Have plenty of those plastic water bottles lying around your home, and have no idea on what to do with them? Well here’s a novel one – the Re-Juicer that uses the bottoms of old plastic water bottles to function as a juicer just in case you want to have a glass of freshly pressed orange juice at that moment. Not only is it lightweight, it is a snap to clean as well, and you would have done your part in using the same water bottle more than just once before discarding it away to our landfills. The Re-Juicer costs $6.50 a pop.

This Dustbot robot is the type of concept technology that I live to report on. European scientists have come up with a new way of removing trash in narrow streets with these wheeled guys. Clearly, Disney-Pixar was the inspiration as the Dustbot is essentially a WALL-E without the ecological apocalypse.

This new garbage collection process would start when a consumer with a bag full of trash gives the Dustbot sanitation organization a call or sends a text message. The automated system then sends the nearest Dustbot right to the user’s door, navigated via GPS.

From there, the consumer selects the type of trash he or she is disposing on the touchscreen, and put it in the drawer/compressor that comes from the Dustbot itself. I can only presume that the Dustbot goes somewhere and dumps the trash in an eco-friendly spot after that.

You may notice that the Dustbot is precariously balanced, like a Segway. So what happens when you call up a Dustbot, drop in your garbage, and then it tips over? Talk about awkward.

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It’s not uncommon to find a garden with a few tulips planted here and there.  It is a little odd to find them shining brightly though.  Although a normal tulip does need sunlight, this particular type runs purely off of the sun.  This doesn’t take any pesky tending or watering.  Instead just sit it out in the sun and it will shine brightly as soon as the sun goes down.

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With the many e-book readers that flood the market today, it isn’t hard to believe that we will be a paperless society in the next few decades. Pretty soon, the only paper we will be using regularly is toilet paper.

So I guess it is no surprise that Japanese novelist Koji Suzuki has chosen to print his novel on toilet paper. Actually, I’m not certain whether Mr. Suzuki made the choice, or if the publicity department at his publishing house was really itching for a new marketing idea.

I honestly don’t think that Koji Suzuki needs any fancy gimmick to sell his works. If you never heard of this author, then you might have heard of a 2002 horror movie called The Ring. Yes, he wrote the book that the Gore Verbinski movie is based on. By the way, that movie was a remake of a Japanese movie Ringu.

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Now unlike those other Transformer USB drives, this is a real transforming robot and it’s even eco-friendly.  It can change into a total of 6 different robots, giving you plenty of ways to keep yourself entertained.  It’s a great and pretty much pointless way to enjoy solar power.  Not all solar power really needs to have a point though and this would also be a fun thing to enjoy with your children.

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I used to have a rubber raft that required a foot pump to inflate. It took a lot of foot motion to get that raft inflated, and I never really thought about using that energy to power a mobile device.

It would appear that the UK cellular company Orange has figured out how to channel the power of a good idea. In fact, this device can “generate enough energy to power five minutes of call time in the time it takes to inflate a pillow”.

One can only assume that the pillow is a regular sized pillow, but I wish they would have used a measurement that would have used the number of actual pumps. As I recall, it took about a half-hour of foot pumps to fully inflate my two-man raft, so who knows how long it would take for that precious 5 minutes of talk time.

The press release says that it is “no bigger than a packet of Wet Wipes” for a size comparison. Clearly, this Orange Power Pump must be targeted for parents, who know what it is like to travel with Wet Wipes. Believe me, I know this. For those who don’t know, the actual measurements are 154mm x 129mm x 47mm. Now those are some precise stats.

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I truly hate lanterns and for one simple reason.  They take about six different D batteries to stay powered.  Who honestly keeps D batteries around?  I don’t think I even own any gadgets anymore that require that particular type of batteries.  Well if you really don’t want to have to stock pile batteries, this small lantern uses other forms of power to make sure that your activities stay well lit.

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Electric vehicles will no doubt be more and more commonplace in the future, and you know what this means? More and more gas stations would have to learn to co-exist with these types of vehicles, resulting in each pump offering both electric charging as well as regular fuel. I do think that this isn’t such a good idea after all, since a slight spark in an electrical charging system could result in all that high octane fuel catching fire, blowing up in some Hollywood-style explosion. Well, that could just be my imagination getting the better of me, but what we have here is the first billing system in the world for electric vehicle charging posts.

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