Golf cart and bicycle trailer – all in one.

Golf has never really looked like a green sport to us, even considering the often beautiful surroundings. At least not when one considers parking areas filled to the brim with large SUVs and lawn mower tractors working around the clock. If we also weigh in golf cars, fertilizers, irrigation and every other must-have to keep a golf course in peak shape… Well, you see our point. However, here’s a way for you to take charge of a piece of your own carbon footprint an make at least your own golfing a bit greener. It’s called the Gocy Active and it’s a combined golf-cart and bile trailer. With the mounting kit installed on your bike, it’s easy to hook up the trailer/cart and pedal off to your local links with a better eco conscience. On arrival you unhook the cart, extend the third wheel and swing away. After your last hole, the procedure is of course the opposite. You use your own golf bag, but the Gocy is delivered with it’s own special bag for grocery shopping, picnicking or whatever you need to schlep along.brbr

Label that watches over food safety.

Tempix is a Swedish company with cool idea. A temperature indicator for chilled or frozen foodstuffs. The Tempix system can keep a watch over products down to an individual package and create an alert if a package has been exposed to an unsafe temperature during the transport from manufacturer to customer. The Tempix temperature indicator is integrated into the package bar code. If the product has been exposed to a too high temperature, part of the bar code is destroyed, thus making the product impossible to check out through the cashier. The indicator is also readable to the naked eye. Compare the area inside the green circle in the two labels above. The top label indicates that the product has been correctly treated, the bar code is intact and a singe line i clearly visible inside the while square. The bottom label, however, indicates that the product has been exposed to temperatures above the allowed level. The black line in the square has disappeared, and the last part of the bar code has been erased.brbr

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Jim Parsons on smartness. Cut from the Swedish edition of Elle magazine #10, October 2008. Thanks’ Jim…brbr

Simple, smart weather cover for your bike seat.

The Neverain bike seat cover is both simple and smart. Just what we like. The whole thing consists of a bag to be attached under the saddle, not unlike the small tool bags some people use. The Neverain bag comes with an attached weather cover that can be easily pulled out and deployed over the saddle. You can either cover your saddle before a rain, or, if you missed the forecast, cover the wet saddle before you get on your bike. No more wet butt biking. The cover is of course waterproof, and the bag is ventilated to ensure drying of the cover until next time you need it. One extra feature is that you need to remove the seat post to install the bag, thus ensuring that no-one can steal your seat cover without destroying it in the process. The Neverain cover will be about SEK 100:- (approx. USD 12:- when it hits the stores later this year.brbr

New old water purifier wins Swedish Skapa award.

The Solvatten water purification device won first prize in this year’s Swedish Skapa awards and boosted inventor Petra Wadström’s bank account with a cool SEK 400,000 (about USD 50,000). The invention is a water purifier where the sun’s heat and UV radiation does most of the cleaning work. A filter on the tap does the rest. After sitting out in the sun for three to four hours, the device can deliver ten liters of clean, drinkable (and hot) water. Anything that can help fix the lack of drinkable water in the world gets our support. However, as good as it may be, the Solvatten is not the first of it’s kind. We have covered three similar ideas before, the latest one only last August. Then, designers Alberto Meda and Francisco Gomez Paz won first prize in the Home category in the Index:2007 design competition with their very similar (but better looking) concept, the Solar Bottle. In March of 2006 we also presented two other, and much simpler and cheaper, solutions using the same principle. Petra Wadström’s Solvatten, however, seems to be much nearer actual production than the Solar Bottle. The two other ideas are already in use, we think.brbr

Where Do Chicken Nuggets Come From?

 

We went to see Banksy’s installation of animatronics entitled, Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill now running on Seventh Avenue near Bleeker Street. It’s like the hall of presidents only with fish sticks and hot dogs instead of presidents. See more videos and images here.



Invisible reflective spray.

We spent a great deal of yesterday visiting this year’s Tekniska Mässan (the Scandinavian Technical Fair). We knew that the Swedish Inventor’s Association and the Skapa Foundation (Swedish only) were to present a lot of new inventions this year and that many of the inventors themselves were going to be on hand for chats. Over the next few days, we’ll present some of the inventions we found at the fair. We’ll start out with C Me. C Me is an aerosol spray that can make virtually every garment in your closet reflecting in the dark. It is said to work best on denim, fleece or linen but other fabrics won’t cause much of a problem either. The spray is totally invisible in daylight, does not leave stains or affect the feel or function of the garment sprayed. The persons in the picture above have each had one trouser-leg treated with the spray. It strikes us as a way to make teenagers wear reflexes, since they would be reluctant to wear ordinary reflecting tape or fobs. The C Me spray is also available in a version for pets, i.e. dogs and cats. It would probably work well on cats that like to run outside and can’t be persuaded to wear a collar.brbr

Why I like films about time travel

The actual why I’m not sure about. So sorry for that misrepresentative post title. Actually I’m now thinking it might have been better titled, Please Tell me why I like FIlms About Time Travel, because I really wish I had a clue why. Back to the Future, Donnie DarkoMementoPrimerTwelve Monkeys All are about time, all are on my favorites list.

Bolt with a secret stash.

Maybe you can’t get very much into the little compartment, but if you have something really, really secret this hollowed out 5/8 bolt looks like a great stash indeed. What if we would keep it in our tool box with some other bolts just like it, or actually screwed on to something innocent like one’s car or porch swing. No-one would have a clue. According to the Spy Coins site, who sells different spy tool replicas, among them hollowed out coins, these things were actually used by spies during the Cold War as means to hide and transport secret documents on microfilm. Apparently U2 pilot Gary Powers was carrying a hollowed out silver dollar when he was captured by the Soviets in 1960. The coin contained a suicide-device, but Powers either failed to, or chose not, use it. The coins are mostly US, so we chose to write about this bolt instead, since it would work all over the world. The bolt is USD 40:- and current American nickels and quarters are about USD 20:-.brbr

3D printers down to desktop size (almost).

On top of our wish-list for Christmas is our own 3D printer. Especially now since they are down to a size where one might hope they can be fit into a normal office space. We’ve covered 3D printers before, but the first one was the size of a closet and started at USD 25,000:-. A little later we found another, smaller version that even a one man (or one woman) design firm could afford at a measly USD 5,000:-. The latest evolution in 3D printers, the Alaris 30 from Objet Geometries, is supposed to have taken detail to the next level and have added the ability to print movable parts inside the model. No word on pricing or availability yet, though.brbr