ecofriendly

I assume most people who are reading this watched the big game on Sunday, right? Then you probably saw the cute commercial during the second half that depicted "The Green Police" cracking down on people for using environmentally unsound products. But apparently the eco-cops approve of the 2010 Audi A3 TDI Diesel--after all, it was named Green Car of the Year by Green Car Journal. Earlier this week we got a chance to get the low down on what the A3 TDI clean diesel hybrid is all about. But we've yet to see what it's like … Read more

A 60 second commercial during the big game on Sunday made a name for what has been called the "2010 Green Car of the Year," the Audi A3 TDI, which is a "clean diesel" hybrid car that plans to take on the Stateside market as well as the European market. Yesterday, the editor of Green Car Journal gave us his reasons as to why the A3 TDI was worthy of its eco-friendly car champion status, I'm sure that many of you would like to know a little more about this hot topic car, and therefore … Read more

Six months ago, I had an exclusive First Look at Marvell's prototype plug-in computer, the SheevaPlug. Ever since, dozens of companies have contacted me about their applications. Most recently, CNET reviewed the Pogoplug from Cloud Engines.

That said, it didn't surprise me when Marvell announced Tuesday that 10,000 SheevaPlug units featuring Marvell CPU technology have shipped.

To celebrate this milestone, Marvell also announced Tuesday the launch of its worldwide Plug Computer developer competition, called "Free Your Imagination," to award the most innovative Plug Computing concept submitted.

You can participate or find out more about this … Read more

The greening of homes and gadgets is a growing consumer trend, and many exhibitors will debut their eco-friendly products at CES 2010. Last week, we highlighted the Electronic Houskeeper and the PICOwatt, two devices that monitor in-home energy use. Today allows us to highlight the Surge, an iPhone and iPod Touch case with solar panels.

Solar chargers like Solio are chunky and need to be carried around. But the Surge solar case is sleek, ergonomic, and certified by Apple. Two hours of sun exposure power 30-60 minutes of talk time. The Surge features an LED battery-level indicator.

The charger is … Read more

NEW YORK--Green is the new black in wireless as companies like Sprint Nextel and Samsung announce new products and programs geared toward environmental sustainability.

At a press event Thursday at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum here, the companies announced a new eco-friendly device called the Reclaim and an overall strategy to green the wireless market.

The news comes as consumers are increasingly buying products and services based on environmental sustainability. From energy-saving light bulbs to hybrid cars and now environmentally-friendly cell phones, green is all the rage.

For Sprint, which has been plagued by a poor customer service reputation for … Read more

Earth Day may or may not appeal to your eco-conscience, but keeping the reins steady on your computer's carbon footprint and energy consumption makes good technological and financial sense. Reducing your energy output can prolong the life of your hardware--especially a laptop or Netbook--and can help save cash, which we all know is the 'greenest' motivation around.

This collection of environmentally friendly software lassos together these apps, plus a few others to help understand and appreciate our planet's cities, flora, and outer space neighbors.

ENERGY-SAVERS

Edison

Edison for XP and Windows Vista is the newest one-stop app for monitoring how much energy and money you save when you tighten up your computer's sleep and shutdown schedules. A slider lets you decide after how many minutes you want to shut down your computer's display and hard drive during the peak work day. You can program differing criteria for off hours. Manual customization is also possible if you need to ease into greener computing.… Read more

So what kind of car are you going to get next? Perhaps, I might tempt your credulity by asking you to consider a new eco-car called the LEKO.

A Toyota? No, an IKEA.

A strange Web site has appeared, roulez-leko.com, on which a very relaxed, modern, eco-friendly chap, allegedly the great car designer Christophe Grozs, stands next to an apparent car draped with the word LEKO and the tagline "la voiture selon IKEA."

Yes, the car according to IKEA.

The LEKO (L'eco, get it?), allegedly has the backing of the World Wildlife Fund in France. Which might mean the fund has put money into the creation or that the car will have plastic panda-skin seats.

It also will save you untold (because unspecified) amounts of money on your expenditure. And it is humongously eco-friendly.

This is an ad, right?

If IKEA made a car, the doors might not fit quite perfectly into the body. Then you'd really have to work hard to use those tiny screwdrivers to make sure the engine didn't wobble. And just imagine the number of screws it would take to put in the cup holder.

There's the name too. Real IKEA product names never make sense. They always seem to resemble a fair to middling Scrabble hand--for example, KLIPPAN or LYCKSELE. LEKO is far too meaningful.… Read more

Sure, PMA was lots of fun, but there was plenty of other stuff going on here at Crave this week. Here's some of the best and some of the worst.

• We took a look at the new 24-inch iMacs from Apple--and liked what we saw.

• We brought you news of "trashy" lingerie made from recycled materials. We won't tell if you click.

• Strangely, it seems Amazon wants to help the iPhone be the Kindle killer with its own Kindle app. It works, but there's some strangeness.

• We can rebuild him: Meet the quasi-bionic eye camera. … Read more

Dell finally throws its hat into the whole green computer monitor trend, and of course by green I mean eco-friendly.

Thursday, Dell announced its brand new, aptly named G series of displays, which includes the 22-inch G2210 and the 24-inch G2410. Each monitor includes light-emitting diode (LED) backlighting and is made from recycled material.

Each display has a purported contrast ratio of 1000:1. Now, Dell states that each display achieves a significantly higher dynamic contrast ratio, but If you know how vendors determine dynamic contrast ratio numbers, then you know how meaningless they can be. So I won't … Read more