A couple weeks ago I wrote an article titled “Could Your Cell Phone End Up Killing You?,” which resulted in a flooded inbox, consisting mostly of folks telling me stories of what they believe is anecdotal proof that cell phone use had caused tumors, both malignant and benign. And there were, of course, a couple who believe the research I cited was much ado about nothing. (A former boss told me cell phone radiation had reversed Alzheimer’s in mice.)
My piece mentioned that electromagnetic pollution surround us all the time. Cell phones are a major purveyor of particularly dangerous levels of radiation, due to their being so close to our heads and bodies most of the time, but electromagnetic radiation comes from all sources — wi-fi, satellites, GPS, microwaves, and more. As a result, I felt it was necessary to point out a few recommendations that might lower your  exposure:

Photo via Discovery News; Credit Dawn Bonnell

Embedded solar cells have become all the rage in gadgets from cell phones to even netbooks. However, it usually means having the gadget lay face down in the sun for as long as an hour to get a minimal amount of charge. You can't really use it while it's charging, and the i... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Everything from handy gadgets like cell phones and iPods to user-friendly weaponry like Tasers have changed the way we work, play and police.

Photo via Jaymi Heimbuch

Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) have been the talk of green lighting and display for what feels like ages now. In the last few years, we've started to see the technology applied to consumer electronics like digital photo frames, cell phones, and more recently, televisions. OLEDs are to be the next generation in lighting, in computer monitors, in seemingly anything we can dream up that has a need for light or displays. So, where are we seeing OLEDs turn up, why aren't they common yet, and what technology will beat out this purportedly ultra energy efficient technology that is moving forward at a sna... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via Sharp

Sharp's solar powered cell phone debuted in the Japanese market just shy of a year ago, and after experiencing a boom in popularity, the company is ready to take its solar powered phone global, entering the fray of a rising number of mobile phones and devices with embedded solar cells. And it's chosen to start off with a country that has a thing for green gadgets...

... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Donors are gearing up to send cell phones, streetlights, water purification systems and even audio Bibles to earthquake-hit Haiti. The bad news is that the country’s power infrastructure is on the ropes, but the good news is that these particular gadgets are solar-powered.

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[ Filed under More or in the Industrial Design category ]

From a set of ten coffee mugs and one of twenty cell phones to a series of hundreds of solid-color shirts, some industrial designers have made an art of applying Pantone colors to everything they can think of – and a few things no one has ever heard of. A few of these come straight from the company but others probably do not make the kind of impression ColorVision is aiming to make.

Pantone flash memory sticks make a certain degree of sense, though, as does a Pantone-colored Rubik’s Cube (with nine shades rather than a single solid tone on each side) – even Pantone-themed fashion seems relatively sensible within reason.

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We're not at the merger of man with machine quite yet (we have until 2050 according to Ray Kurzweil), but this graphic shows in a profound way how totally wired our society and culture has become: According to the Census Bureau's recent Statistical Abstract of the United States, an estimated 110 billion text messages were sent on cell phones in December 2008, more than double the 48 billion in the previous December. Meanwhile, total retail sales online soared from $24 billion when the decade began to $128 billion in 2007.