Hasta La Gadget!

San Francisco‘s been mulling this one over for some time now, but at long last, the city has taken a monumental step in turning nearby waves into energy. Mayor Gavin Newsom has stated that his city has just “submitted a preliminary permit application to the federal government to develop a wave power project” off of San Fran’s coast. When the project is fully operational, it could generate anywhere between 10 and 100 megawatts of energy, and it has the potential to create upwards of 100 jobs. If all goes to plan, electric power would be generated from waves that are around eight miles off the west coast of SF, and the mayor also stated that he’ll be making sure that the impact on marine animals, fishing, shipping and recreational uses is minimized should he get the green light.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

San Francisco submits permit app for wave power project originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Solar chargers are a dime a dozen, but who honestly feels like carrying around rechargeable cells and a recharger? Guru Knut Karlsen has conjured up a far superior idea, and rather than just working up a few drawings and making us all feel dumb for not thinking of this first, he went out and proved that solar-charging batteries are definitely ready for production. In essence, he wrapped four C size NiMH rechargeable batteries with a few samples of flexible solar cells; by using a conductive silver pen and some flat wires from a broken Canon lens, he made a connection solid enough for trickle charging to occur. Moving forward, he’d like to install a capacity gauge as well as a method for faster charging, but we’d say this ain’t half bad for a first attempt.

[Via Inhabitat, thanks Sarvesh]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

SunCat batteries boast built-in solar charging wrappers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

If you’re like us, you’re probably taking an ever-increasing interest in gadgets with an eco slant. If that’s the case — and we think that it is — you’ll want to check into Greener Gadgets, a day dedicated to the quest for sustainable consumer electronics and better solutions for our industry, launched by Jill Fehrenbacher, Editor-in-chief of Inhabitat. This Friday (February 27th, 2009), you can join “innovators, entrepreneurs, visionaries, and eco-designers” in New York City to explore some of those solutions, take a look at green gadgetry, and hear from a handful of speakers on the cutting edge of Earth-friendly electronics. Oh, and there’s that killer design competition to round it all up. This year, our own Editor-in-chief, Joshua Topolsky, will be moderating a panel on gadget recycling called “Closing the Loop In Cradle to Cradle,” so if you needed some added incentive to attend, you’ve got it. Today is the last day for registration, so follow the read link and sign yourself up!

Filed under: Announcements, Meta

Greener Gadgets 2009, this Friday in NYC originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Volkswagen sure is talking tough about going green, but we’ve yet to actually see any of these long-teased concepts hit the show floor. In case a plug-in Twin Drive hybrid just wasn’t enough to look forward to, the suits in Wolfsburg have just inked a letter of intent with Toshiba in order to form a collaborative agreement that will see the two working together in the development of “electric drive units and the accompanying power electronics for Volkswagen’s planned New Small Family.” If rumors prove accurate, the NSF crew will mimic that Up! concept we’ve been drooling over for ages, and if you were wondering where the batteries would be coming from, this here arrangement suggests that it’ll be from within the partnership. Oh, and you want a launch date, don’t you? How about “forever from now,” or as VW’s Dr. Martin Winterkorn put it: “A considerable amount of research and development work still has to be carried out until we can produce the electric vehicle.”

Continue reading Volkswagen and Toshiba to link up on electric drive systems

Filed under: Transportation

Volkswagen and Toshiba to link up on electric drive systems originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

We’ll be straight up with you — there’s a lot of fancy work going on with this one that laypeople will have a tough time grasping, but the long and short of it is this: a team from Rice University (Krishna Palem pictured) and Nanyang Technological University have created a microchip that “uses 30 times less electricity while running seven times faster than today’s best technology.” Already crying snake oil? Not so fast. By trashing the traditional set of mathematical rules (that’d be Boolean logic) and instead applying probabilistic logic, researchers have figured out how to deliver similar results with a fraction of the energy. The tech is being dubbed PCMOS (probabilistic CMOS), and could eventually end up in embedded systems and even cellphones. In the case of the latter, this type of chip will be able to display streaming video on a minuscule display with more artifacts than usual, but due to the small screen size and the human brain’s ability to piece together nearly-perfect images, the errors involved would be all but forgotten. Meanwhile, your battery bar would still be nearly full. We always heard there was beauty in imperfections — now, at long last, we finally get it.

Filed under: Desktops, Misc. Gadgets, Laptops

Probabilistic logic makes microchip more energy efficient originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments