Ideas out loud

Those of us that have become accustomed to seeing some neat mobile phone gadgets for the festival season won't be disappointed as this year Orange, in partnership with Gotwind, have created a eco-powered gumboots / wellies.

These festival goers best friend use the heat generated by your feet to charge your mobile phone, via their unique 'Power Generating Sole'. So now you can party all day / night in your boots, come back to your tent plug in your mobile phone and charge it up. A must have for any festival goers this season!

A cool app for your mobile phone, haven't we heard that before, well this app actually makes it easy to leave messages, based on your location, at a bar, cafe, building or any other random place in your neighborhood. You can also see messages from other people, respond to them or comment on them.

Of course for this app to really get some traction, it needs to have some other peps to engage with. What I really love about BlockChalk is the graphics - simple, clean and beautiful.

So get out there in your hood and start sharing the love, and tell people about it, as with all these social apps the more people that use it the more interesting and engaging it becomes.

What other location based apps would people recommend?

Wetoku is a new play on how you can "Meet-Record-Share" conversations online and then post it to your twitter, facebook or website to share with your customers, fans, followers etc.

Founded by serial entrepreneur David Lee in Seoul, South Korea, Wetoku is getting some great press and street cred by being nominated in events such as Mashable's Open Web Awards as well as reviews by Geeks On A Plane, Read/Write Web and Asia 2.0.

Wetoku aims to lower the barriers to users having two way conversations / interviews online. Meaning that anyone with a webcam can chat to another and have it broadcasted in realtime and recorded for embedding later to a blog. Nice simple, no downloads necessary video tool.

As TCH puts it - "Genius idea". Nuff said.

With biking becoming an ever popular mode of transportation around the world, rider safety is going to become and increasinly important aspect of your ride to work. Although his bike hair is pretty ordinary, the concept is a good one and makes the decision to take your helmet with you shopping, going to the cafe or school a lot easier when you know that your helmet will be where you left it when you get back.

Here's a minimal mockup of how the iconic classic coke, in a can, could look. Not only does it look awesome, as you can read below, the removal of the color paint in both the production and recycling process reduces the amount of energy needed to create the can.

A convex logo substitutes colorfully sprayed can. The naked can helps to reduce air and water pollution which typically occurs during the coloring process. It also reduces the energy and effort to separate the toxic color paint from aluminum during the recycling process. Huge amounts of energy and paint required to manufacture the colored cans will be saved. Instead of toxic paint, manufacturers process aluminum with a pressing machine that indicates the brand identity on surface.

Simple and elegant, what other products could we apply a similar process or mindset too, which would create interest while saving our environment?

Apple is about to launch their newest toy, the iPad and after watching the ads on their home page you start to get a glimpse into the far reaching possibilities of these devices. Amazon's Kindle has been the market leader to date on the eReaders but the new iPad takes interacting with content to a whole new level. Not only is the iPad a device that follows Apple's clean lines and aesthetically pleasing design, it also changes the way we interact with their programs that users are familiar with on the Mac OS X i.e. mail, iWork, iLife etc. etc. and they have changed the way users interact with these programs as well, due to the interactive and hands-on nature of the device i.e. sans keyboard and mouse cue gestures.

The real brilliance of the this device, which will be launched in the beginning of April, is that it won't just be for those of us closet geeks and fanboys. The iPad has the potential to reach every corner of society in one of many ways, including many different aspects i.e. reading, learning, communicating, game playing, and many many more which I cannot possibly imagine and will leave up to numerous app developers out there.
This video from Penguin, does however, give us a glimpse into the future of how books will be consumed and how learning is about to change and become much more interactive and engaging. Maybe Apple's iPad won't be the clear winner but combined with the ever growing app store and close tie in with the itunes ecosystem it's going to be terribly hard to knock this iThing off the top post. I for one are looking forward to the fun of playing with it.

What about you...?

Original site senseable.mit.edu

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It seems those creative young minds over at MIT, with a few other partners, have come up with a clever solution to transform your existing street bike into a hybrid bike. This may not be of that great of interest to the already strong bike crowd, but to those that don't like the thought of getting on a bike, pedaling to work and getting there all hot and sweaty without the assistance of their familiar GPS to guide them, well this may be the add-on they've been waiting for.

The Copenhagen Wheel is an add-on for your existing bike, that cleverly encompasses all the components into the hub that can be retrofitted to your bike. Inside the hub comes a 3-speed internal hub gear, batteries, torque sensor, GPRS & sensor kit that monitors CO2, NOx, noise (DB), relative humidity and temperature. All of this linked up, via bluetooth, to your iphone which also doubles as the key to lock / un-lock your bike, change gears, select how much assistance you get from the hub and for viewing real-time information such as traffic as well as km's you accumulate and tracks that you ride, which you can share with your networks.

A great invention that is built upon an existing and tested technology, I really like this for several reasons; One, it links something off-line to the on-line world i.e. real time data, and the ability to share it with social networks. Two, existing bike enthusiasts can adopt this technology without having to purchase a new bike or transportation device. Lastly, it's viral both through the sharing of data through the social networks but also via its visual impact.

I look forward to it's release sometime soon, would love to know when...

Combining both function and eco-friendly design, the Spanish Innovation Lab - Roca, has created a neat L-shaped sink and toilet combo. By combining the two elements of a bathroom house owners can save a significant 25% of the water that is normally used in the bathroom.

This would be great for some of the older buildings in Europe which have small apartments with smaller bathrooms and with this unit you save some serious space. Only obstacle is the EUR 2,731 price tag that comes with it.

None the less it's a great example of using design to solve everyday problems i.e. space and waste water. Two thumbs up to the Spanish!