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Inhabitat's Week in Green: An impressive mobile home, and more!
Is the age of the flying car upon us? This week a new report revealed that Google co-founder Larry Page has secretly invested over $100 million in two aerial vehicle startups. Meanwhile, four major political parties in Norway have proposed a ban on all gas-powered cars by the year 2025. A team of Swedish students unveiled one of the world's most energy-efficient rail-bound vehicles. A young filmmaker transformed a boring Chevy van into an incredible solar-powered mobile home. And the Coboat is a sun and wind-powered catamaran for co-working freelance nomads.
Mouth-based bling MP3 player puts your tunes on retainer
It's time to give your pockets a rest. Take a cue from Parsons student Aisen Chacin and stick your MP3 player where it belongs: in your mouth. The catchily-named Play-a-Grill combines bone-conducting music playback with a classic bit of bling-based technology. This "attempt to provide an unusual display and interface in comparison to typical audio/visual stimulation and digit based control panel" utilizes an iPod Shuffle knockoff, which sits in the roof of the wearer's mouth for some good, old fashioned tongue control over music playback. At the moment, the player looks to be more art project than consumer product (complete with a Nelly-quoting paper), but perhaps this is the iPod killer everyone's been searching for all along.
Chatter Pillow, a glanceable and cuddly way to stay on IM
Some of the most popular items these days are internet-connected objects that contain glanceable information, such as the status of your inbox, the weather, or stock prices. Well, meet the latest addition to the family: the "Chatter Pillow." Designed by Rebecca Stern, an undergrad at the Parsons School of Design in New York, the Chatter Pillow is a midterm project for her "Making Wireless Toys" class. The pillow basically allows Stern to stay on IM from her bed or her couch, without the burden of a laptop -- one of the pillow's trio of icons will light up when one of three possible messages are received, so long as they're sent only from her boyfriend. If he sends "talk to me," "xo," or "on my way," then the icons (pictured) will glow blue accordingly. Now all we need is the cuddly lovechild of the Chumby and the Chatter Pillow for the ultimate in glanceable wireless cuteness gadgetry, and our geeked-out pad will be complete.[Via MAKE: Blog]
