadow caddy carries your golf clubs behind you and even has a park mode so it will not follow you onto the green. This is great for any golfer who wants to enjoy the walk as well as the game itself. There is no better gift for the avid golfer. No more wasted money on a regular caddy who can not keep up anyway.

via Gizmag

Star Wars DIY Force FX Lightsaber Kit

Gaming & Toys, Gizmo of the Day / By /

In order to complete Jedi training and become a full-fledged Jedi you must build your own lightsaber. This is just how it is done. If you lived long ago and far away and had just finished your Jedi-learning, you would be stopping by the local W’Al M’artt and buying yourself an Adegan crystal. Then you’d cram it into your saber hilt along with a power source, add a little bit of loving care, and voila: a lightsaber fit for a Jedi. Alas, there are no more Adegan crystals for sale. But don’t cry – we have the next best thing. The Star Wars DIY Force FX Lightsaber Kit.

This Saber Kit is just what you need to build your custom saber. One main saber unit with a tri-color blade (flip a switch and choose red, green, or blue – each with corresponding and different sound effects) and a slew of parts let you assemble the saber you’ve dreamed of. All the parts are based on actual screen-seen components, so your saber will look like an awesome mashup from the movies. And the coolest part is, you don’t have to choose between the Jedi and the Sith – because you can switch back and forth with the flip of a . . . well, switch.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $99.99

Stop the Junk Mail!

1 Comment / Miscellaneous / By /

Here is one of the 10 ways that Dvice featured that you could become ‘greener’ that is not only tree-friendly, but mailbox and sanity friendly too! It’s a way to cleanse your mailbox of unwanted catalogs, credit card and other assorted offers that we all get via snail mail every day.

A non-profit called 41pounds.org will for $41 (for 5 years!) help to eliminate junk mail by directly contacting those direct mail companies that send you this stuff. In case you’re wondering why the name isn’t 41dollars, it’s because you are sent approximately 41lbs worth of junk mail each year.

Here are some frightening stats from their site:

To produce and process 4 million tons of junk mail a year, 100 million trees are destroyed, 28 billion gallons of water is wasted, and energy equivalent to 2.8 million cars is spent — which produces greenhouse gases and more global warming. In addition, $320 million of local taxes are spent to dispose of junk mail each year.

Here are even more horrendous stats. I’m signing up right now. $41 is a small fee to pay, not to mention that over 1/3 of that amount is donated to community and environmental organizations.

Cheers to the gents at 41pounds for starting up this great idea!

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