Archive: Technology

Taking the piss out of hydrogen? Not any more

Pee power could fuel hydrogen cars | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

There’s a lot of smart development, design and thinking happening on hydrogen, and the role that it has an energy storage medium for a carbon future. The neat thing about unhooking hydrogen from urine is that the hydrogen isn’t stuck as tightly in ammonia molecules as it is in water.

Have a look at Hugo Spowers’ www.riversimple.com hydrogen powered car to see what the solution might look like.

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Wednesday, 9th March, 2011

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Changing CO2 emissions: China speeds ahead of the rest

World carbon dioxide emissions data by country: China speeds ahead of the rest | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

With less and less manufacturing industry based in the old ‘developed’ countries, and their economies still smarting from the impact of a tough recession and stuttering recovery, it’s no great surprise that CO2 emissions in Europe and North America have dropped.

The speed of growth of China’s economy, with it’s associate environmental and climate impact, to soon be followed by Brazil, India and a slowly growing African economy, is the one to watch.

China not only leads in CO2 growth, but manufacture of renewable technologies. The dragon has awoken and is ready to fly. With the right support and leadership, and a greater transparency of innovation from businesses already in  the know, its colour could become green as well as gold.

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Monday, 31st January, 2011

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Living better, with less, that lasts longer

Living better, with less, that lasts longer.

Sorry no sale. Have a look around you, now. Be thinking about this question: “how many of the things around you were designed to last a lifetime, and at the end of that life, it’s or yours, could be recycles into something useful.

In my office in St Davids, I see a Pelicase, a metal filing cabinet, an aluminium Lamy pen and the orangebox Ara chair that I’m sitting on. Of the thousand things in my office, a handful are made for life. Time to change.

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Friday, 21st January, 2011

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Simple as this.

To make something great doesn’t always need new technology.

Sometimes it is just a matter of using old technology well.

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Wednesday, 19th January, 2011

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The Sahara Forest Project – dreaming to reality

Incredible Sahara Forest Project Moves From Concept To Reality With Major Development Deal : TreeHugger.

Biomimicry specialist, architect and designer Michael Pawyln wove a story of magic possibilities that he shared with the Do Lectures in 2009.

One of those ideas, the Sahara Forest Project, has moved a big step closer to the production of fresh water that’s been distilled from the sea by sunlight and gravity – and then used for algae, irrigation and drinking water

Optimism is invisible

The things we can’t see, they can define us every bit as much as the things we can see.

No one could see the internet’s potential.

The problem was you couldn’t pick it up with your hands.

You couldn’t wear it. Eat it. Or smell it.

To many, it was emperors new clothes.

The Naysayers had their day. And we had to listen to them.

But now they are mostly quiet.

Because everyone from a farmer in a field in India optimizing his yield to the kids doing their homework in the kitchen have been touched by this thing we can’t see.

Here’s to the invisible.

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Saturday, 1st January, 2011

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Build it and they will come

Top 20 Countries viewing The Do lectures since Sept 16th 2010

  1. USA
  2. UK
  3. Canada
  4. Germany
  5. Australia
  6. Netherlands
  7. India
  8. Spain
  9. France
  10. Sweden
  11. Taiwan
  12. Ireland
  13. Denmark
  14. Japan
  15. New Zealand
  16. Norway
  17. Romania
  18. Italy
  19. China
  20. Brazil

At the bottom of our garden, there is a shed. And it’s leading the way in a new way of learning: It’s online. It’s digital. And it’s going to change things.

The talks have been watched in 2663 cities and 172 countries.

Wales can be proud of this shed. This shed is global.

And it’s going to to be one of the biggest classrooms in the World.

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Wednesday, 15th December, 2010

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Pummelvision

“Make your life flash before your eyes using photos from Facebook, Flickr, or Tumblr”

Pummelvision is a great new tool made by Jake Lodwick. Input your photos from your service of choice and it creates and uploads a video to your youtube/vimeo.

Simple and very pleasing to watch. Though I’m sure quite a bit of work went it to creating this, the speed at which the process occurs is quite remarkable.

The above example contains photos by Justin Ouellette.

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Monday, 13th December, 2010

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Do not print this

Do not print this.

(Actually, it won’t let you.)

Granted. Pdf’s are brilliant.

But we print them out because they make it so easy to print files out.

The truth is we don’t read most of what we print out.

The PDF below works by making it impossible for you to print from it.

That too is brilliant.

Because it saves trees.

Which is really brilliant.

Because trees are really really really brilliant.

Ok, enough brilliant’s and really’s for one day.

Blurb below.

Save as .wwf is a small, but smart and powerful idea that aims to reduce the amount of paper printed unnecessarily. The wwf file is a hacked pdf file that can’t be printed. That simple twist will make you think the necessity of a physical copy as opposed to a digital one, the other good thing is that you can also decide if the document you’re sending needs to be printed. This creates a chain reaction affecting everyone who receives your document. At the moment it’s pretty small, in its early stages (the official launch was yesterday). You still need to get a plug-in to read and save the format, but the possibilities are massive as soon as a big company like Adobe embraces the idea.

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Thursday, 2nd December, 2010

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Always be shipping. Slowly

Russell Davies is a thinker.

He sees things before others do.

He has began to put that skill to use.

He has started to make things.

And, I think he quite likes it.

Last year, it was The Newspaper Club. (which is doing v.well)

And now, there is Dextr.

It takes your tweets. One at a time. And shows you them as big as the screen allows.

It took 2 and half years.

He’s not fast.

But he is good.

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Thursday, 11th November, 2010

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