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The Faraday electric bike shows us all how retro the future will be
This ain't no fixie with a minty fresh paint job, this is the Faraday. Built for the Oregon Manifest design competition, ideas factory Ideo teamed up with bike builders Rock Lobster Cycles to produce this retro-technotastic electric bike. Everything futuristic has been hidden inside the frame: those parallel top tubes hold a series of lithium-ion batteries which juice up the front-hub motor -- all controlled from the green box tucked beneath the seat cluster. Those two prongs up front serve as built-in headlights and the base of a modular racking system, letting you swap out various carrying mechanisms like a trunk or child seat with the pop of a bolt. Tragically, the bike is just a concept -- so unless the teams responsible cave into peer pressure and get it into production, you'll have to use old-fashioned leg power to get you over those steep hills. [Image courtesy of Mike Davis] %Gallery-136151%
Tweet-a-watt crowned winner of Greener Gadgets 2009 design competition
Hey New Yorkers, did you get a chance to check out last week's Greener Gadgets conference? If not, you missed out on some killer eco gadgetry and discussion, including a panel on electronics recycling from our own Editor-in-chief, Joshua Topolsky. As the dust settled on the main event, the design competition, Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone's Tweet-a-watt walked away with top honors. The service, which automatically updates Twitter with your power usage, beat out a coin-operated electrical piggy bank dubbed the Power Hog, a decidedly un-electronic indoor drying rack, and a hand-powered portable laundry machine, the Laundry Pod. Congratulations to all who won and participant; hit up the read link for a full list of the finalists.[Via MAKE]
The best of the Greener Gadgets Design Competition, so far
The Greener Gadgets Conference is coming up in a few weeks here, so we thought we'd bring you some highlights of the design competition it's sponsoring. First up, Recompute is a fully sustainable design for a desktop computer -- meaning that it makes use of low-impact manufacturing, uses fully recycled materials, and is easily dismantled at the end of its life for... you guessed it: more recycling. We don't have full specs on this puppy right now, but we know it's got 8 USB ports, and that we're getting one if it ever makes it to production. Also in the running is the RITI eco-friendly printer, which uses coffee and / or tea dregs in place of costly, old, boring and non-eco-friendly ink. The printer is also manually operated, and does not use electricity -- which may not make it the speediest device in the world -- but we don't print that much, anyway. Next up, there's Harddrive -- which is a simple USB flash drive encased in concrete to stave off harmful leaching into landfills once disposed of -- though the concrete obviously makes the drive a bit nastier to haul around town. Finally, the Inlet Outlet is a whole-home concept that combines a standard outlet -- which eats up the juice -- with an inlet right next to it, which returns some electricity to the grid. The design is for adapter kits which could easily be used to green up your home. Votes are being tabulated online for the Greener Gadgets Competition, whose winners will be announced on February 27, 2009, at the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York. Check the gallery for more photos of the submissions.[Via Inhabitat]%Gallery-43721%
