GITweekly

Buy Zee Phone

Oh God, here he goes again. Ranting. Exclaiming. Off on a tirade of expletive filled, self-referential, self-important drivel. But really all I want to do is stop the little voice gnawing away in my head. “Get a new mobile, get the latest, the greatest, your phone is old, outdated. Think of all of the ace things you’ll be able to do with your new one”.

“Stop it!”

You know we all do it. Suckered by the shininess, the speed, the touchy feely. This upgrading of mobile phones has become such a part of our lives. The thing I’d love to know is why? Read the rest of this entry →

Twitter is a remarkable beastie. The things you read. One such post from Mobile Muster, retweeted by the excellent* My Green Australia, said that you should drop your old phone into water before you send them the phone. This is because of the personal information that was still potentially stored on the phone. Will this work? Probably not is the answer.

How do I know this?

I’ve done it. By mistake. And don’t you, dear reader, pretend that you haven’t either!

The receptacle of choice in most cases is the toilet. Full of water and specially designed to accept all manner of foreign objects.

So what do we recommend and what can you do to salvage an accidentally flushed phone?

Here are our top tips:

• To potentially save a toilet dunked phone – remove all covers and disconnect the battery (iPhone users may have trouble). Go and rinse it under some fresh running water. After this you should pop it onto a heater vent overnight. It might just work.
• To get rid of your personal info, for most phones, you should Google – restore factory settings resetting – include your model number in the search. Once you follow the instructions you should start the phone up and try to access contacts and dialled numbers. Chances are that this has worked and you can save recyclers the delights of the moldy phone. Moisture and years of ear grease make for a yummy cocktail.
• If you are going to dunk the phone it probably should be in some sort of salty solution. Salt conducts electricity and will make a mess of a circuit-board’s ability to work. I’m just not sure of the complications at the recycling end. This is another reason you rinse the phone that’s been flushed. Urine** is full of salty bits.

Part fish and chip shop arcade machine - all green tech.

I have well and truly become a Kickstarter.com addict. What with all of those clever types creating and throwing those ideas out into the wilderness hoping for a bite.
Enter Solar Vox. The green brain-child of designer Eric Strebel and electro-guru Jim Nogarian.

Looking like a midget 80′s fish and chip shop arcade machine and part space-ship, the Solar Vox uses angled design and clever electronics to power-up on-board rechargeable batteries via solar panel or USB, from which you can then charge your thirsty iDevices and other USB powered tech.

Although it’s hardly revolutionary – it’s fantastically evolutionary. We like.

If you want one – support them at the Kickstarter.com website. The project funding from Kickstarter closes on the 28th of January, 2011.

Go get some.

Did a bit of a Bing search today. As you do.

I wondered, which Australian-made solar panels are the best?

On the list that I found there were panel manufacturers in: Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK, and the USA.

Not Australia.

Yep, I couldn’t find a single manufacturer of solar panels (PV panels) in Australia.

One of the most sun-blessed countries in the world. Sad. Sad indeed.

That’s when I discovered an Australian company called Solar Sailor.

Solar Sailor are using their own “Hybrid Marine Power (HMP)” and “Solar Wing” technologies to create the Toyota Prius’ (sans the recall issues) of the maritime world. They’ve created ferries and other vessels that run on electricity captured using solar panels on the roof of the ferry.

This is such a logical yet remarkable use of the solar technologies available today. By using the exposed surfaces of the vessel as well as some tricky tech to manoeuvre the panels, some in the form of a sail, to the most efficient angle to catch the most sun, they’ve created a boat that is environmentally advanced in so many ways.

• Instead of idling at the wharf, belching diesel fumes into the air and the lungs of their patrons, their ferries float like a flower on the water – recharging their batteries and powering their systems via green solar and wind energy.
• Manoeuvring from a standstill from the wharf and getting up to speed (the most energy intensive part of the journey) is done using zero emission electric power. Once momentum is built the vessel switches to its efficient diesel motors.
• All of this leads to much cleaner and greener waterborne transport systems. Genius.

Take a peek at their site for details about all of there current technologies and the dreams they have of a green future.

So there we have it – a little green spark in what appears to be a pretty underwhelming green technology scene in Australia.

Where are our solar panel makers, our fuel cell makers, our wind tech companies, our innovators. I’m sure they’re out there. But the only press I’m seeing, and that most “average” folk in Australia are seeing, are the stories about green projects in Australia using international companies.

And I thought we were the smart country.

I’ll end with this and the dodgy image above – If nobody has noticed the world is in a bit of a race against time, with that global warming thing going one. Oh yeah and the black oily stuff running out.

The thing is – when something is running out it tends to get a wee bit expensive. Costs go up and the alternatives start looking like a logical move. As time passes all of this solar tech is going to drop in cost and the price of burning fossils is going to rise – the crossover point is a bit of a sweet spot. But if Australia waits for the sweet spot it will have missed the proverbial boat – at least Solar Sailor is doing its best to do its bit.

Do you thing I’m wrong? Out of line? Have no idea?

Let us know – email’s in the about page. We’d love to cover any of your tech or pass it onto some great local green sites that we love.

Cheers,

Davey Whale – GITweekly.com