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https://www.ft.com/content/9b7...

http://www.core77.com/posts/37...

https://hubjapan.io/articles/1...

"The 41.5 mpg standard would have meant that ICE cars would increase in price dramatically while plunging in performance metrics, and also in crash survivability as structure is sacrificed for reductions in vehicle weight to increase mpg."

Increased fuel economy is better "performance" and you can get modern smaller more economical engine cars going faster than older larger engine cars. Modern cars are also a lot better at protecting the passenger than older cars ever were. Check the video on this head-on between a 1959 Bel Air and a 2009 Mailbu http://www.core77.com/posts/23...

It was a terrible user interface design that did not provide accurate feedback to the user. In the case of Chrysler's new shifter, it was difficult to know when the vehicle was in "park" and this was especially bad because the shifter is a handle that strongly resembles a standard shifter. Check out the video from Mopar about how to use it.

The brake must be applied to change gears, INCLUDING to change into park when stopped. The gear change indication is not moved by bumping the lever (this would make a lot of sense to me, Park could be selected by frantically bumping forward several times if in doubt) but instead by just holding and waiting for the bold or illuminated letter to move to the desired gear. The shifter moves back to the center position when you let it go. The tactile feedback is deceptive to the user, especially to a user that is used to the manual and automatic transmission controls used in vehicles for many decades prior to this "innovation." Even in cars with automated transmission control where the lever is just an electronic input to the car's engine control unit, they STILL use locking positions for the lever for very good reasons.

I want to know if you can shift to neutral from drive on this thing without applying the brake. If not, that's a serious safety risk too; if the engine were to malfunction or start uncontrollably accelerating, the fastest thing to do to separate it from the wheels and maintain control of the vehicle is to slam it into neutral. It doesn't seem like this design allows that. Removing physical linkages can have benefits but then a bad decision by some C programmer somewhere can end up getting you injured or killed. There is a reason I don't own anything with an automatic transmission anymore.

http://www.core77.com/posts/54...

Except it really doesn't. You can configure iMac 27" 5K to have a 4GHz 4-core CPU, 2TB "fusion" drive (probably same hybrid thing Microsoft has here), 32GB RAM, and a Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB VRAM for $3400.

That's basically the same machine, except with an Apple logo and OS X instead of Microsoft logos and Windows 10, and no touchscreen. And, the bit that makes the touchscreen even remotely useable was patented by Apple 6 years ago so Microsoft didn't even come up with that - they can just use it through the cross-licensing agreement that the two companies share.

Is the touchscreen and Windows 10 really worth $800?

Nails and glue have been in use for a while (hundreds, if not thousands of years) because they work.

Japanese have been building houses and temples without any nails and glue for hundreds of years. Here's a couple of videos I came across recently. They swear by it. I'm by no means an expert so I can't go any deeper into the subject. But clearly neither are you.

Industry will vanish along with cellphone ban
Savvy entrepreneur sees school cell phone bans as opportunity - runs mobile rental space for gadgets
More Unpredictable Side Effects of Technology: Cell Phone Storage Trucks for Students
Businesses make $4M off NYC students by holding their cellphones during school NYC Plans To Lift Ban On Student Cellphones In Schools

Actually, wood can be quite good at bearings --- one just has to use the correct sort of wood. Lignum vitae was used for the bearings for steam paddle boats and submarines and is now being used for bearings in hydroelectric plants:

http://www.core77.com/blog/mat...

Because in Egypt the military was using aircraft and snipers to shoot protesters. So it's common there now to "lase" aircraft to point them out to other people so they know to take cover.

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeat...
http://static2.businessinsider...
http://s3files.core77.com/blog...
http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/...

Notice there are hundreds of lasers on these things... yet there's a a surprising lack of blind pilots or aircraft crashing into crowds.

Yes, it's technically possible this could hard the pilot. But practically? Not very likely. These pilots circled the crowds for hours every night for months with hundreds of lasers trained on them the entire time without incident.

Apple, in their next Mac, is considering a cylindrical tower, w/ an internal 3 plane cooling that cools everything.

Nice design, with the heat sink in the core like a funnel or chimney.
Its shape isn't compact, the cylinder is hollow, and this is not passive cooling :

"The form factor also echoes the shape of the single large fan located in the bottom of the machine." ref

You can rent Solid Edge on a monthly basis too! http://www.core77.com/blog/digital_fabrication/solid_edge_for_rent_a_new_subscription_program_through_local_motors_21638.asp

peer-to-peer wifi/radio system.

This just isn't going to work. WiFi solves the easy problem (range 0-30 metres - you can just pull a cable if you are desperate). The difficult problem is the middle range; 100m -> 10km (or up to about 50km to 100km in country areas).

Actually, it can work, and it has, both in rural areas and poor countries. All at low cost and maintenance. There are devices like the mesh potato that have been used to build networks in South Africa. And the WiLD projects have deployed networks with links ... yes, up to 100km.

Just look at all these mesh networks deployed or in process!

An interesting 2012 article (w/ pics) by Google Maps UI designers about the evolution of Google Maps over the years: http://www.core77.com/blog/case_study/google_maps_designing_the_modern_atlas_21486.asp

Windows are not grouped willy-nilly on the taskbar. They are grouped by the order in which they were opened, so there's a temporal flow to them..

The order in which people opened their windows is very difficult to remember. And those who found out that they can move the taskbar buttons around are spending too much cognitive energy doing it :) The taskbar is a terrible interface, which does not mean there are no worse ones around.

Your bird's eye view is useless when there are multiple document opened in a program and they are all similar looking, because you still have to mouseover and read their title.

True, unless the title is also shown in the bird's eye view as well, which i believe compiz is doing. If drag and drop between bird's-eye windows would also work (like it does on MaxOS), it would be tremendously useful.

I like your example about Vista, which looks as if consumers suddenly exercised power by "voting with their wallets". The other interpretation is that Windows7 is also a piece of crap, its just better than Vista so in comparison one can more or less accept it. The same happened with Gnome 2. People hated its "simplicity", but compared to the starting out KDE4 it looked like the revelation. A lot of this is about what history has brought in front of users and what we have learned to use.

The desktop metaphor itself has lots of problems. Not surprising, it has been around for more than 30 years and was developed by Xerox for a computer to create graphics that should be printed on a laser printer. At the moment, designers seem to be bold enough to try something new. Even in FOSS. That is quite a new situation and as it seems the FOSS world is not prepared for it. Developers, users and designers need to work this out, or FOSS will become a "product" like commercial software.

The users' part in my opinion make a useful contribution. One part is to identify the problem that interfaces without text, based on gestures, have bad discoverability, like you did. Don Norman also points this out in this article: http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/gesture_wars_20272.asp Users have to acquire the language to describe their tasks and interfaces, deeper than "i don't like it" or "cannot get my stuff done". Telling the developers and designers that they're drunk will not help, because they aren't crazy. Maybe Steve Jobs could pull that off, but the FOSS community should strive for a better work model.

So, while I agree that Unity is rough and Gnome3 is lacking stuff from Gnome2, hating is not the answer. Identifying the good ideas therein and analyzing what should be changed is better. IMHO.

I have to admit I was just raging.

However, my frustration with scroll bars has nothing to do with Opera, I just needed an outlet.

As usual, Don Norman has more insightful things to say about this topic: http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/gesture_wars_20272.asp

Currently the trend seems to be towards low-speed driverless centrally controlled 'people pods' rather than anything actually exciting.

Who would have thought we would have diverged from the path of making continually more badass cars towards trying to develop boring things such as the Google ATNMBL.

I suppose whats going on with cars now is a similar to the of taking control from users as in "curated computing". The Chrysler turbine car is a genuinely cool piece of machine, probably my favourite car of all time, I really wouldnt mind seeing it back in limited production despite its lack of practicality.

Turbine technology isn't a complete waste however. A an electric car could have a removable ~30kW microturbine + fuel tank unit for long journeys and use it for storage space or extra batteries for the rest of the time.

Did a search for Lawn darts... best picture ever http://www.core77.com/blog/images/vanbezooyen_core77_worsttoys.jpg

There are some similar ideas for camouflage

Razzle Dazzle or just plain ugly? . The idea was that while you couldn't hide the existence of a ship visible to the periscope of a submariner, you could give him a blinding headache while he squinted through the eyeglass trying to see past the mist, fog, icebergs and waves to determine which end of the ship was which.

Jasper Maskelyne used searchlights combined with an inverted rotating cone of mirrors to create 9 mile radius rotating pinwheels of light that would disorient pilots.

Water-based eyeglasses

I've been waiting for someone to put my idea into practice for over 5 years: http://www.core77.com/challenge/memory/ I still favor topical application rather than subcutaneous, but that's just me. Rensselaer should step it up though with video, Skype accounts and Hulu.

... at greenergadgets.com

Now... while I like the idea, I don't really see it working for real.
It is a nice hippie pipe dream at best.
Whoever "designed" it forgets that people don't use printers because they have bad handwriting, but because they need clear, efficient, quick and presentable printouts.
Manually powered... I don't think so.
Plus... that last point kind of defeats the eco-idea of the printer by itself.
How much water would be wasted annually that way?

Use:

1. Insert a paper in the middle of the printer
2. Put the coffee or tea dregs into the ink case on the top of the printer
3. Move the ink case left and right as you draw on a paper
4. When the print finishes, pull out the paper from the printer and wash the ink case

Some other "designs" on the list are also intriguing but most seem as they have been envisioned either by children or over-privileged westerners.
Like someone who never heard of indoor drying racks and power-socket timers and thinks that you could solve the power crisis by harnessing the immense untapped potential of doormats and trampolines.
You know... those same people that find a wallet that would overheat, smell bad, bite your hand and otherwise embarrass it's owner when he/she tries to take money out of it - a fuckin great idea.

Oh... and that portable hard-drive you have, that fits in your pocket?
Wouldn't you be a lot happier with one that needs a bag just so you could lug it around - cause it is a god damn concrete brick!
Concrete would prevent such heavy metals your portable drive is made of like imaginarium and unobtanium from leaching into the landfill.
Once you get sick of hauling 20 pounds of bricks around with you and you just chuck the god damn thing out of the window of your car.
Hopefully, one might eventually hit the inventor in the head. Or the wallet guy.

... at greenergadgets.com

Now... while I like the idea, I don't really see it working for real.
It is a nice hippie pipe dream at best.
Whoever "designed" it forgets that people don't use printers because they have bad handwriting, but because they need clear, efficient, quick and presentable printouts.
Manually powered... I don't think so.
Plus... that last point kind of defeats the eco-idea of the printer by itself.
How much water would be wasted annually that way?

Use:

1. Insert a paper in the middle of the printer
2. Put the coffee or tea dregs into the ink case on the top of the printer
3. Move the ink case left and right as you draw on a paper
4. When the print finishes, pull out the paper from the printer and wash the ink case

Some other "designs" on the list are also intriguing but most seem as they have been envisioned either by children or over-privileged westerners.
Like someone who never heard of indoor drying racks and power-socket timers and thinks that you could solve the power crisis by harnessing the immense untapped potential of doormats and trampolines.
You know... those same people that find a wallet that would overheat, smell bad, bite your hand and otherwise embarrass it's owner when he/she tries to take money out of it - a fuckin great idea.

Oh... and that portable hard-drive you have, that fits in your pocket?
Wouldn't you be a lot happier with one that needs a bag just so you could lug it around - cause it is a god damn concrete brick!
Concrete would prevent such heavy metals your portable drive is made of like imaginarium and unobtanium from leaching into the landfill.
Once you get sick of hauling 20 pounds of bricks around with you and you just chuck the god damn thing out of the window of your car.
Hopefully, one might eventually hit the inventor in the head. Or the wallet guy.

... at greenergadgets.com

Now... while I like the idea, I don't really see it working for real.
It is a nice hippie pipe dream at best.
Whoever "designed" it forgets that people don't use printers because they have bad handwriting, but because they need clear, efficient, quick and presentable printouts.
Manually powered... I don't think so.
Plus... that last point kind of defeats the eco-idea of the printer by itself.
How much water would be wasted annually that way?

Use:

1. Insert a paper in the middle of the printer
2. Put the coffee or tea dregs into the ink case on the top of the printer
3. Move the ink case left and right as you draw on a paper
4. When the print finishes, pull out the paper from the printer and wash the ink case

Some other "designs" on the list are also intriguing but most seem as they have been envisioned either by children or over-privileged westerners.
Like someone who never heard of indoor drying racks and power-socket timers and thinks that you could solve the power crisis by harnessing the immense untapped potential of doormats and trampolines.
You know... those same people that find a wallet that would overheat, smell bad, bite your hand and otherwise embarrass it's owner when he/she tries to take money out of it - a fuckin great idea.

Oh... and that portable hard-drive you have, that fits in your pocket?
Wouldn't you be a lot happier with one that needs a bag just so you could lug it around - cause it is a god damn concrete brick!
Concrete would prevent such heavy metals your portable drive is made of like imaginarium and unobtanium from leaching into the landfill.
Once you get sick of hauling 20 pounds of bricks around with you and you just chuck the god damn thing out of the window of your car.
Hopefully, one might eventually hit the inventor in the head. Or the wallet guy.

... at greenergadgets.com

Now... while I like the idea, I don't really see it working for real.
It is a nice hippie pipe dream at best.
Whoever "designed" it forgets that people don't use printers because they have bad handwriting, but because they need clear, efficient, quick and presentable printouts.
Manually powered... I don't think so.
Plus... that last point kind of defeats the eco-idea of the printer by itself.
How much water would be wasted annually that way?

Use:

1. Insert a paper in the middle of the printer
2. Put the coffee or tea dregs into the ink case on the top of the printer
3. Move the ink case left and right as you draw on a paper
4. When the print finishes, pull out the paper from the printer and wash the ink case

Some other "designs" on the list are also intriguing but most seem as they have been envisioned either by children or over-privileged westerners.
Like someone who never heard of indoor drying racks and power-socket timers and thinks that you could solve the power crisis by harnessing the immense untapped potential of doormats and trampolines.
You know... those same people that find a wallet that would overheat, smell bad, bite your hand and otherwise embarrass it's owner when he/she tries to take money out of it - a fuckin great idea.

Oh... and that portable hard-drive you have, that fits in your pocket?
Wouldn't you be a lot happier with one that needs a bag just so you could lug it around - cause it is a god damn concrete brick!
Concrete would prevent such heavy metals your portable drive is made of like imaginarium and unobtanium from leaching into the landfill.
Once you get sick of hauling 20 pounds of bricks around with you and you just chuck the god damn thing out of the window of your car.
Hopefully, one might eventually hit the inventor in the head. Or the wallet guy.

... at greenergadgets.com

Now... while I like the idea, I don't really see it working for real.
It is a nice hippie pipe dream at best.
Whoever "designed" it forgets that people don't use printers because they have bad handwriting, but because they need clear, efficient, quick and presentable printouts.
Manually powered... I don't think so.
Plus... that last point kind of defeats the eco-idea of the printer by itself.
How much water would be wasted annually that way?

Use:

1. Insert a paper in the middle of the printer
2. Put the coffee or tea dregs into the ink case on the top of the printer
3. Move the ink case left and right as you draw on a paper
4. When the print finishes, pull out the paper from the printer and wash the ink case

Some other "designs" on the list are also intriguing but most seem as they have been envisioned either by children or over-privileged westerners.
Like someone who never heard of indoor drying racks and power-socket timers and thinks that you could solve the power crisis by harnessing the immense untapped potential of doormats and trampolines.
You know... those same people that find a wallet that would overheat, smell bad, bite your hand and otherwise embarrass it's owner when he/she tries to take money out of it - a fuckin great idea.

Oh... and that portable hard-drive you have, that fits in your pocket?
Wouldn't you be a lot happier with one that needs a bag just so you could lug it around - cause it is a god damn concrete brick!
Concrete would prevent such heavy metals your portable drive is made of like imaginarium and unobtanium from leaching into the landfill.
Once you get sick of hauling 20 pounds of bricks around with you and you just chuck the god damn thing out of the window of your car.
Hopefully, one might eventually hit the inventor in the head. Or the wallet guy.

I always preferred inconspicuous consumption. It's a shame Paul Lukas stopped doing that...

This incident should be deeply embarrassing for Virginia Tech, which actually does employ some reputable professors and produces some educated students. However, this nonsense comes from a student in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, where a grasp of physical reality is clearly not a graduation requirement.

As a VT alumnus, I am embarrassed - and wrote an email to the addresses on the press release telling them so and asking that they please take the story off of the front page of vtnews. And to simply ask the physics or engineering departments if they have any questions.

Calling it a "design" competition doesn't excuse this. A design is worthless if it isn't realizable. A guy on my floor was an architecture major (5 year degree??). They were always doing various models and such. He had one that was basically a Jetsons house - big bubble shaped thing on a long skinny stalk. He couldn't get the thing to stay upright even in the model, and I asked him how he thought you could ever actually build something like this. He started off about "modern materials, carbon fiber, kevlar ....". Sorry, no - that's actually what I'm studying you see. It can't work - never mind the practical aspect that there wasn't any way to get into the place. His reply was that it didn't really matter - it was the design that counted.

If that's all that counts, then call it art. I could see if this stuff was within the realm of physically possibly - let's say less then one order of magnitude divorced from reality. But the stuff on that page is just absurd. How about the replacement for air conditioners that works by putting water filled fan blades into your freezer (sustain_cool) Then install and chill the air when you turn it on! Uhm, sure - why don't you just leave the refrigerator door open, it will be about as effective.

Of course, not all of them are obviously physically impossible - most are just stupid, worthless or both.

But then, I'm just an engineer. You know, the boring hacks with no imagination or creativity.

RTFA: http://www.core77.com/competitions/greenergadgets/projects/4306/greener_gadgets_03.jpg
It runs on current generated from gravity moving 12 Neodymium Magnets.

• Eco-friendly
  
• Open Source
  
• Geeky
  
• Ugly as heck
  

This incident should be deeply embarrassing for Virginia Tech, which actually does employ some reputable professors and produces some educated students. However, this nonsense comes from a student in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, where a grasp of physical reality is clearly not a graduation requirement.

As other posters have observed, the energy generated by a 25 kg mass descending two meters is several orders of magnitude away from the 50 Watt-hours or so needed to generate the claimed light output. A careful reading of the breathless Va Tech press release shows that it's mostly written in the future, a key hint that the device doesn't actually exist.

But that's not important in a DESIGN contest, where the objective is to imagine something that looks cool and makes an uninformed audience coo with delight. Considerations like "can is possibly work?", "can it be manufactured?", or "is its cost plausible?" are far distant from such endeavours.

For fun, let's look at some of the other entries. First place goes to the Ener-Jar. It's an undeniably cute (but clearly not manufacturable) gadget that—get this—measures AC power consumption. Wow. What a groundbreaking idea. Too bad the people who make the Kill-A-Watt have been making something like it—but a lot more useful—for a decade or so. But the EnerJar is a DIY project, so that makes it a cute design winner.

Or this novelty, the Bambus. It's a USB memory stick that's recyclable because, err, it's made of bamboo. I suppose this isn't a bad idea (and it "will age in a nice way and will therefore become more likable over time"), but saving the earth by encasing USB devices in bamboo seems like a pretty slow payoff. Maybe this bamboo cellphone has more appeal.

I think my favorite is the digital tattoo interface. I'm not sure what this implanted device has to do with saving energy, except that it incorporates a "blood-powered fuel cell". The girl "demonstrating" it doesn't look too happy; maybe she's having second thoughts about bio-compatible materials.

We shouldn't be too hard on these ideas—some of them might actually be practical, although they mostly seem to recycle well-understood ambient energy notions in applications that suffer from an orders-of-magnitude mismatch between production and consumption. There are some good industrial designers, who do understand physics and engineering, and maybe one of these kids will grow up to be one.

This incident should be deeply embarrassing for Virginia Tech, which actually does employ some reputable professors and produces some educated students. However, this nonsense comes from a student in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, where a grasp of physical reality is clearly not a graduation requirement.

As other posters have observed, the energy generated by a 25 kg mass descending two meters is several orders of magnitude away from the 50 Watt-hours or so needed to generate the claimed light output. A careful reading of the breathless Va Tech press release shows that it's mostly written in the future, a key hint that the device doesn't actually exist.

But that's not important in a DESIGN contest, where the objective is to imagine something that looks cool and makes an uninformed audience coo with delight. Considerations like "can is possibly work?", "can it be manufactured?", or "is its cost plausible?" are far distant from such endeavours.

For fun, let's look at some of the other entries. First place goes to the Ener-Jar. It's an undeniably cute (but clearly not manufacturable) gadget that—get this—measures AC power consumption. Wow. What a groundbreaking idea. Too bad the people who make the Kill-A-Watt have been making something like it—but a lot more useful—for a decade or so. But the EnerJar is a DIY project, so that makes it a cute design winner.

Or this novelty, the Bambus. It's a USB memory stick that's recyclable because, err, it's made of bamboo. I suppose this isn't a bad idea (and it "will age in a nice way and will therefore become more likable over time"), but saving the earth by encasing USB devices in bamboo seems like a pretty slow payoff. Maybe this bamboo cellphone has more appeal.

I think my favorite is the digital tattoo interface. I'm not sure what this implanted device has to do with saving energy, except that it incorporates a "blood-powered fuel cell". The girl "demonstrating" it doesn't look too happy; maybe she's having second thoughts about bio-compatible materials.

We shouldn't be too hard on these ideas—some of them might actually be practical, although they mostly seem to recycle well-understood ambient energy notions in applications that suffer from an orders-of-magnitude mismatch between production and consumption. There are some good industrial designers, who do understand physics and engineering, and maybe one of these kids will grow up to be one.

This incident should be deeply embarrassing for Virginia Tech, which actually does employ some reputable professors and produces some educated students. However, this nonsense comes from a student in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, where a grasp of physical reality is clearly not a graduation requirement.

As other posters have observed, the energy generated by a 25 kg mass descending two meters is several orders of magnitude away from the 50 Watt-hours or so needed to generate the claimed light output. A careful reading of the breathless Va Tech press release shows that it's mostly written in the future, a key hint that the device doesn't actually exist.

But that's not important in a DESIGN contest, where the objective is to imagine something that looks cool and makes an uninformed audience coo with delight. Considerations like "can is possibly work?", "can it be manufactured?", or "is its cost plausible?" are far distant from such endeavours.

For fun, let's look at some of the other entries. First place goes to the Ener-Jar. It's an undeniably cute (but clearly not manufacturable) gadget that—get this—measures AC power consumption. Wow. What a groundbreaking idea. Too bad the people who make the Kill-A-Watt have been making something like it—but a lot more useful—for a decade or so. But the EnerJar is a DIY project, so that makes it a cute design winner.

Or this novelty, the Bambus. It's a USB memory stick that's recyclable because, err, it's made of bamboo. I suppose this isn't a bad idea (and it "will age in a nice way and will therefore become more likable over time"), but saving the earth by encasing USB devices in bamboo seems like a pretty slow payoff. Maybe this bamboo cellphone has more appeal.

I think my favorite is the digital tattoo interface. I'm not sure what this implanted device has to do with saving energy, except that it incorporates a "blood-powered fuel cell". The girl "demonstrating" it doesn't look too happy; maybe she's having second thoughts about bio-compatible materials.

We shouldn't be too hard on these ideas—some of them might actually be practical, although they mostly seem to recycle well-understood ambient energy notions in applications that suffer from an orders-of-magnitude mismatch between production and consumption. There are some good industrial designers, who do understand physics and engineering, and maybe one of these kids will grow up to be one.

This incident should be deeply embarrassing for Virginia Tech, which actually does employ some reputable professors and produces some educated students. However, this nonsense comes from a student in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, where a grasp of physical reality is clearly not a graduation requirement.

As other posters have observed, the energy generated by a 25 kg mass descending two meters is several orders of magnitude away from the 50 Watt-hours or so needed to generate the claimed light output. A careful reading of the breathless Va Tech press release shows that it's mostly written in the future, a key hint that the device doesn't actually exist.

But that's not important in a DESIGN contest, where the objective is to imagine something that looks cool and makes an uninformed audience coo with delight. Considerations like "can is possibly work?", "can it be manufactured?", or "is its cost plausible?" are far distant from such endeavours.

For fun, let's look at some of the other entries. First place goes to the Ener-Jar. It's an undeniably cute (but clearly not manufacturable) gadget that—get this—measures AC power consumption. Wow. What a groundbreaking idea. Too bad the people who make the Kill-A-Watt have been making something like it—but a lot more useful—for a decade or so. But the EnerJar is a DIY project, so that makes it a cute design winner.

Or this novelty, the Bambus. It's a USB memory stick that's recyclable because, err, it's made of bamboo. I suppose this isn't a bad idea (and it "will age in a nice way and will therefore become more likable over time"), but saving the earth by encasing USB devices in bamboo seems like a pretty slow payoff. Maybe this bamboo cellphone has more appeal.

I think my favorite is the digital tattoo interface. I'm not sure what this implanted device has to do with saving energy, except that it incorporates a "blood-powered fuel cell". The girl "demonstrating" it doesn't look too happy; maybe she's having second thoughts about bio-compatible materials.

We shouldn't be too hard on these ideas—some of them might actually be practical, although they mostly seem to recycle well-understood ambient energy notions in applications that suffer from an orders-of-magnitude mismatch between production and consumption. There are some good industrial designers, who do understand physics and engineering, and maybe one of these kids will grow up to be one.

It looks nice and all, but what about the other winners? http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/greener_gadgets_design_competition_results_8851.asp

Your conclusion is right, but your figures are a bit out. The drop is 58" according to the plan. This gives about 0.022W at 100% efficiency.

For reference, the highest efficiency LEDs that I know of get 131 lumens per watt. If we're generous and allow them 150 lumens/watt, they still need 4W of power. This would require a drop of 255 metres using the 50lbs of weights he claims. Since we can't really go above 1.5m high, we'll need almost 4 tonnes of weights.

A shame really, I'd have rather liked one.

That's not a picture of a real lamp. It's a "concept illustration" generated in some CG program.

There may be an actual prototype, but it's not as good looking. Although I have suspicions about that image; the shadows are inconsistent and the inside corners don't show a dark band.

OK, can someone tell me where my calculation is wrong:

The designer's diagram shows 50lbs of weight falling 58 inches. Google tells me in metric that's about 23kg falling 1.5m; under the force of gravity (9.8N/kg), that gives a total potential energy of 23*1.5*9.8 Joules—call it 350J to be generous.

Now, the claim is that this thing outputs 600-800 lumens of light. Let's assume that LEDs can put out 200 lumens per watt of electricity delivered—this is apparently quite generous. That means the LEDs will need at least 3 watts of electricity to give out that amount of light.

As everyone here knows, 3 watts is 3 joules/second—meaning our total of 350J will last slightly less than two minutes; this is substantially less than the claimed four hours!

Either my number-crunching is wrong (in which case I'd be delighted to be enlightened—excuse the puns), or this device ain't ever going to do what it claims...

-Fl

Depends on how buff your grandma is. 5 x 10lb weights.
http://www.core77.com/competitions/greenergadgets/projects/4306/greener_gadgets_03.jpg

I'm interested in seeing how Apple solved this problem with the iPhone

This might not be used on the iPhone, but I'm sure we'll see this eventually... Apple's invisible interface.

http://www.core77.com/corehome/story.kermit.jpg

The slashdot headline has little to do with the actual article. There is no causality present between the use of CAD and drawing, or at least none that has been discussed in the article itself, and the association is much clearer. My design students generally suck at drawing when they begin their studies for a simple reason: they've been spending less time practicing drawing (and more time playing WoW, not necessarily using CAD).

A bigger problem that isn't mentioned is that the command for traditional drawing and sketching skills in the United States is shrinking, and growing dramatically in China. http://www.core77.com/reactor/08.04_china.asp has an interesting article about this topic, which - in my opinion - is the design equivalent to off shoring in India. Cheaper labor combined with equally (or often better) skilled employees is a no-brainer for traditional US business. Additionally, the manufacturing firms in China will often "throw in" design services for free if you tool or manufacture with them.

It's gotten to the point where the Taiwanese are off shoring to China because it's cheaper ..

ugh couldn't find the original article thing on popsci.com but here's what i found thru google http://www.core77.com/challenge/humanpower/pages/8 desc.htm i think it's just a concept but i wonder if the night version Coming Soon(tm) from nike is like this?

I'd rather use this elegant solution.

Plus, this hanging one wouldn't try to kill my cat every morning like Clocky would.

Hell, automate the process:
http://www.core77.com/reactor/tagmaster.html

Okay, not actually. Neat toy, but I'm all for impermanence in this case. Someone already pointed out the transient nature of nodes, and you don't want the tag outlasting its validity.

(1) Probably Too Much.
(2) Will I die through the action or inaction of a vacuum cleaner? I could either be smothered by dust puppies, or... eeew. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Here's a link to a similar concept submitted to a design magazine in November. Due to poor frame html, the border isn't included.

Zorba