The Dose is your weekly hit of gadgets news and new gadgets aimed at your incurable addiction
This week Greenpeace gets green on your iPhone, London tests GPS-speed regulation, and the Vatican looks to build Europe’s largest solar power plant
Greenpeace Takes Tissue Issue to the iPhone
With all the ‘green’ hype commanding
headlines companies have been quick to jump on the bandwagon and sometimes this
means a superficial commitment to environmental reform. Take the issue of
recycled paper and your local supermarket. Lately the shelves have become loaded
products gussied up in green packaging and bespeckled with trees, with each
claiming moral superiority over the other. Enter the Greenpeace iPhone app.
Compiled in the diminutive download is a list of companies that have made
serious efforts to provide 100 per cent recycled material, as well as ditching
the harmful chlorine whitening agents. The app lists off the best and the
‘could do betters’ for toilet paper, facial tissues, paper towels and napkins,
saving you countless minutes in the cleaning aisle.
Less Control = Longer Life?
A long standing ‘hot topic’ among
science-fiction writers is the simple fact that machines are ‘better’ than
humans. This is certainly true in the categories of ‘microwavery’ and ‘killing’
but what about environmentalism? Conceivably, computer algorithms could be
integrated into our daily lives in order to conserve energy. In their simplest
forms, these sections of code tell our computers to go to sleep or to turn down
the heat when we’re not at home. But as computing systems continue to advance
in sophistication a new, very real possibility arises, one that will have us
asking; how much control are we willing to forgo in order to maximize our
efficiency? London’s transport authority is putting this question to the test as we
speak in implementing Intelligent Speed Adaptation. This speed-regulating
software is currently on a six months trial aboard cabs, buses, and other
service vehicles in a bid to reduce emissions, accidents, and fuel consumption.
The system is capable of either preventing a vehicle from exceeding a posted
speed limit (via a GPS map) or the much more benign ‘advisory mode’ which
simply displays the speed limit on the dash.
God’s Go-To Guy Going Green
It’s been a longstanding fact that the man
upstairs created the Sun and so it’s only fitting (though strangely shocking)
that the Vatican is building what is poised to be Europe’s largest solar power
plant. Racking up a build-cost of $660 million, the Pope’s Pad will have its
modest $1.5 million solar array expanded upon. When it’s all said and done the
plant will produce nearly 100 megawatts of power for the city-state and for
forty thousand Italian homes.
