We like to boast about how ‘smart’ our mobile devices and computers have become – but why are we still powering them with dumb batteries? Amy Prieto, a chemistry professor at Colorado State University, started a company that is created a three-dimensional battery with a core of copper foam. Although it’s still in the very beginning stages of development, this incredibly smart technology could lead to batteries that contain two times more energy and charge in five minutes flat.

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Post tags: 3D, Amy Prieto, battery, Colorado State University, electric vehicles, lithium ion battery, Prieto Battery Company, Rechargeable Battery, smartphones

As much as we love Smartphones, they are a pretty inefficient technology. We typically focus on charging as the main point of energy consumption, but new research from MIT suggests the real inefficiencies happen far from your outlet. Cellular base stations, the facilities where electricity is turned into radio signals, suck up an astounding $36 billion worth of electrical energy a year. You may think that all that juice helps to make your phone blazing fast, but it doesn’t. According to researchers at MIT much of this is wasted by a single inefficient piece of hardware – and they may have finally cracked the problem with a new design.

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Post tags: "energy efficiency", Energy Consumption, MIT, power amplifier, smartphones, Technology

GreenWave Reality just launched a high-tech WiFi-enabled LED lighting system that allows consumers to easily control and automate lighting through a handheld remote or smartphone. The energy-efficient “Connected Lighting Solution” was just announced at the Hong Kong International Lighting Fair, where it has been heralded as “the next generation in lighting.”

Read the rest of GreenWave Reality Launches WiFi-Enabled LED Light Bulbs That Can be Controlled With a Smartphone

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Post tags: automatic lights, GreenWave Reality, Hong Kong Lighting Fair, LED bulbs, LED lights, motion sensitive lights, smartphones, the Connected Lighting Solution

UK mobile network provider O2 just announced that they will not be releasing a charger with the new HTC smartphone. Why you ask? Well, their research has revealed that the UK “has more than 100m chargers lying in drawers, tangled in cupboards and generally gathering dust. The majority of phones are now upgrades and chargers that use USB cables, meaning the bit of plastic that plugs into the wall can actually be used by pretty much every phone.” By doing this, the company believes they can divert an amount of plastic waste from landfills equivalent to the weight of 1,000 London buses!

Read the rest of O2 to Sell New HTC Smartphone Without Chargers, Cut Four Olympic Swimming Pools Worth of E-Waste

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Post tags: environmental impact, HTC smartphone, landfills, mobile phones, o2, phone charger, recycling, smartphones, universal charger, Waste

Bike sharing programs are great, but pedaling up San Francisco‘s steep hills can be a pain. And car sharing is cool, but finding a parking space in the city can be tough. Enter Scoot Networks, an electric scooter-sharing service that will let you power up those hills and park virtually anywhere without using a drop of gas. The service, which is modeled after car-sharing businesses, launched today in San Francisco with a fleet of 60 vehicles. To use the scooters, users simply plug a smartphone into the dashboard, and a Scoot app on the phone activates the bike.

Read the rest of Scoot Launches Electric Scooter-Sharing Program in San Francisco!

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Post tags: bike sharing, Car Sharing, electric scooters, green transportation, Michael Keating, plug-in scooter, San Francisco, Scoot, Scoot Networks, scooter-sharing service, smartphones

Wanting to make a unique and affordable iPhone skin, San Diego-based designer Robert Magno decided to work with what he already had: boxes. “I’ve been noticing that there are a lot of products that have packaging with great graphics,” Magno writes on his Kickstarter page. “This is a way to extend the life of the artwork on those boxes.” Magno hand-cuts the skins from actual boxes and applies a removable adhesive; and he says the skin still leaves plenty of clearance for the camera port and flash. Sure, they may look like ads for Hershey’s and Kellogg’s, but they’ll keep your phone from getting scratched!

+ Magno Designs

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Post tags: cardboard iPhone skin, DIY iPhone skins, green gadgets, handmade iPhone skins, iPhone, iphone case, iPhone skins, recycled boxes, recycled cardboard, Robert Magno, smartphones

OK, early adopters: You want to spring for the latest phone or tablet, but your old one is still in great condition. What to do? Instead of holding onto those old electronics, or trying to pawn them off on friends or family, you can sell them back to an electronics wholesaler for cold, hard cash. With Instant Sale, eBay’s electronics buy-back site, you can unload your unwanted gadgets for fast money, and your old electronics will be resold or recycled. Even really old gadgets that can’t be resold (because they are so old) can be recycled at Ebay’s Instant Sale site, so you know they’re going to a good place (at least a better place than that cardboard box in your closet).

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Post tags: apple, Apple Computers, cell phone, ebay, Ebay Instant Sale, electronics recycling, electronics swap, gadget recycling, instant sale, iPad, ipad wifi 64gb, iPhone, iphone 3g, iphone 4, mac, macbook pro, magic mouse, mobile device, mobile phone, recycling your gadgets, sell your used electronics, smartphones, trade up your electronics, trade your gadgets

Apple CEO Tim Cook is in China this week meeting with Chinese government officials, seeking to clear up trademark and labor issues with the company’s second-biggest market. In recent weeks, Apple has come under fire for harsh working conditions at the infamous Foxconn factory, where most of the company’s iPhones and iPads are produced. Apple might now be considering whether to acquire its own manufacturing or research facilities in the country, according to Bloomberg News.

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Post tags: apple, Apple CEO, china, chinese labor, computers, foxconn, foxconn factory, gadgets, iPad, ipod, labor, labor rights, mac, macbook, smartphones, tim cook