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Inhabitat's Week in Green: of space elevators, floating cities and solar sheltered drinking machines
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. This week Inhabitat showcased several incredible examples of futuristic architecture, starting with an epic floating ark that houses a self-sustaining city at sea. We also saw a plan to harness carbon nanotubes to create the world's first space elevator, and we brought you an ingenious solar-powered shelter that harvests and purifies rainwater for drinking. In other news, Asia revved up the world of eco transportation as South Korea unveiled the world's first commercial electric bus, and Beijing launched a plan to cut eliminate gridlock by cutting vehicle registration by 2/3. We also checked in on the electric Bluebird supercar, which is gearing up to break the UK land speed record next year, and we took an in-depth look at the year's best electric vehicles. Finally, welcome to 2011! As the final countdown rang out we took a look at Times Square's dazzling 2011 eco ball, which is studded with 32,256 LEDs. We also looked back on Inhabitat's top green energy, transportation, and tech stories of 2010, and we rounded up the year's best green products and wearable technology concepts that stand to change the way we get dressed for the day. And if you're running errands this week to return any unwanted holiday gifts, check out Amazon's new preemptive return tool - it could save you a trip next year.
Bluebird Pidion BIP-6000 ready to beat Android into you
SDG's Bluebird Pidion line is nothing new -- nor is its ultra-rugged BIP-6000 handheld computer -- but what is new is Android compatibility. Previously equipped with Windows Mobile 6.1, the beastly machine rolls on a Marvell PXA320 at 806MHz with GSM / HSDPA voice and data, a 3 megapixel cam, barcode scanner, 3.5-inch VGA display, full QWERTY keyboard, and -- you guessed it -- mil-spec 810F compliance for resistance to just about any reasonable thing you could throw at it. Needless to say, this isn't the kind of phone you buy for your pre-teen, your grandmother, or yourself for that matter -- but if you've got a fleet of mobile dudes and gals that need to scan stuff, drop their phones without a care in the world, download Market apps on the go, and hate on their Trimble Nomad-toting competition, this could very well be your lucky day. It's on Android 1.5 at the moment, but the company anticipates a "2.x" upgrade (we're guessing this'll be 2.1) either this quarter or next, so start socking away cash -- and dreaming up the most creative way to put that moisture resistance to the test while you're at it.
The bluebird of happiness
Our friends over at the Iconfactory have a devil of a time protecting one of their more popular icons: David Lanham's blue bird that adorns their Twitterrific software. Turns out there are plenty of people that think the icon is free for the taking, and have used it in all kinds of projects and web sites. Of course, this means more work for Ged Maheux, tracking down each person and letting them know that, no, they can't use the icon, because it's for a piece of commercial software. The good news is that there are, however, plenty of design alternatives to the Iconfactory's copyrighted artwork. Lots of friendly, smiling flyers have come out of the woodwork/birdhouse -- and they're free to use for your website or other non-commercial project. Read on for a rhapsody in bluebirds.
Bluebird shows off Pidion BM-350 at CeBIT
Bluebird's one of those manufacturers we don't hear a heck of a lot from, but it warms our heart to hear that they're alive, well, and equipped with fresh wares that were demoed at CeBIT last week. The latest device in its Pidion series is the BM-350, looking a heck of a lot cleaner than the BM-500 we saw at last year's show and reasonably equipped with HSDPA, 1.3 megapixel primary and VGA secondary cams, Bluetooth, WiFi, microSD expansion, the all-too-typical QVGA touchscreen, integrated GPS and FM radio, and a healthy dose of Windows Mobile 6. Unfortunately, the rumored asking price of €500 (about $769) seems way too high for the spec sheet, so it looks Bluebird might just be doomed to anonymity for another year.[Via PHONE Magazine and NaviGadget]
BlueBird's BM-500 Pocket PC debuts at CeBIT
If you're in Germany this week and have a chance to hit the CeBIT show, you may be able to peep the new BlueBird BM-500 WM Smartphone (yes, it's Windows Mobile 5-based). This bar handset -- part of the PIDION line -- features a rather nice 2.8 inch touch-screen, EV-DO data speeds, built-in 802.11b WiFi, Bluetooth, the now-standard 1.3 megapixel cam and the less-often used miniSD card slot. Changes we'd make? Get microSD in there and dump the miniSD, upgrade that cam to 2 megapixels and get WM6 in there. Seriously -- WM5? The older BM-200 and BM-300 had this way back when. Come on now; WM5 is so January 2007.[Via Wired.com]
Bluebird busting out its BM300 T-DMB PDA in November
If you don't mind not having a phone mixed up in your PDA device, you couldn't do much better than Bluebird's upcoming BM300 for a Windows Mobile 5.0 unit. Not only does the handheld pack in a 2.8-inch QVGA display, T-DMB, a 520MHz Intel PXA270 CPU, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, an SD slot and 512MB of internal memory, but it does it all at a mere 0.5-inches thick. Bluebird even packed in stereo speakers, just because it could. Unfortunately, still no word on price for this thing, but if this isn't enough to inspire immigration to Korea, we don't know what is.
BlueBird's BM-300 Pocket PC does DMB too
It takes a pretty special phone-less PDA to pique our interest these days, and even though Korean manufacturer BlueBird's new Pidion BM-300 doesn't really push the envelope in areas like processor speed or screen resolution, the fact that they threw a DMB tuner into the mix puts this model in some pretty distinguished company. Besides the PM80 from LG, in fact, we're hard-pressed to think of another palmtop that sports a built-in digital TV receiver -- which is probably because there's little demand for this feature anywhere outside of Korea for now. Specs-wise, the WiFi- and Bluetooth-equipped BM-300 definitely comes out on top, as its 512MHz Bulverde CPU, 64MB/128MB RAM/ROM configuration and Windows Mobile 5.0 OS are all superior to what the LG model offers, though the two do share the same unfortunate 320 x 240 resolution. South Korean TV fanatics can expect these to hit stores sometime in October -- from the look of things, they need some time to polish up that design a little -- for a price that's yet to be announced.[Via Digital-Lifestyles]
