ECOwhisper Wind Turbine

The ECOwhisper is a newly designed wind turbine that promises to be much quieter than the current three blade turbines. Renewable Energy Solutions Australia Holdings (RESA) who developed this product claim that it is not only silent, it also produces 30% more power from common wind speeds. So basically they have made an ecological product even more ecological – excellent!

OLPC XO-3

The OLPC (one laptop per child) initiative originally started by Nick Negroponte of the MIT Media-Lab has just presented the follow up to their 100$ laptop at the CES in Las Vegas. By offering children in third world countries modern information tools in a rugged and energy-efficient design, the initiative is hoping to close the gap between the third and the first world. At CES they presented the design for a small tablet-computer that can be charged with a solar panel or by a hand operated crank.

Dirk Vander Kooij's Endless Saloon Table and Rocking Chair

This endless furniture by Dirk Vander Kooij is made from molten pieces of recycled fridges. A robot squeezes out layer upon layer of the paste to form these amazing continuous shapes.

anaesthetic Totem

Australian design-studio anaesthetic has created these fun stools. At first sight they are just cubes, but when they are stacked they form interesting totems, hence their name. Another simple, yet clever product. Available in four colours here.

Xperia NFC Tags

Here's a clever new idea from Sony. NFC tags. NFC stands for near field communication and is a reasonably new standard that is creeping into the next generation of smartphones.

These NFC enabled tags that Sony expects to be selling from this spring will enable you to trigger functions in your phone, just by holding it close to the tag. There's not much point in me loosing too many words about this, when the video does a far better job at explaining how this works.

UNICEF Brick by Psychic Factory

A clever idea for disaster relief by design consultancy Psychic Factory.

Food and water can be donated in easily transported bricks. Once their content of food and water has been consumed, the UNICEF Brick can be filled with sand or earth and used as building blocks for shelters. I'd be interested to see if this ever makes it into reality.

Robin Backgrounds for Desktops, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3

Desktop 2560 x 1440 px

Background for iPhone 4

Background for iPhone 3