In the end of November, some cities in California made an effort to become the capitol of “electric vehicles”. According to the inhabitat blog, these cities have built a plan for “buiying fully electric vehicles for all government transportation to expediting the approval of charging outlets throught the bay area”. As electric vehicles have been on people’s minds for a long time now, and the creation has been in the news for awhile, I found it awesome to read of actual places taking the next step. If this can continue in other cities, someday we wont need gas station, right?!... can you imagine?

Andrew Stordy, an industrial design student, with a portfolio on Coroflot, has become heavily involved in an awesome project called the “Malaria Must Go” project. It is a project that has been working towards ways of repelling mosquitos and such in countries where malaria is a highly present force.On Core77 recently, one of his designs was posted. He created a charcoal-powered mosquito killer. It is a neat and insanely helpful design that is working towards a good cause.

I saw this post recently of a fridge design. The post was on treehugger.com, a site that reviews many, quite obviously, environmentally friendly designs. They say that “the small fridge” will be seen more and more. It is a design for a refridgerator that is taller and thinner, creating more space. On the outside of it, there is a spout for water, such as many fridges have now, hooked up to the tap. The catch about this fridge is that it saves a much larger amount of energy, “20% more efficient than the standard offerings”. Rock on.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/12/the-future-of-fridges.php

A 3-in-1 tripod flashlight. I want one! I am one of those people who still goes camping with my old coleman lantern, where you have to strike a match and light the little bags inside, being careful not to put it too close to the firepit. This flashlight can be used as one flashlight, or divided into a three way light source. I think this is a clever idea, and one that would be extremely helpful. A good design concept.
http://www.gadgetgrid.com/2008/12/09/3-in-1-tripod-led-flashlight/

How items are being shipped out has become more and more of a prevelant issue as designers are trying to help the environment, as well as just be more efficient in the grand scheme of things. Apparantely Hp has a concept for shipping laptops in laptop bags, instead of boxes. It just makes more sense when you think about it. Anyway, the design company Ciclus, has created a packaging unit for wine. It is shipped in these wooden boxes that can hold the wine safely and then be turned into a lamp once the wine is taken out. I think this is a neat way to integrate a design concept into an already made product. I also think that it is a neat idea in terms of adding more to packaging, or thinking about it in a new way.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/12/ciclus-sustainable-design.php

Seth Godin recently posted about Google, and a new way to interact with things by voting up and down and such. He mentioned how this could be somewhat um… unrealistic as companies try and boost their own ratings and as there are ways to work around the search counts. Somehow, I find it all crazy. When it’s up to the consumer, soley, I don’t think things always work out the way they are planned. Microsoft came out with a new search engine in the last year called clublive. I only know about it because they have an interactive gaming platform. You play small games, using the search engine for every clue, and earn points towards prizes. To me, this seems like bribery, and if they are doing it… then is every search engine? What’s the point of viewings or search counts then?

“Now, of course, the new mail is probably a longer list than the mail you just finished processing.The internet isn't full, but we are.”Seth Godin wrote a post this past month about our attention spans, essentially. It used to be that one person could be up on all the news. While news has always been prevelant, the greater accessibility to any news every created, starts to take its toll. While it is nice to have the world at our fingertips, each person is now forced to become more selective about what they know, choose to know, choose to follow up on, etc. I just found this to be an interesting thought and take on what the growing technology means in our lives… (but of course it goes without saying that expanding technology aids in all that we do in our daily lives as well).