This gifted robot moves his ears, speaks 36 languages, reads, listens, his body lights up and he even detects the presence of other objects (by sniffing them). As he is permanently connected to the Internet, he can act, react, transmit or broadcast many types of content available over his network, news, messages, music, text, alerts, radio, etc.
He can hear you, obey your commands and even recognize things you give him to sniff.
Reading out books, or interacting with objects thus ushering in the pioneering of the RFID revolution are new skills Nabaztag:tag has acquired, adding to his multiple existing talents.
When connected to the Internet this marvellous Rabbit has infinite potential.
The first Nabaztag was born in 2005. He has since become an Icon for the new era of the Internet of Things.
To live sustainably, we must use Earth’s resources at a rate at which they can be replenished, and thus provide for future generations to live as we have. In this kit, you can learn about alternative energy and sustainable living by conducting experiments and building energy-related models. Thirty of the best experiments and the ten most important building projects from the original Power House kit are presented in this new Green Essentials Edition.
The ten building projects include: the power house itself, a greenhouse, a solar cell array, a passive solar collector, a solar oven, an air conditioner, a refrigerator, a hydrometer, a lemon battery, and a wind power generator.
Experiment with the heating, cooling, and insulation of the house and greenhouse. Test passive solar collection methods with a solar collector. Assemble a solar power array to explore active solar power with photovoltaics. Build a model refrigerator and air conditioner to learn about heat transfer. Experiment with a lemon battery to learn about power storage. Set up a wind turbine to generate electricity from the wind.
As you perform the experiments, you will read the diary entries of a group of young explorers who are learning to live a sustainable existence on an island. To survive, they must implement real-world versions of the projects you are doing in the kit. Ages 10 and up.
Eternal Image makes it possible to take Star Trek fandom to the grave with the debut of their Trek-branded burial options.
For the millions of fans on our planet and beyond, our new line of Star Trek urns, caskets, monuments and vaults will be an important discovery indeed. After ten movies and five television series, phrases like “Live long and prosper,” “Resistance is futile” and “Space: the final frontier” have become part of our global vocabulary.
“The new Star Trek Urn will feature a bold design reminiscent of the 24th century styling of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet,” Eternal Image says, adding that “The Star Trek Casket styling has been inspired by the popular Photon Torpedo design seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
The monuments and vaults will follow later in 2009. Sign up to be notified when prices are announced and each item becomes available.
Go green and learn how to adopt an eco lifestyle with the Power House, an Alternative Energy & Environmental Science kit from “edutainment” company Thames & Kosmos. The Power House is designed for ages 12 and up, and requires no soldering, making it an ideal hobby for the entire family.
“This is by far one of the best put together packages we have ever seen. Items like this will hopefully inspire our future generations to design and build energy efficient homes. Great for Birthdays, Summer Camp Projects, Boy Scouts and more.” — Carl’s Electronics
Sustainable Living in the 21st Century
Power House provides an engaging introduction to regenerative energy sources while teaching basic concepts and principles in physical science. The kit focuses on the heat and light energy from the sun, the energy from the wind, as well as with electrochemical and plant energy. You will learn how to transform and use these forms of energy.
With the Power House kit you can build a model house complete with solar panels, windmill, greenhouse, and desalination system. You can build and operate an electric train, windmill, solar cooker, solar hot water tank, hygrometer, electric motor, power hoist, sail car, and more! Plant watercress, prepare sauerkraut, and make chewing gum. Learn how plants convert sunlight into energy for your body and your engines.
The thoughtfully designed series of experiments was developed by physicist Uwe Wandrey. Professor Wandrey creatively integrates physical science and technology lessons with the adventure of building a home and living on a remote island. To survive, you must learn how to harness the power of the sun and the wind as well as tap the energy of other physical forces. The storyline follows the experiments in a stepwise fashion. Easy-to-follow activities make it fun to build models and use them for your experiments.
We hope that building small models such as are provided in Power House will inspire you to plan and construct something on a larger scale.
An Adventure in Sustainable Living
The Power House Experiment Manual is much more than just a set of instructions. The manual is organized around the story of a group of island dwellers who must learn to live sustainably using the resources available to them on their small island. As you read their journal entries and learn of their projects and experiments, you build models of the same projects and conduct the same experiments alongside them.
More than 20 different building projects in one kit!
Power House
Wind-powered Generator
Solar Collector
Solar Power Station
Greenhouse
Current Indicator
Sail Car
Hygrometer
Refrigerator
Electric Motor
Electric Crane
Electric Train
Oil Lamp
Light Telescope
Rice Cooker
Solar Oven
Oil Press
Thumbtack Scale
Lemon Battery
Electric Switch
Power House includes a 96-page full color manual with 70 experiments and 20 building projects, organized into these nine chapters:
• The Heat Trap: Construct and experiment with a greenhouse.
• The Sun Collector: Collect the sun’s rays to heat water.
• The Sun Burners: Make a solar cooker while learning about the principles of light before you cook rice and bake bread.
• The Water Vampire: Desalinate water, plant watercress, produce sauerkraut and make chewing gum.
• The Heat Absorbers: Learn how heat of evaporation provides cooling, conduct experiments about air humidity, build a hygrometer and test a refrigerator.
• Power Plants: Grow beans, make a potted plant feed a candle, harvest sunflower energy, build an oil press, and assemble an oil lamp.
• The Energy Converters: Extract electric current from sunlight and metals in acid, build a light telephone, galvanize a nail and split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
• The Forces of Magnetism: Generate electric current with magnetic fields. Build a current indicator, electric and solar motors, a transfer switch, and a crane. Lift pencils with the sun and learn about levers. Build an electric car.
• Wings in the Wind: Build a sail car and learn how wings and sails transform energy. Learn to sail with the wind, by the wind, and against the wind and examine a mixed energy vehicle.
Available through Thames & Kosmos or one of their Dealers. For all the latest product news, follow Thames & Kosmos on Facebook.
Guyot Designs, an outdoor products specialist, prides itself on being a holistic company, dedicated to creating functional yet beautiful designs that respect a strong commitment to environmental responsibility and corporate ethics. Their products are strictly eco-friendly, with the goal of being 100% recyclable and reclaimable, and are produced by fair and sustainable labour using the cleanest technologies possible; some of Guyot Designs’ products are even shipped without packaging to reduce waste and environmental impact, as part of their “carbon negative” initiative. They partner with independent inventors and designers to help them bring these unique and undiscovered products to the marketplace, then contribute partial sales proceeds to socially important causes like the Rocky Mountain Institute.
The company is probably best known for its innovative and award-winning Squishy Bowls. These space-saving bowls, made of flexible food-grade silicone that’s temperature resistant to 400°F, are designed to be collapsible, so they can be brought along anywhere without taking up much space, but always retain their shape. They’re available in four vibrant colours — Lime, Slate, Tahoe Blue, and Tomato — and are easy to clean, as they only require a quick hand wash with soap and water. (One review suggested turning the bowls inside out to lick them clean, but this proved to be a bit awkward and messy.)
Ideal companions for the Squishy Bowls are the Utensils, particularly the MicroBites size. These versatile 5-in-1 cooking, eating, and serving utilities consist of a spoon, fork, knife, spatula, and spreader, all in two pieces which ingeniously snap together. The Utensils are available in Celery, Mustard, and Tomato, and the MicroBites in Slate, Tangerine, and Tomato. They range from 6 to 9½ inches long and are made of a high-temperature nylon polymer that can withstand heat up to 450°F. They’re safe on Teflon and other coated cookware, can be easily boiled and wiped clean, and have specially long handles to keep your hands clean with deep pots or containers. As an added bonus, they have holes in the ends of the handles that enable them to be attached to packs with carabiners, which makes MicroBites convenient, lightweight tools to carry around at conventions such as Comic-Con.
The full line of Guyot Designs’ products includes the SplashGuard (Universal, Original, and Mini in multiple colours and image designs), Gription, Firefly, Bottles (surgical grade stainless steel that comes in four shapes and sizes: The Standard, Shorty, Commuter, and Backpacker — Insulated version coming soon), Lid, Squishy Bowls (Bowl & Cup Set, Medium Bowl, The Travel Shot), Utensils, MicroBites, and Spork. A stand-out is the Firefly, which turns your water bottle into a lantern, night-light, or reading lamp: “The Firefly’s design allows it to be used right side up, upside down, or hanging from the nearest handy branch. The unique replacement lid design contains integrated LED lights which spread a warm glow throughout the bottle. The variable light levels allow you to go from tent nightlight to nighttime trail lantern with the push of a button… the control is at your fingertip! The electronics are in a sealed compartment, so there’s no risk of water or juice gumming up the works! Compatible with all standard wide-mouth bottles sold through specialty Outdoor Retailers.” The Firefly uses 3 AAA size batteries; rechargables are recommended since they are more enviromentally friendly. (Hopefully a solar-powered Firefly 2.0 is currently in development to eliminate the need for batteries altogether.)
Guyot Designs offers long-life products with a Limited Lifetime Warranty.
Twinkies, long a staple in the geek food pyramid, have remained essentially unchanged by their makers since their creation, so Hostess thought it would be fun to officially showcase the people who have been getting creative and playing with their food, in The Twinkies Cookbook: An Inventive and Unexpected Recipe Collection:
“As part of Twinkies’ seventy-fifth anniversary celebration [in 2005], Hostess put out a call for recipes, asking people to share their ideas for cooking — yes, cooking — with Twinkies. Hundreds of people from across the country responded with an amazing bunch of inventive, homegrown, and sometimes wacky recipes. Nearly fifty of these unexpected creations — both sweet and savory! — are presented in this nostalgic and colorful collection. A delight for the whole family, The Twinkies Cookbook is the perfect snack for the Twinkie lover in all of us.”
The cookbook’s introduction, Twinkies: History of a Sweet Sensation, tells the story of the Twinkie’s origins, and includes interesting quotes, trivia, and archival pictures. There are nine chapters of recipes and full-color pictures that follow: Novelty Twinkies, Twinkies for Chocolate Lovers, Fruity Twinkies, Twinkies Take the Cake, Twinkies à la Mode, Twinkie Drinks, Twinkie Stack-Ups, Gourmet Twinkies, and Twinkies and Meat. The recipes range from those simple enough for children to make, to a few time-consuming productions requiring special equipment and considerable experience in the kitchen.
As a bonus for pop culture fans, this book also clears up the much-debated urban legend that Twinkies have an indefinite shelf life. (Spoiler: The golden snack cake’s real lifespan is 25 days.)
The Twinkies Cookbook: An Inventive and Unexpected Recipe Collection is distributed by Ten Speed Press (US and Canada). For more recipes and information, visit twinkies.com.
If you’ve been dreaming of picking up roots, living on the edge, or literally going out on a limb in terms of eco-lifestyle possibilities, then Finca Bellavista: A Sustainable Rainforest Community might be just the thing for you. Located on the base of an almost 6,000 foot primary rainforest mountain on the South Pacific Coast of Costa Rica — not far from the Pan American Highway, Finca Bellavista was created with the sole purpose of preserving 300 acres of local rainforest by offering a unique opportunity for ecologically minded property owners to live sustainably in and steward a managed rainforest environment.
With a principle focus of creating a balance between maintaining a fragile habitat for wildlife and using natural resources wisely, Finca Bellavista aims to implement sustainable energy practices such as hydroelectric and solar power, while operating a full-fledged recycling center and a common garden area for the community. This might make it an eco-utopia for some, but for others it’s a possible solution for dovetailing conservation with development.
As per Finca Bellavista’s guidelines on their website, treehouses in the community must be low-impact, stilt-built or arboreal dwellings that utilize a rainwater catch system to provide water for each unit. Waste that is generated is to be treated with “a cutting-edge technology found in biodigestors”. A “hydroelectric turbine system” will power the entire community. The power grid will run via a system of transformers and underground power cables installed along the horseshoe-shaped main access road that runs throughout the community, producing peak power of 62 kilowatts at the generator leads. The power system at Finca Bellavista will produce clean, sustainable, and extremely reliable power for the community, all the while virtually eliminating any monthly electricity bills for residents.
Fancy a bit of socializing or Tarzan action? Residents can opt for either the community’s system of ground trails or its ‘Sky Trail’ network of zip lines and platforms that deliver them to and from their homes in the rainforest canopy. Missing the outside world? A main parking lot exists at the community’s base area, where high-speed Internet and WIFI are available.
The proprietors state that “these requirements will not only preserve the integrity of the rainforest canopy and its inhabitants, but will also provide an unusual and adventurous lifestyle for human dwellers as well. Imagine waking to the sounds of a tropical bird symphony or catching a zip-line to meet up with friends for a meal or an evening cocktail…” This might be a bit too much of an Ewok housing scenario for some, or a real estate development plan that should simply exist as a rainforest preserve, but for now it is on the table as a possibility for how “going native” might be the wave of the future or the cure for what ails us.
