Hasta La Gadget!

Heating and cooling costs make up half of your average home’s utility bills. A smarter thermostat, then, could save you big bucks, and so we’re glad to see Texas utility company Oncor rolling out EcoFactor software and compatible thermostats to subscribers. These units look straightforward enough, but connect to the interwebs to download weather reports, meaning they can anticipate heatwaves and cool spells and plan accordingly. They can also figure out just how long it takes to get your home to a certain temperature, so if you want it 74 degrees at your pad by the time you arrive from work at 5:30 this thing can figure out the last possible minute it needs to spin up the AC. That’s great, and a $19.95 installation fee is similarly encouraging, but we’re not so keen on the $8.99 “monitoring” fee Oncor will be charging monthly. For that kind of cash this thing should track us on Latitude figure out our schedule by itself.

Update: We got a note from EcoFactor who wanted to clarify a few things, primarily that they don’t actually do the thermostats, just software. Its their software that tells the otherwise absent-minded thermostats what to do, which is where the subscription fee comes from (erroneously called a “monitoring” fee by our initial source). The first six months are free, but after that you’re on the hook for nine bucks every lunar cycle or so. We still think that’s a bit steep, but we’ve certainly spent more on less worthwhile things.

Oncor’s ‘Take a Load Off, Texas’ campaign offers Dallas residents smarter thermostats originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Jul 2010 10:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Cnet  |  EcoFactor  | Email this | Comments

LCDs can be transformed from e-waste to infection fighters, says new research originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Inhabitat  |  University of York  | Email this | Comments

As gadget chargers go, this one is pretty low-tech. But as it is made by Nokia, and aimed at developing countries, it is also likely that it will last forever.

The bike charger relies on the well-tested and durable bottle-dynamo to convert your pedaling into power, and the phone is held to the handlebars with a big rubber-band. In between is a box of circuitry to give a nice smooth current to any device equipped with a 2mm jack.

The charger will first be available in Kenya for around 15 euro ($18) and will go on sale worldwide by the end of this year. So how much power can our legs produce? Quite a lot, surprisingly: Pedal at 6 mph for just 10 minutes, and you’ll get almost half an hour of talk time or a stunning 37 hours of standby. The minimum speed required to charge a phone is 4 mph, or walking speed, so even a modestly jaunty commute should be enough to keep your cell going for a whole day.

We like the simplicity of Nokia’s gadget. Other solutions tend towards the complicated, with magnets or hub dynamos providing the juice. With bikes, though, simple is almost always best.

Dynamo power to recharge handsets [BBC]

See Also:

• Ugandan MacGyver Builds Own Cellphone Charger
• Reelight: Magnet Powered LED Bike Light

Tiny SIM cards seems like the last thing worth worrying about in our bid to save the environment one tree at a time — but let’s not forget that you end up throwing away about 80 percent of the card as soon as you pop the actual chip out and stick it in your phone. Portuguese carrier TMN has rolled out what it claims to be the world’s first recycled paper SIMs in combination with the release of the Samsung solar-charging Blue Earth handset, delivering a powerful one-two combo of feel-good environmental responsibility that should boost your karma for a solid day or two (if not more). You can’t get the paper SIM with TMN’s other devices just yet, but in the meantime, you can pick up the Blue Earth package for a stout €239 ($318).

[Thanks, Ricardo]

Portuguese carrier TMN pairs Samsung Blue Earth with world’s first paper SIM card originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink sapo.pt  |  TMN  | Email this | Comments

We don’t know what charlatanism is afoot here, but word is that Australian company Digital Works has come up with a way to recharge non-rechargeable batteries. We’d usually scoff at such blasphemy, but the tech has been convincing enough to at least get PC Treasures (who?) to distribute the ReZap Battery Engineer on the North American continent. This little do-it-all device will juice up rechargeable and standard batteries alike — allowing up to 10 recharges for the latter type — and is also capable of electrifying up to four cells of varying sizes at the same time. You can expect the ReZap to arrive in May with an SRP of $59.95, which we’d consider cheap if it does everything it promises, or extortionate in the somewhat more likely event that it doesn’t. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Digital Works’ ReZap recharges disposable batteries, coming to North America in May

Digital Works’ ReZap recharges disposable batteries, coming to North America in May originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments