Inspirational and good news.
We all know that kids like having fun and we know that there is a thing called the environment. Finally someone has combined fun on the beach with cleaning up the environment.
This toy is designed to be attached to improperly disposed of water bottles and use those bottle as a floatation device. Kids can run around on the beach while cleaning it up all for fun!
WorldDevils is a site that aims to bring people’s attention to the wrongdoers on our planet. The site is very young so right now it’s only a predictable list of devils (GW Bush to Carlos Menem). I encourage everyone to sign up and add some lesser-known evil people to see what happens at this site.
How is this site good you ask, well over at Mashable they argue that:
The hope with WorldDevils is to bring awareness to those individuals and entities that are causing harm on a larger level, whether it be socially or politically. The company has indicated that it will be adding a system for curbing the abuse of its system by those out to cause harm on a personal level.
It’s up to you decide if calling people devils increases awareness and will provoke change.
There’s a neat post over at MetaFilter on spy satellites and how they are being used to highlight inefficient housing. A community in London have used thermal imaging to find houses that leak the most heat, then they put the map online.
This is part of an effort to get residents to improve the insulation on their houses in order to cause less environmental damage.
The Association for Progressive Communications has an article / interview on how communication technologies can be used for development. It’s a neat read to remind us that the internet and other new technology can be used for more than just LOLcats (I love LOLcats!).
I rather feel that WSIS showed two things, if only by default. First, that it is important to develop a common understanding of the potential of ICTs in development between the development community and the ICT community. This requires that both listen to one another’s priorities and issues. Second, that it is important to develop a much better evidence base concerning experience with ICTs in development. WSIS did neither of these, but it demonstrated their importance. Effective use of ICD is unlikely to occur without them being addressed much more effectively.
I have to admit that whenever I read about “new” ideas that are really improved old ideas that we forgot in this modern age I can’t help but think there is a wealth of historical knowledge we have yet to improve upon. We are learning from the past and combining it with the future though! Take for example the ingenious idea of using a sail on a boat, or a “new” approach to gathering energy (wind). Indeed these new approaches do improve on the original idea and do so while being cheaper than the current finite resource-based approach to energy. They also tend to combine different sources of renewable energy.
A true triumphant of old world techniques like sailing and new technology is floating on the coast of Australia. A boat that has sails that also function as solar panels.
The concept is the brainchild of Robert Dane, an Australian doctor from the small fishing town of Ulladulla in New South Wales. A keen sailor and rower, Dane was watching a solar-powered boat race in Canberra in 1996 and noted that the winning boat used a solar panel inclined towards the sun. The only problem was that as the wind grew stronger the panel became a hazard and had to be pulled down.
“It intrigued me, and I started wondering how one could combine sun and wind to power a modern, seaworthy boat,” Dane says. “And then one day six months later, I woke up one morning and realized that I could use a wing sail that was at the same time a solar collector.