New Earth, Home Wind Maker Raising Cash
New Earth's 2- and 5-kilowatt turbines, sold under the Savonious brand name, are small and designed for the urban and home environment. Think of them as the Mini Cooper of wind turbines. We first read about New Earth when EcoGeek wrote about how the turbine could halve a home's energy bill.
New Earth's systems are just reaching commercialization — the company "soft-launched" in September and its first turbine was only installed in July. But Gardner tells us that already the company has "a pipeline of orders approaching seven figures in revenue," and they "should be delivering on that pipeline in early '08."
The official web site doesn't list a price but, if you trust crowdsourcing, an informative Digg commenter claimed the systems range from $6,500 to $16,500.
There's plenty of competition in the home wind power space. Southwest Wind Power, manufacturers of the Skystream turbines, has received investment from the likes of Denver's Altira Group and Chevron's (CVX) venture capital arm.
Home wind systems works well for off-grid, rural, and even suburban homes, but, despite a few rare exceptions, it's difficult to find turbines installed in the urban settings in which most people live. The fact of the matter is that they are big and quite difficult to install.
Still, wind power is an important part of a future in which distributed energy is a major component of electricity generation. Finding a solution for wind power in urban settings is a good goal, and the first step is bringing turbines to market that have a form factor that can work for cities and the urban cohorts most likely to adopt the technologies.
Are your earphone cables always in auto-tangle mode? Here's a good idea from designer Jaehyung Hong: a Bluetooth lanyard with transport controls on board, letting you control your MP3 player while you're listening, and then store your earphones in its handy slot when you're not. Roll those messy cables up inside the device, keeping that spaghetti bowl of wires from tangling up so much. Neat. [
This working pen is ridiculously awesome, if you believe the uncorroborated early reports: 
Today Nokia said that in technical trials, the target of 100Mbps download speed and 50Mbps upload speed for its next-gen cellular data network "can be met," and promised initial deployment by 2010. Americans probably won't see it until later, since the 3GPP LTE (don't ask) initiative has more momentum across the Atlantic. The founding members are all Euros, though some Asian companies just joined in, including LG Electronics, NTT DoCoMo and Samsung. Still, it's grounds for excitement, since those superfast wireless data rates will get here sooner or later. (FYI: The phone pictured is Nokia's concept Aeon, and no, that's not a real 100Mbps antenna.) [
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