Tag: green gadgets
REVIEW: AlertMe Starter Energy monitoring kit
In these penny-pinching times we need every bit of help we can get to keep our bills down. Is AlertMe the solution to keeping those electricity bills in check, or a needlessly expensive alternative to switching off the lights before heading on out for the day?
LG launches WE5 – the UK's first anti-eyestrain monitor
It’s 1.30 in the afternoon and already I’m getting dryballs. My contact lenses want to leap off my corneas, I feel like it’s 3am in a smoky bar and I’m having to remind myself to blink as often as I can. LG reckons they’ve got an answer to this problem in the form of the LG WE5 eyestrain-minimizing monitor – the first of its kind the in the UK.
They come in a range of sizes between 18.5″ to 27″ (with all over 21″ offering 1080p HD displays) and seem to have borrowed a version of the LG ambient light sensor technology we’ve seen in LG TVs.
The idea is that the screen auto-adjusts to ambient lighting to give you enough LCD backlighting to be able to see what you’re doing without blinding you, but, just in case you don’t get the idea, it’ll actually remind you every once in a while that you probably ought to take a break from whatever it is you’re doing. A tenner says that gets ignored and switched off in 95% of WE5s.
They all come in 16:9 size with a digital contrast ratio of 50,000:1 and are available from May.
CES 2008: The greenwash begins
On Sunday night Bill Gates takes to the stage at the Venetian Ballroom for CES’s curtain raising keynote speech, and each year he delivers a surprise guest to play Eric to his Ernie. It is probably a long shot but I wonder if tomorrow’s star turn will be none other than Mr Inconvenient Truth Al Gore.
At a CES where gadgets are starting to look a little commoditised – bet we don’t see those swathes of MP3 players, PVPs and flash camcorders of previous years – makers are having to come up with new ideas to persuade us to trade in pounds for new gadgets. And what better way to do this than with a bit of greenwash.
WING: your own portable windmill
Windmills are great, but they could be a bit more portable, don’t you think? That’s the idea behind the development of WING, a concept design for a personal windmill. It’s the work of Croation designers Ines Vlahović & Mladen Orešić, and has just scooped an INDEX award for its innovative umbrella-like design.
Whole House-Off Switch: Shut down your house to save the planet!
As I’m sitting here working, there are dozens of things switched on in my house: fridge, washing machine, this computer, the central heating, bedroom alarm clock, hi-fi… And even when I go out, they’ll still be sucking electricity, costing me money and KILLING GOD’S GREEN EARTH. Ahem, sorry, got a bit carried away with eco-fervour there.
2007 Tech Trends No. 2: Green Gadgets
Second in a series of posts highlighting Tech Digest’s pick of big technology trends for the second half of 2007…
Technology companies make money from flogging us technology as often as possible. They don’t tend to make money from hugging trees. So when you see a company like Dell announcing plans to become the greenest technology company on Earth, you get a sense of why eco-gadgetry is increasingly seen as a vital business strategy by tech firms.
Ecoelectricals selling green Auto Switch-Off extension socket
Plugs. We don’t write about them much, yet you all use them. Lots of them. And you’re KILLING THE PLANET in the process. Well, you are if you leave gadgets charging or switched on when there’s no need to.
How green are your gadgets, and do you care?
It was interesting to read yesterday’s story about Greenpeace’s latest chart of how eco-friendly consumer electronics firms are. Lenovo came top, followed by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Dell, Samsung and Motorola.
