Award-Winning Green Gadgets: Outstanding Design Innovations For Greener Electronics
Greener Gadget Competition aimed at generating outstanding design innovations for greener electronics. The top 50 entries were published online for voting and commenting, and from these the judges picked the Top 10 to be judged live at the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City on February 27th.
Greener Gadgets conference featured key representatives from some of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world, innovators from academic thinktanks, members of startups focused on renewable energy, and some of the leading minds in the word of sustainable design and business.
The designers goal were to explore the concept of “Greener Gadgets.” Designs sought to minimize the environmental impact of consumer electronic devices at any stage in the product lifecycle. Areas of sustainability to consider included energy, materials/lifecycle/recycling, social impact, and educational development. Designers focused on a particular area of human enterprise (learning, playing, communicating, etc.) or a particular context (work, home, school, etc.), a particular material, or a specific device. Entries could also seek to create new paradigms for products and services.
Definition: A gadget , according to Wikipedia, is a small technological object (such as a device or an appliance) that has a particular function, but is often thought of as a novelty. Gadgets are invariably considered to be more unusually or cleverly designed than normal technological objects at the time of their invention.
The 1st place winner: Tweet-a-Watt
This nifty gadget combines energy conservation with the popular social-messaging tool Twitter. Tweet-a-Watt uses a modified Kill a Watt power meter to automatically "tweet" (publish wirelessly) your power usage to your Twitter account. By sharing these numbers on a service like Twitter, users can compete for the lowest electricity usage numbers and also see how they're doing compared with their friends and followers.
The 2nd place winner: Power – Hog
This power-consumption-metering piggy bank is designed to educate children about the energy cost associated with running electronics devices. Plug the tail into the outlet and the device into the snout; feed a coin to meter 30 minutes of use. Kids can use their allowance to turn on the TV or video game by feeding the Power-Hog with loose change. The Power-Hog meters consumption and blinks red when time is running out. It also helps parents meter the amount of time spent watching the tube.
WattBlocks
With a single tap of the foot, WattBlocks easily disconnects devices in the home that are notorious for consuming standby power. Few consumers understand that many of today's electronics consume power while not in use. These energy vampires can account for $100 of a home's yearly power cost. The kit uses several WattBlocks, which are plugged in between wall outlets and vampire devices, and a master step switch that plugs into an outlet near the entry/exit of the home. As the user exits, tapping the step switch sends a signal through the home's power lines, telling all WattBlocks to block power to the vampires.
to be continued
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