It was a busy week in green design as the design world’s most important trade show, the Milan Furniture Fair, wrapped up, and Earth Day hit with full force on Thursday, April 22nd. Inhabitat brought you the most incredible green designs from Milan — from LED lamps made almost entirely from soap to Inigo Mauerer’s stunning new stripped-down OLED chandelier to gigantic architectural LEGO bricks (with life-size lego furniture to match!)

We also caught wind of several curious new energy developments from across the pond — first, the UK is hatching a plan to recycle human waste into fuel by piping biomethane from the sewage system back into homes in Oxfordshire. Meanwhile a farmer in Norther Ireland has created a treadmill for cows that he thinks could generate 6% of the world’s power. More conventional alt energy sources are on the rise as well – this week researchers announced advances in dye solar cells that make strides towards grid parity and a gasification process that is capable of doubling biofuel production.

Several major auto manufacturers also got our engines racing this week as they unveiled the next generation of sleek electric rides. Toyota officially revealed plans for a minivan sequel to it’s ever-popular Prius while Chevy charged ahead with the MPV5, a larger version of the Volt sedan that seats five and packs extra space in the trunk. And finally, if classic cars are more your style, don’t miss this cloth-covered retrofit to a rusty old MG Midget.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: cow treadmills, electric cars, and the Milan Furniture Fair originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Reuters – The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether a California law banning the sale and rental of violent video games to minors violated constitutional free-speech rights, the first time it will rule on a video game case.

See the original post:
Top court to rule on California video game law
(Reuters)

If you’re a Symbian fan, a Nokia fan, or simply a lover of 12 megapixel cameraphone sensors, it’s a great week to be alive what with the mighty N8’s specs and Eldar Murtazin-penned mini-review all going live ahead of Nokia’s official unveiling. But wait, the N8 fest isn’t over quite yet: the AWS 3G version of the phone just garnered the FCC’s blessings, turns out. How do we know this is the T-Mobile-ready N8, exactly? Well, the device is listed simply by its internal code, RM-596, throughout the paperwork — but the shape of the FCC ID label (which is laser etched, as the filing points out) is exactly what we’d expect given the shots of the N8 we’ve seen so far, and it looks like it’ll appear on the endcap of the phone with the camera hump visible just underneath. Given the leaked specs, we’re expecting a version with T-Mobile support anyway, so we’re nearly certain this is it. If Murtazin’s take on Symbian^3 is any indication, there might not be much reason to get stoked about this thing — but hey, at least the FCC is going to be totally cool with you blowing your cash on it.

Nokia N8 earns FCC seal with T-Mobile 3G on board originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Contrary to popular belief, one solid state drive isn’t the same as another solid state drive necessarily. OCZ’s new Agility 2 is proof of that, boasting the final (v3.0.5) version of SandForce’s SF-1200 firmware. The issue here is that Corsair’s recently released Force series of SSDs are shipping (and continue to ship) with v3.0.1 installed, which — according to SandForce — will never be viewed as the final version ready for mass consumption. As the story goes, v3.0.1 may experience a reliability issue with a power management state, but v3.0.5 caps small file random write performance as to better separate the SF-1200 drives from the pricier SF-1500 drives. Our compadres over at AnandTech were able to put the (factory limited) Agility 2 SSD through its paces, and for the most part, it came out looking pretty decent. Critics found 5- to 10-percent performance gains when compared to Intel / Indilinx offerings, but unless you have to have the absolute best, paying extra for that bump may not be the most intelligent move. The other point here is that while the Agility 2 may be capped with the v3.0.5 firmware, at least its upgrade path is a lot clearer than the aforementioned Force; if you ever take v3.0.1 away from that unit, you can kiss that extra performance goodbye. Hit the source link for the full, drama-filled look.

OCZ’s Agility 2 SSD reviewed: despite limits, SandForce SF-1200 drive performs well originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Christopher Null – Buy a Mac and you know you’re getting the state of the art when it comes to components (except for a Blu-ray optical drive — Steve Jobs hates Blu-ray). And that’s a good thing, since you’re probably paying a fortune for the privilege.

Read the rest here:
Latest MacBook Pro CPU runs so hot it can boil water
(Christopher Null)