Geek Mondays: Unlimited Solar Power

Why MIT geeks are throwing the best dinner party ever.

After the extremely popular Blue Planet Run post last Friday, we’re still on a sustainable solutions high. And the good guys at MIT are right there with us. In a breakthrough discovery last week, they’ve found a new way of storing energy from sunlight that generates practically unlimited solar power.

Resembling plant photosynthesis, the process basically splits water into hydrogen and oxygen gases using sunlight. MIT chem professor Daniel Nocera explains. (Come on, stick with the man — he’s no stand-up comedian but let’s see Jerry Seinfeld save the world from the energy apocalypse.)

Why is this huge? Because, so far, the one thing keeping solar power from reaching critical mass has been the struggle to store energy efficiently when the sun doesn’t shine. This new method — both cheap and easy to implement — will eventually allow homes to harness daytime solar energy and store it for electricity at night.

So who’s coming to our first solar-powered dinner party? Say, November 14, 2010? Don’t be late.

>>> via CleanTechnica

Nomadic Living 2.0

What European gypsies have to teach us about sustainability and the housing market.

Real estate crunch got you in the dumps? Too broke for a boat and too proud for a trailer? Fear not, the Danish have your back.

Copenhagen-based artist and activist collective N55 just released the first prototype of WALKING HOUSE, a 10-foot-high pod home that actually walks at a strolling pace.

The solar- and wind-powered pod includes a fully-functional kitchen, toilet, living room, bed, and wood stove. An on-board mainframe computer controls the six giant legs.

Developed in collaboration with MIT, the prototype cost nearly $50,000 to make, but the team believes that as design and the production process get streamlined for larger quantities, cost will go down significantly.

Inspired by the area’s large population of travelers, the WALKING HOUSE offers a unique hybrid of traditional nomadic culture and modern design solutions.

Today, the pod is taking its inaugural stroll around rural Cambridgeshire at the Wysing Arts Centre in Bourn.

We love the nomadic-living-gone-high-tech appeal of the house and its decidedly sustainable twist. The inside looks absolutely cozy — not in that Craigslist-euphemism-for-shoebox-dump kind of way. Makes us wanna curl up inside with Kings of Convenience playing oh-so-lazily in the background.

via Slashdot

RFID vs. Honor

What third world children have to do with NYC commuting and why RFID beats honor systems every time.

YOU BE CYCLIST

Remember when the One Laptop Per Child program first made waves and everyone thought a $100 laptop for the third world was anywhere from laughable to plain undoable? Well, two years later OLPC has had the last laugh with its world-changing success, and the design team behind it is after a brand new revolutionary initiative.

The guys at Continuum have just concepted Ubicycle: a high-tech yet brilliantly user-friendly public bike-share system. It’s simple: you “rent” a bike using the same funds-loaded Smart card you use on trains and buses. It’s RFID-enabled, so whenever you use it to unlock a bike from the rack, the system knows who’s taking the goodie. (Sure beats a may-or-may-not-honor honor system.)

And speaking of the rack, each nifty modular station holds 2 bikes and the racks can be stacked horizontally. Seven of them (that’s 14 bikes for the mathematically- challenged) take as much space as a single parked car. The lock mechanisms are powered by the solar panels coating the kiosks for the ultimate cherry on top.

(Meanwhile, Philly is still trying to get the very, very 1.0 Philly BikeShare program off the ground. Hey, at least we’re trying.)

via PSFK