This is either one of the stupidest ideas on the planet or one of the smartest. It’s called the eco-amp and it’s an iPhone speaker amplifier that is basically a cardboard cone. It has been made from 100 percent recycled paper and it cups over the speaker on your iPhone.

It arrives in a flat envelope, so you’ll need to do a little origami work to fold it into shape. But seriously, it’s just a piece of presumably slightly thicker paper that’s been folded in the shape of a cone, so you could probably just do the same thing by cutting up an old shoebox. That beats spending $7.99 plus shipping for a twin pack of the eco-amp.

After all, despite the name, there is no actual amp here. It’s more like the horn from an old phonograph. We’ve all rolled up a paper cone to use like a makeshift megaphone and this works in basically teh same way. Creating company eco-made of Los Angeles claims that you’ll increase the volume on your iPhone speaker to 30dB.

[Source]

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Have you ever wanted to have your own private tropical island, but you couldn’t be bothered to buy the land? What if you want to be eco-friendly while on your sunny vacation too? Apparently, you can with this floating island.

To be fair, it’s not really an island. It’s probably more appropriate to call it an island-shaped boat that’ll work as a self-enclosed resort. Designed by Michele Puzzolante, the Solar Floating Resort (SFR) concept is large enough to accommodate six people with plenty of room to spare. There’s a Jacuzzi on deck and you can go underneath for an underwater observation room.

The biggest feature, though, is the use of a photovoltaic thin-film skin all along the round roof. These solar panels can collect sunlight throughout the day, generating enough clean electricity to power you through the night. And inside, the same photovoltaic skin is used to capture power from your artificial interior lights.

Aside from the obvious hurdles associated with manufacturing such a seafaring mobile resort, there’s one other issue: there doesn’t appear to be any closets. Where are you going to put your eco clothing? That’s not very luxurious at all.

[Source]

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are increasing in popularity and in variety. Even within Toyota, they have introduced some new variants to the Prius line, but what if you want something even smaller and even more efficient? That’s where the newly revealed Toyota Aqua cruises into the picture.

The Toyota Aqua, from what I can see, looks to be roughly Yaris-sized and is purpose-built for the Japanese urban commuter. This is Toyota’s smallest hybrid offering on the market and it is said to get 35.4 km per liter; that works out to about 83MPG or 2.8L/100km. That’s better than its Prius stablemate, which “only” gets 32.6 km per liter.

The good news is that Toyota isn’t keeping the Aqua to just the roads of Japan. They have plans to roll it out worldwide next year to about 50 countries around the globe. It may not be known as the Aqua when it reaches a dealership near you, though, as it is being marketed as the Prius c on the international market. The European version is based on the Yaris, but gets the same hybrid system.

Pricing for the Toyota Aqua in the Japanese domestic market is set to start at 1.69 million yen (about $22,000), though the local price in other markets will surely vary.

The post Toyota Aqua: The Even More Compact Hybrid Commuter Car appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

What’s interesting about this keyboard and mouse is that they are made fully of bamboo; there is “almost no plastic” here and the bamboo goes more than skin deep. Because bamboo grows in a tropical environment, it is particularly hardy against humidity. It’s also sustainable, since it grows relatively quickly.

The actual keyboard and mouse aren’t all that exciting with the usual set of keys and buttons. The keyboard has 108 keys, including some shortcuts, while the mouse has a rubber scroll wheel between its two bamboo buttons. Find it on Brando for $82.

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German automakers have obviously decided that the time has come to inductively power bigger gadgets than toothbrushes. It’s the electric vehicle’s turn now. German government-backed “Effizienzhaus-Plus mit Elektromobilität” project, or “Effective House Plus with Electric Mobility” has pilot plans to demo a feasibility and effectiveness of these inductive chargers for a speciment of a German household (and a garage for several electric vehicles):

EV’s in that test will include electric bikes and Smart ForTwo cars, plus several more electric cars from makers such as Audi, BMW, Daimler, Opel and Volkswagen. Daimler will start its entry into such tests in March 2012 by supplying a Mercedes-Benz A-Class E-CELL modified to include an induction charging option to test how effective the technology proves in real-world conditions. Fitted with a special charging coil, the A-Class E-CELL only needs to be positioned over a charging coil in the ground to automatically begin cable-free charging by way of an electromagnetic field.

Of course, a mid-sized or bigger electric car like that Tesla might be better and more “effectively” served by connecting a charging cable directly to it, as opposed to to running inductive coils in the garage floor and walls. We are supposed to run an “Effizienzhaus” effectively, aren’t we? Why waste that precious power on heating up the gap between coils in your garage floor and in car?

The post Inductive Charging for Electric Vehicles Will Be Tested in Berlin appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It’s never too late to go green and it’s always a good sign when technology experts take an eco-friendly approach to things. The i2R e-Paper from Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) appears to be paving the way for a greener environment.

When we said e-Paper, your mind might have wandered to e-Readers that have displays needing low power and offer lots of readability. But the new e-Paper from Taiwan comes equipped with a lot of cool properties.

ITRI’s i2R e-Paper, which is a highly flexible electronic paper, is both re-writable and re-usable. It has a plastic film covered with a cholestric liquid crystal and it does not require any power to retain an image; although it does not help to completely stay away from electricity. For printing on the e-Paper a thermal printer, such as the one you would find in a fax machine, is required. The heat from the printer helps in the writing process. The printer heats up the liquid crystal layer and makes the molecules light or dark. The 300 dpi resolution that we will get is quite fine. The compound can produce different colors as well. And to erase everything, you just have to run a printed e-Paper sheet through the printer again. The writing and the erasing processes will, obviously, require power, but that can come from the sun.

The researchers at ITRI say that the bendable, thin plastic product is re-writable up to 260 times and research is going on to make it last even longer.  The developers believe that their new product will immediately replace paper used in the production of items such as advertising banners, ID badges for corporate visitors, parking lot tickets and so on.

The low cost of production and low power consumption are enough to make it popular. And it’s also more environment-friendly than printing on traditional paper. Adopting the technology will definitely save tons of trees, lets just hope it doesn’t use a heap of other rare earth metals.

Check out the video to see the e-Paper in action.

[via ITRI]

The post i2R e-Paper Technology Promises A Greener Future [Video] appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The infographic embedded here comes by way of Geekaphone and it outlines some enviro-minded factoids on the iPhone for you to consider. For example, of the 45kg of CO2 pumped out as a result of the iPhone 4, 57% comes from production and 35% comes from consumer use. The sad thing is that consumers aren’t really doing their part with less than 10% of phones being recycled.

There are over two million cell phones entering landfills each week, since the average life span of a phone is less than 18 months. This results in 65,000 tons of toxic waste (equivalent to three small oil tankers) being dumped at the dump each year.

What about Apple? While the reduced packaging has done some good (14% fuel savings), it’s still scary to think that 30 companies on 3 continents are responsible for the iPhone, including 300,000 workers in China earning less than $10 a day. That opens another can of worms altogether, but it’s still worth knowing as you download another fart app and stream another video on Crackle.

The post Earth Day: Is The Apple iPhone Green? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

When compact fluorescent bulbs first hit the scene, they were a revolution. A bulb that lasted many times as long as the incandescent counterpart and used only a fraction of the power. Well, GE put out an ecomagination challenge to see what they could do next and this idea is easily one of the best.

In the video below, you can see Robert Hand show a prototype of his idea that requires you to just replace the “bulb” part of a compact fluorescent rather than replacing the whole thing. The ballast part can be reused, Hand say it’s really the most expensive part of the package anyhow and easily outlasts the tubular twisty bit containing the chemical gas.

CFLs are supposed to save you money in the long run because they last so much longer and use less energy. They can get even cheaper if you can reuse the ballast part. Pretty interesting stuff, don’t you think?

[via ecomagination]

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There’s a series of notebooks from companies like Asus that make use of bamboo. Apparently, it’s supposed to be a durable and sustainable material that is friendly to the environment since its farming practices are much less disruptive as others. It seems that Macally agrees with the bamboo thing and now they’ve begun to offer bamboo cooling stands for laptops too.

These caught my eye as I meandered around the CES trade show floor in Las Vegas this past week. Normally, when it comes to notebook cooling stands we find them made of a variety of plastics, aluminium, and so on.   I’d almost be inclined to think that the Macally Ecofan and Ecofan Pro cooling stands could be potential fire hazards. But if bamboo is similar to other woods in respects to the point in which it will simply ignite and combust, 572 degrees Fahre­nheit (300 C) is a long ways away from torching your lap.  I’d be more worried about that potentially explosive knock-off battery.  In any case, its unknown if it dissipates heat as well as aluminium does, so we’ll just have to get our hands on one and find out.

Both the Macally Ecofan and Ecofan Pro are equipped with a pair of 2.5-inch fans spinning along at 2300rpm. Power comes by way of a standard USB cable connected to your notebook and the cooling stands will hold notebooks up to 17-inches in size. The only difference between the two is that the Ecofan has a fixed height (at a slightly ergonomic angle), while the Ecofan Pro is adjustable in height.

A third and the newest edition to the bamboo family is the EcoPad, much more like an extendable chopping block with ventilation holes and a mouse rest.  This one is fanless and costs about $25 online, while the EcoFan models list for $40.

The post Green notebook cooling stands made with renewable bamboo appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Our rampant consumerism isn’t exactly having a positive effect on poor Mother Nature. We could talk about using biofuels for our cars and solar panels for our homes, but what about something as small as a protective case? Covering this smaller but relatively important realm is Bioserie, with a new line of iPod touch 4G cases made of plant materials.

If you want to go green, this is probably the way to go. The bioserie iPod touch 4G case is meant to provide an “environmentally friendly option for Apple device owners.” You still get complete protection against a random bump or bruise, but you have the piece of mind that your protective case is made of a “unique blend of bioplastics which are all derived from plants and annually renewable resources.” This is not unlike the recent push toward bamboo-based products.

On the manufacturing front, bioserie is working to keep its impact as minimal as possible too, “emitting considerably less greenhouse gas” than the regular process. This isn’t the first plant-based cover from bioserie either, as they already have cases for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3G/3GS, iPod touch 2G/3G, and iPod nano.

You have a choice of black, white, sky blue and pink; sadly no green for this model. The bioserie plant-based iPod touch 4G case retails for $34.95 and comes with free international shipping from Hong Kong.

[bioserie]

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