Hasta La Gadget!

The tallest building in New York City is turning green. Officials for the Empire State building announced that soon all of its power will come from wind energy, provided by Texas-based Green Mountain Energy.

The company has signed a two year agreement, which will see Green Mountain providing 55 million kilowatt hours of energy per year. It’s expected that the shift will see carbon dioxide emissions reduced by nearly 100 million pounds annually.

“It was a natural fit for us to combine 100 percent clean energy with our nearly completed, ground breaking energy efficiency retrofit work,” Anthony E. Malkin, president of building owner Malkin Holdings, explained. “Clean energy and our nearly 40 percent reduced consumption of watts and BTUs gives us a competitive advantage in attracting the best credit tenants at the best rents.”

Via USA Today

OtterBox has announced a new, rugged iPhone 4 case, the Reflex Series. It’s also available for the BlackBerry Curve 8500/9300.

Originally posted at CES 2011

LAS VEGAS — Quirky’s Perch is an all-in-one speaker and charger for your phone. It comes in two parts: the dock, which stays put on your nightstand, side-table or desk, and the Bluetooth speaker, which charges on the dock but can be taken with you in a bag, a big pocket or just to the bathroom so you don’t miss any of your audiobook.

When not docked, the speaker has its own kickstand, so you can prop it up wherever you like, vertically or horizontally. It also has a built in mic for conference-calling. When it is docked, the speaker snaps into place, held by magnets.

The dock part hooks up to AC power and connects to your phone via a USB cable instead of a device-limiting dock-connector. It also has a clock readout so you can use it as a bedside alarm.

The Perch is just like any other Quirky product – designed by an online community and only sent to production once the minimum order has been reached. In this case the minimum pre-order is 1,600, and the price is $200, with a $20 discount for early adopters.

Perch product page [Quirky]

See Also:

• Jawbone
• Ears-On With the SuperTooth Disco Bluetooth Boombox
• SuperTooth, a Block-Rocking Portable Bluetooth Speaker
• Quirky

Vlogging and lifecasting are both things we haven’t really gotten into in this new-age of gadget crazed aliens and humans, but the LooxcieCam is a gadget — and you know us, we kinda-maybe-sorta really love gadgets. Here at the Consumer Electronics Show, Looxcie ousted its new streaming service which it has dubbed LooxcieLive. In addition to the Bluetooth video connectivity to your smartphone, the service allows you to beam the vidcast across mobile networks and WiFi to any other dude or dudette on your contacts list that’s got the app installed. Those looking to get started right away will be disappointed — the service is currently unavailable, but will be live within the first half of 2011.

Aside from the newly announced software, we got a chance to play with the LooxcieCam. The headset we looked at was paired (via Bluetooth) to a Droid X using the LooxcieMoments app, and the streaming quality was something we hope to see an improvement on. The unit, stuffed with 4GB of recording memory, can record one hour of VGA quality (and 4 hours of sub-VGA quality). The app is both available in the Market and App Store, and minimum requirements to run it are 2.0 on Android and 4.2 on iOS. Interested in seeing the headset in action? Head past the break and click play.

Continue reading Looxcie introduces LooxcieLive, enables mobile-to-mobile stream viewing

Looxcie introduces LooxcieLive, enables mobile-to-mobile stream viewing originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 12:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments