I’m fairly certain that the idea of jumping over an island has never crossed my mind in all my years of thinking. But if you’re a champion kitesurfer like Youri Zoon and you stumble across a small enough island, well, that’s just another day on the beach for you. Jumping the damn thing and nailing it is just how you live. Watch Zoon catch the perfect gust of wind and fly over an entire 120-foot island near New Caledonia. Sick.
There are already portable battery packs that have solar panels for recharging. The Trinity is a new kind of portable charger that uses a different renewable source of energy: the wind. It recharges its 15,000 mAh battery through its built-in wind turbine. Although it’s quite promising, I don’t think you should support it just yet.
Trinity weighs just 4lb. and when collapsed it’s just 12″ long, so it’s fairly portable. It has three aluminum legs that can either stay in a tripod arrangement or lie flat. Inside Trinity is a 15W generator and its battery. The current prototype has a 5V/1A USB charging port, although inventor Skajaquoda is considering adding an additional 5v/2A USB port for more power hungry devices like tablets. Here’s where it starts to get iffy. Skajaquoda also added a miniUSB port that’s meant to charge Trinity’s battery… via an outlet.
Why would they add a way to charge the battery that doesn’t use the built-in wind turbine? If you’re going to plug it in to charge it you might as well get a conventional battery pack that’s much smaller. The only reason I can think of for the addition of the mini-USB charging option is that Skajaquoda isn’t confident about Trinity’s charging speed through the wind turbine. Commenters on the fundraising site are asking the same question: How fast does it charge through wind power? Sadly, Skajaquoda didn’t include that vital data on their Kickstarter page and on their pitch video.
Breeze on over to Kickstarter to find out more about Trinity. The device can be yours for a pledge of at least $249 (USD), but again I don’t think you should back the project yet. I’m not saying this is vaporware or a scam. It’s an interesting and promising invention, but at the same time there are important details about it that need to come to light before you plunk down your hard-earned cash.
[via GadgeTell]
A thousand feet off the ground, the wind blows brisk and uninterrupted. But how do you build such a tall, thin beam to support a turbine’s blades? You don’t—you float the generator in a giant helium balloon. The world’s first floating commercial wind turbine will soon be hovering over Fairbanks, Alaska.
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We have seen the humble beginnings of Altaeros Energies’ Airborne Wind Turbine system slightly more than a couple of years ago, and here we are with more news concerning the effort. It does resemble a jet engine of sorts at first glance, where this floating turbine as well as the rest of its “comrades” could make their way to every single corner of the earth, where it will then offer the modern day amenities of electricity as well as Internet connectivity to folks who live off the grid. Hmmm, sounds familiar, although I am not quite sure whether folks living in the interiors would prefer a Facebook account over the more basic necessities of life.
Altaeros Wind Turbine Could Deliver Wi-Fi Connectivity As Well original content from Ubergizmo. 
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In the matchup of wind turbine v. hurricane, our bets have traditionally been with the hurricane. But think about it this way: wind turbines are designed to suck energy out of wind. What if they could suck out so much energy that hurricanes like Katrina or Sandy never form in the first place—with the potentially destructive storm instead spun directly into electricity? That’s the win-win situation posited in a new study from Stanford and University of Delaware researchers.
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From microscopic coral to massive planets, the natural world is full of beauty on a scale that can only be seen with the aid of a microscopic or a telescope. Announced today, the winners of the 11th annual International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge—sponsored by the journal Science and the U.S. National Science Foundation—zoom into microscopic scales and zoom out onto planetary scales.
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Robots have a hard time walking. They’re getting better
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We all know wind turbines can produce electricity, but have you seen them produce lightning?
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Called the "silent epidemic," a little-known fungal disease called valley fever has become ten times more common in the past decade. Its fungal spores are being spread by dust storms in the American Southwest. Exactly why valley fever suddenly increased has nagged at public health officials, but a piece in The New Yorker suggests something quite prosaic is partially responsible—construction.
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Earth from above is a beautiful sight
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