By Evan Ackerman

Over 3 billion people use solid fuel (like wood) for cooking. This is not ideal, since the toxic smoke from indoor cooking fires kills 1.6 million people per year while wafting up into the atmosphere where it does all kinds of other bad stuff (in total, it’s about 50% of the nastiness of CO2 when it comes to climate change).

What do you care about all this? You don’t! What you do care about (maybe) is sweet camping gear. The BioLite stove is portable, efficient, and powerful. It burns pretty much anything you care to toss into it, uses only half as much fuel as a regular fire, and boils water significantly faster than a conventional petroleum fuel camp stove. The reason that we’re posting about it, though, is that what makes the stove perform so well is an attached thermoelectric generator. The generator uses heat from the fire to power a small fan that improves combustion efficiency by blowing air back into the stove, and there’s enough energy left over (1-2 watts) to charge portable electronics through a USB port.

The BioLite camp stove is a bit bulkier than some other camp stoves and weighs a pound and a half, but you don’t have to carry fuel, and unless you’re camping in the arctic, you probably won’t run out of stuff to burn. It should be available sometime this year for around $80.

Incidentally, the BioLite stove also reduces smoke emissions by 95%, which saves lives and the environment. But, you know, whatever… (There’s a larger version for the developing world for $50).

[ BioLite ]

By Evan Ackerman

You don’t have to be a hypochondriac to get freaked out by the amount of nastiness that’s probably living on and around your computer keyboard. And not just living, but also eating, pooping, dying, and having lots and lots of unprotected sex. Ick. Traditional keyboards are full of all kinds of nooks and crannies that are to bacteria what the back of a Volvo is to high school kids, and just like with high school kids, you can only eradicate about 5% of them with a disinfecting cloth.

The Cleankeys keyboard eliminates all of the hiding spots that you’d find on a keyboard with, you know, keys, by being completely 100% touch sensitive. This means that if you wipe the keyboard down with a disinfecting cloth you get rid of 99% of the nastiness in one fell swoop. Since the average keyboard has 3,295 germs per square inch, that leaves a mere 33 germs per square inch to deal with on the Cleankeys keyboard. Incidentally, the average toilet seat has about 49 germs per square inch. Cleankeys: it’s cleaner than your toilet!

Actually using the Cleankeys keyboard would take some getting used to, since there’s no feedback when you push a key. Cleankeys says that it’s about 30% slower than typing on a standard keyboard, but “that time is typically made up many times in the time saved cleaning.” Mmmhmm. They keyboard is entirely washable (you can stick it under running water), includes an integrated trackpad, and is available with a plastic or glass top for $400 and $450 respectively.

[ CleanKeys ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Article courtesy of John Beck, from The Processor.

Have you ever wished your phone was a little more environmentally friendly? I haven’t because I’m a thoughtless oaf, but for tech-savvy eco warriors who have, Samsung has launched the Blue Earth handset.

The touch screen eco-phone is made from material extracted from water bottles, and is free from nastiness like bromine-based flame retardants, PVC and phthalate esters. It also sports a built in solar panel to take advantage of what Samsung helpfully points out, is one of the most eco-friendly energy sources.

The Blue Earth ships with a “unique user interface designed to draw attention to preserving our fragile environment.” Less impressive than it sounds, this basically amounts to the option of switching to energy efficient settings for screen brightness, backlight duration and Bluetooth at the touch of a button. For the environmentally conscious app-addict, there’s even a built in pedometer, which allows users to smugly calculate the number of trees they’ve saved from an untimely death by walking instead of driving.

The green theme extends to the packaging, which is easy to recycle and printed with tasty soy ink. It is also adorned with what Samsung describes as “a simple DIY idea” and I’d describe as “clutching at straws” – reusing the box as a photo frame or a pencil holder.

Of course all this of this is for naught if the phone is horrible to use, something which no one seems to be in a position to confirm or deny at the moment. Specs look fairly average (3 inch capacitive screen, up to 16GB of external memory, 3.2 Megapixel camera), and given that its eco-friendly credentials will likely add a premium, it may struggle to find customers away from dedicated environmentalists.

The Blue Earth is set to launch in Sweden this month followed by rollout across other European and Asian countries.

[ Press Release ]

Don’t expect every country in Europe to follow France in implementing a “three strikes” anti-piracy laws. A report called Digital Britain, which assess the UK’s preparedness to enter the digital era, will be published next week, and inside are methods that the UK could use to combat Internet piracy. One such method: slowing down the Internet connection of file-sharers so as to prevent them from effectively downloading illegal content. (Though, if my UK acquaintances are telling the truth, broadband in the UK is garbage to begin with. It’d be like telling a slug to slow down.)

Slowing people down is one option, rather than just cutting people off from the Internet altogether, which is something the EU doesn’t support. The Government there, now less a few Blairites, sees Internet access as being as important as something like running water.

Also in the report: a demand that ISPs cooperate when copyright infringement is found. You know, sending letters to customers saying, “Yeah, we found out that you were downloading Premier League games, and now the FA and Sky Sports are breathing down our necks. Knock it off.”

Of course, that’ll open up ISPs to all sorts of nastiness. “If they can catch people downloading episodes of “Lost,” why can’t they spot people who are looking at terrorism sites, teasing Gordon Brown, etc.?”

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