Ice-powered air conditioners

Ice Energy said Tuesday it has raised US$33 million in a second round of funding. The round, led by Energy Capital Partners, also provides up to US$150 million in project development financing.

Ice Energy makes rooftop air conditioners that use ice to help lower the cost of operating them.

The ice storage can shift the demand to off-peak times by as much as 40 percent, according to the company. For that reason, the company is marketing its products to utilities looking for ways to reduce peak demand to avoid construction of new power plants.

Via CNET Blogs

CMEL shows 25-inch paper-thin OLED display

A Taiwanese display maker just one-upped Sony on the Japanese electronics giant's home turf.

At the FPD International Exhibition in Japan, Chi Mei EL, or CMEL, unveiled its OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display that measures less than a millimeter thick and 25 inches diagonal. Sony has a prototype of the same thinness, but it's just 11 inches diagonal.

CMEL's prototype display resolution is WXGA, or 1,366x768 pixels, and shows 16.7 million colors. While it's not yet an actual product, it shows that the race for OLED supremacy is heating up.

Samsung has shown a 12.1-inch OLED prototype, and Toshiba and Panasonic are also working on prototypes for monitors or TVs. In addition, there are several companies that make smaller OLED displays for mobile and handheld devices already, but Sony is the only one with an OLED TV on the market, its 11-inch XEL-1.

The technology is still not ready for mass production, and the price of an OLED TV, using Sony's 11-inch as an example, at $2,500 is still prohibitive for the average consumer.

Via CNET Crave

Out of Sight Out of Mind modular desktop blows our mind

If you are one of those who has to put up with messy colleagues (hint: Like the one to my left), the SpaceStation desktop organizer could probably do the trick. But what if they need more than just organization, something along the lines of an overhaul? Then you'll probably need to invest in an "Out of Sight Out of Mind" (OSOM) table.


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E-notes: Like Post-its, only reusable

Does the world really need Post-it 2.0? Ask those of us with Post-its habitually plastered on our monitors, walls, backs, and foreheads, and we'd probably be hard-pressed to come up with suggestions for improving the classic attachable notes.

Still, the designers at Sequoia Studio have come up with an inventive concept product called E-notes. The notes use tactile and flexible electronic paper technology and are powered by a solar captor. They can be stuck and unstuck to surfaces easily using a glue inspired by the adhesive that keeps the gravity-defying gecko in place. The best part? They can be reused, thus saving paper.

E-notes even have a visual alarm/organizing function that changes colors. That we like.

Watch a more detailed explanation of the product here. But as Yanko Design cautions in its post on the subject: whatever you do, don't call it a digital Post-it!

Via CNET Crave

Bring Your Own Image Search

Bring Your Own (BYO) Image Search literally means using your own image to search for others. Born out of Idee Labs, the engine allows you to upload a personal picture and it'll come back with image results based on algorithms such as similar colors, shapes, textures, luminosity, complexity, objects and regions. For example, if you look at the screenshot above, I uploaded a picture (on the right in the Search Image box) which I took at my sister's wedding and the engine immediately generated pages of images with a similar color tone--white. There's also an option to point the search to an image on the Web. According to Idee Labs, the image results are based on the stock images from UK firm Alamy.
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