Solar-powered Ikea lamp

Here's one more gadget that will help you reduce your electricity bill and do your bit for the environment at the same time. The Sunnan desk lamp from Ikea has solar cells which you leave in direct sunlight over the day. A 9- to 12-hour recharging period will yield about 4 hours of light from its LED bulbs for use at night.

Like many other products from Ikea, it has an attractive design and, more importantly, isn't expensive. This one is listed at US$20. Check with your local Ikea store to see if they've already shipped it to your country.

Via bookofjoe

Solar and wind portable charger coming in June

It's all dandy when the sun is blistering down on you and you can store solar energy. But when the blustery weather sets in, you'd want to take advantage of that, too. That's where the Kinesis K3 portable charger comes into the picture.

Notice that seven-bladed fan in the K3? That's going to give you 30 minutes of talktime on your handset or 300 minutes of music listening pleasure on a MP3 player with an hour of wind charging. Same goes for the solar panels. When the 4,000mAh internal lithium-ion cell is fully juiced up, it will have enough stored energy to charge a handset or an MP3 player more than five and 10 times, respectively. The mileage you'll get obviously varies with the devices you are using and, of course, the intensity of that big AC mains in the sky and consistency of the wind speed.

The list of compatible gadgets weren't mentioned in the K3 flyer, although the charger has a compartment for storing multiple adapter tips. A weatherproof chassis and LED power indicators also help if you are outdoors or need to know how much energy you've accumulated on the K3. Expect the portable charger to be available online in June and it'll apparently carry with an estimated price tag of US$100.

Via InventorSpot

D-Link DHP-303: PowerLine adapter goes green

If you want to take your network connection to a far corner of the house where the wireless signal can't reach, the best way to get this done is with a pair of PowerLine adapters. These little devices basically extend the network connection through the electrical wiring of the house and turn any power socket into a network port.

Generally, you need at least two adapters to make a PowerLine connection. Each adapter can be plugged into a wall power socket and each also has a network port. Once plugged in the wall socket, the adapters will have power and will transmit the data signal between the two.

D-Link recently released its next-generation PowerLine HD Network Starter Kit the DHP-303, which comes with a green twist. The kit includes two adapters that are equipped with D-Link Green Technology. This allows them to detect data transmissions to automatically power down when idle.
Read more »

Hitachi's "green" refrigerator turns out blue

Going "green" is a huge movement, with companies around the world releasing products that have less and less of an environmental impact--or, at least, that's what they want us to believe. As consumers' interest in eco-friendly products gets higher, so does the temptation to embellish a product's green credentials.

According to The Mainichi Daily News, Hitachi Appliances, a subsidiary of Hitachi and currently Japan's biggest refrigerator maker, seems to be the first company to have fallen for the temptation to claim a product is green when it isn't.

Of nine refrigerator models the company released between September and November of last year, including the "Eiyo Ikiiki Shinku Chirudo V" and the "Big & Slim 60", six are not eco-friendly at all and the other three are far from the level of eco-friendliness the company advertised them to be.
Read more »

See how GreenPrint can help save paper

GreenPrint World scans print jobs before they hit the page to make them as tree-friendly as possible. It creates a print filter, intercepting your print jobs before they reach the spooler and checking them against a list of preset but adjustable criteria. You can have it grab by the number of lines on a page, for example.

In CNET's First Look video below, we'll show you how the program can help you prevent wasteful print jobs--and how it could be even better.
Read more »

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