Online Dressing Room

Though I'm not in the market for this product (OBVIOUSLY), I did find this site to be VERY innovative in their approach to sell, or at least HELP sell, their product. Check them out...

www.knickerpicker.com

"Innovate Or Die" Winner

Specialized and Google's "Innovate Or Die" contest is over. They've announced the winner.

The challenge was to harness a bike's humble pedaling mechanism to achieve great things for humanity. If this sounds tough, witness the incredible simplicity, usefulness and thoughtfulness of the winning design: the Aqueduct bike.

Windmills reach new heights

Fifty stories, or about 490 feet. That’s the record setting height at the top of the blades on the windmills in the photo above. These latest-generation turbines were just connected to the grid at the Snyder Wind project in Scurry County, west Texas. Built by Enel North America, with financial backing from GE Energy Financial Services, the turbines were made by market-leading Vestas -- not GE, for those keeping score -- and can crank out 3 megawatts apiece. These windmills are especially tall because wind studies showed the most persistent winds were high up. So, on their own, the supporting towers supporting the turbines are 345 feet tall, or about 35 stories.

This milestone is worth marking since, the longer a windmill's blades get, the more power they can generate, and the lower the cost of that power falls. So the bigger these turbines get, the closer they get to being competitive with conventional fossil fuels. No word on the price for this project, though. But as one measure of this trend, consider that, with just 21 turbines, this project can generate enough power to supply about 12,000 homes. Were it built just a few years ago, the project would have needed twice as many, or more, turbines to generate that much power. For a sense of the scale of these vertigo-inducing heights, see the close up, below, showing the three trucks parked at the base of the tower on the left.

Luxury with a conscience

Will green-car buyers bite at Porsche’s high-speed hybrids?

Among the rush of green car announcements at this week's Detroit auto show, Porsche unveiled two new entries in the green car race. First, the German supercar maker announced a hybrid version of its Cayenne SUV, due in 2010 (photo above). Porsche also said that after its all-new Panamera ( a grand touring, 4-door sedan) debuts next year, a hybrid version will follow sometime after (see diagram below). There's no price information as yet, but these models are likely to cost three, four or more times the cost of a Prius hybrid.

Microsoft Surface

I'm not sure how far off we are from this new technology, but just the possibility is quite amazing.

Google Sky

Goggle Sky,the latest version of Google Earth lets you flip to Sky Mode and see the sky from the place you were centered on the earth. It’s an incredible way to explore and travel from your desktop… absolutely beautiful. This is in collaboration with NASA/Space Telescope Institute, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and Digital Sky Survey Consortium.

Japan's Sewer System

These photos are amazing. To see all of them, click here

Edding Markers Guerilla Marketing

A very creative marketing campaign for Edding markers promoting its slogan, "works on any surface". Projected out of a moving van onto the surface of all kinds of buildings in a very popular area of Hamburg, Germany. Take a look.

The Blacker the Google...

...the more energy-efficient the screen.


Eco-tech blogger Mark Ontkush estimated a black version of Google would save 750 Megawatt-hours a year because black requires less energy to display than white.

So Toby Heap made Blackle.

Try it out!

Rumor: Touch Screen iPods

The touch screen iPod is more of a "When" than an "If". There's no doubt that we'll see it eventually, but it could be as soon as next month if the information from Digitimes is correct. It claims that the Taiwanese manufacturer Wintek is churning out touch screens ready for an August release. Given the usual scarcity of Apple products at launch (yes, except the iPhone), a late summer release would give them time to ramp up production (and frenzied demand) in time for the holiday season. Digitimes fails to quote sources, but with all the speculation spinning around, there's got to be something from Apple next month, right?

via wired magazine

The Wind

Such a cute commercial.

Swarm Theory

How do the simple actions of individuals add up to the complex behavior of a group? For example, whereas one ant is incapable of complex thought, a colony of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) can solve some fairly elaborate problems.

I ran across an article on nationalgeographic.com talking about the swarm theory and how it can provide insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots. Though I'm not entirely interested in truck routing or military robots, it did raise some interesting questions that made me stop and...think.

If you are in a mood to reflect, take a moment and...click here

Apple iPhone

I was wondering how they were going to package it- well, here it is.

Apple Obsession

I meant to post this yesterday, but I was walking past the Soho Apple Store on Thursday night around 11:30pm and ran in to the ridiculous line of people who had been waiting for the iPhone release for an entire week. This is what Apple is bringing us to- sad!

Inside China's Vast Factories

Lunch time in the cafeteria of Youngor Textiles, the largest suit maker in China, lasts around 20 minutes.



A few hours drive outside of Shanghai, this giant textile factory has imported top-of-the-line machines from Belgium. At the time of this photo, the company was about to expand by about 200 machines to a total of 500. The floor of the workroom shakes from the operation of the machines.



Bird Mobile
Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, 2005

The largest mobile-phone manufacturer in China when this photo was shot, Bird Mobile has since been overtaken. Here, workers complete a manual-assembly portion of the phone-production process.

Kinetic Sculpture

If you have a second, this is definitely worth watching. This man apparetly uses the laws of kinetics to build movable objects powered by the wind. Not only are they amazing to see move without man-power, but they are absolutely gorgeous.

To watch, click here

Microsoft Photosynth

Microsoft just launched Photosynth, mindblowing new technology. It has to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen. WATCH THIS CLIP!

Japan's First Solar Powered Condo

Why are they so much more advanced than we are?!?


The Gradia Solare's roof is covered with photovoltaics, 1530 watts per apartment plus some surplus for the common areas. It appears that the solar panels are owned and managed by an outside company for fifteen years and then transferred to the Condo corporation, which probably keeps the upfront costs out of the sale price of the units. The building is full of features, including "Eco-cute" combo heat pumps for domestic water and heating, high efficiency appliances and filtered ventilation air. Various technologies are supposed to "reduce carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to the amount absorbed by approximately 4,200 cedar trees"- They could plant some more instead of that sea of asphalt around the building.

Google Street View Causing A Stir

Google just came out with the coolest thing since its introduction of Google Earth. It allows you to have a 360 street view from whereever you want. Obviously some people are up in arms about the detail and amount of information that you can see--those cheating husbands are going to have nowhere to hide!

check it out: Goggle Street View.com
and watch the demo: