If the Egyptians required social housing, this would've been it. This staggering pyramid design is the latest in Dubai's attempts to make it the playground - and architect lunatic asylum - of the world, a building capable of housing one million people.

The concept behind this "city of the future" is for the entire project to be off-grid and power itself, presumably by the methane emissions of one million people. Proposer and developer Timelinks is currently patenting some of the technology involved, should its ludicrously huge self-contained pyramid house ever rouse enough interest from the money men to become financially viable.

Timelinks has applied for an EU grant to investigate how possible the technology behind its future world would be to create. We could tell them how possible it is for £10 right now.

(Via DVICE)

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Roads get really hot. Really really hot. But 2cm below the surface of the road gets hotter still, and some researchers at Worcester Polytechnic University reckon that we could use that heat in power generation.

The scientists did everything they could to get a stretch of asphalt as hot as possible - embedding highly conductive quartzite into the surface, and painting everything with an anti-reflective coating so that more sunlight is absorbed. The result was a road which got insanely hot, and stayed insanely hot for a while after the sun went down.

IKEA must be feeling a bit guilty about cutting down all of those trees to manufacture flat-pack furniture, as they're pouring €50m into 'GreenTech' projects and will be selling solar panels, water conservation and purification devices and "alternative light sources".

'GreenTech' are apparently a division of IKEA specifically for environmentally friendly projects, so this could be a good sign of things to come and a slightly more obvious thing for IKEA to diversify into rather than, er, mobile phone networks.

Whilst there's no details yet on when these products will be available or how much they'll cost, it's nice that a big company like IKEA are pushing environmental technologies to consumers... even if they are going to recieve inevitably silly Swedish names.

(via Electricpig)

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Wireless electricity. Another wild gadget fantasy, only this is a fantasy MADE REAL in recent years thanks to the arrival of special batteries and charging pads.

Sanyo has announced it's bringing this (possibly alien) wireless charging technology to Wii, using a variant of the fantastic Eneloop battery and a "magnetic induction" (MAGIC for short) pad. So, instead of removing your batteries and placing them in a charger - a tiresome task at best - you replace the entire backside of your Wiimote with a custom battery pack, then stand it in on a dock.

Your batteries will be done in 220 minutes, according to Sanyo's boffins. As ever with all the cool new stuff, there's no UK release date for the Contactless Charger Set yet - but you will be able to pay a man in Japan a huge mark-up to send you one this August.

(Via BuzzYa)

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The first eco-nightclub has opened here in the UK in the distinguished and yet decidedly unsavory part of town that is Kings Cross. Club Surya is made of all manner of reclaimed bottles, timber and budgerigars but it's the dancefloor that really adds the interest as far as I'm concerned.

Using the ever-popular piezoelectricity - essentially a way of changing kinetic energy into electrical - every badly jigged step on the boards is harnessed in tiny underfloor crystals and used to power all the needs of the club itself from lighting to sound. There should even be enough left for a few bits and pieces in the rest of the N1 area.

Technically, that flying saucer to the left there is known as a wingless electromagnetic air vehicle, or WEAV for short. We'll just scream "UFO!" and run from it in terror, though, if that's OK.

It runs on "magnetohydrodynamics" - a way of propelling vehicles by ionising air with an electrical current then shooting it out at great speed. The thing also spins, to help keep it stable. It is, basically, your archetypal flying saucer.

It does make me feel all virtuous when I can wax lyrical about eco-friendly gadgets and, as it goes, the Weza portable energy source foot pump could be the greenest of them all.

The outer mechanics of this kinetic to electrical energy device are pretty simple - pump it with your foot and make power, you know, just like the old pedal-power TV but actually effective.

The Weza has an internal, rechargeable, 12V, 7Ah lead-acid gel battery (sounds nasty) that's capable of jump-starting just about any vehicle you could choose as well as power a whole host of smaller devices.

The Orange Dance Charge is a motion-powered kinetic charger full of magnets and weights, designed to keep your phone juiced-up simply from the movement of your arms. How many words do you think we'll get into this update before resorting to crude references to masturbation?

We're not particularly excited about what's clearly a novelty item designed to generate a bit of publicity during the UK's festival season and help Orange make a token effort to look like it's a "green" company, but you sort of have to use awesome promotional photographs like this:

It weighs a teeny 180grams, although that weight is clearly doubled by the rather ugly Orange-branded towelling-based promotional band attaching it to that lady's trim upper arm.

The Dance Charge will be viewable and shakeable at this weekend's Glastonbury drugs/mud festival.

(Via Reg Hard)

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Anyone fretting about the pumps drying up again, should the Shell tanker drivers strike once more, might want to think about Doug Heffron's alternative coping method rather than panic buying.

Back in 1993 when fuel prices sky-rocketed in the US, Doug home converted his Geo Metro Xfi, which already did a very reasonable 56 miles per gallon, into a rather unsightly but undeniably stripped-down and highly economical 75mpg mutant machine.

The London Transport Museum and Orange are asking the public what urban life will be like in the year 2055 with the Future Generator game.

The site runs parallel to an interactive exhibition at the museum and attempts to collate the results of as many people as possible to paint a realistic picture of how our cities might look in 50 years time.

It's all done by some simple and seemingly rather obvious two-option, eco questions akin to "Would you rather blow up the planet or recycle things?" and I suppose the idea is to assess attitude, rather than behaviour, in the most universal way possible. It's worth a go.

I'm not convinced I need a solar powered lawnmower. It's not the energy side of mowing that bothers me, unless we're talking about the energy needed to get my arse up off the sofa and out to push the thing around.

However, I do like to give a hearty round of applause to the hackers with enough intelligence and modding cojones to come up with these contraptions.

We must try very hard not to refer to the Squirt 2 jet-powered boat as a "death trap." Every time we call an odd and dangerous-looking invention a death trap, the inventor pops up and gets quite angry about it being labelled as a death trap.

As of yet, no one has died during the testing and creation of the Squirt 2 Turbine Jet-Boat so, for all intents and purposes, it is entirely safe. You may well emerge totally alive and unscathed from a trip on the aluminium-hulled jet-propelled speedboat that generates 1370 horsepower. Here it is showing off by firing up its engine...

Your hair will be slightly ruffled and there's a chance your bowels will have emptied themselves inside your trousers, but you almost certainly won't be dead. Nobody gets killed during the YouTube demo video, either. It's safer than riding a bicycle.

(Via Hacked Gadgets)

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Launched at the end of last year, we've finally managed to get out hands on the 60% recycled, eco-friendly handset from Nokia, the 3110 Evolve and according to our friends Susi and Abi from Shiny Shiny and Hippyshopper it's really rather good.

For more eco-gadgetry, pay a visit to Abi at Hippyshopper - greener than an envious gooseberry.

Related posts: Top 10 Planet-saving gadgets

It's not often you hear the words 'desktop PC' and 'sexy' side by side, unless you're referring to an iMac, but by gosh - look at this Dell!

And it's not often you hear 'Dell' and 'sexy' said next to each other, either. Want more to like about it? Well for starters, it consumes 70% less energy than the average desktop PC, with the mini tower being 81% smaller to boot, as well. Shipped in recycled packaging, everything about it appears to be green, let's just hope it stays that way from conception to production. It's as yet unnamed, and still only a concept, but fingers crossed they'll sell these soon - our Hippyshopper blog will be very cross, otherwise.

(via Gizmodo)

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This is the greenest computer since sliced bread with microchips in it.

According to an announcement from Mr Michael Dell himself, this never before seen, eco-inspired, bamboo case PC uses 70% less power than an ordinary computer and is 81% smaller than a standard desktop, about the same size as an external hard drive. It looks pretty too.

If you are as yet to navigate to the Google homepage today, you may be unaware that it's Earth Day today. Happy Earth Day everyone!

Earth Day is a day as old as the hills - even older. It's as old as the mud the hills are made from. Earth Day started back in ancient Egypt when the villages on the banks of the Nile would celebrate the annual floods which brought silt deposits to fertilize their land.

In celebration, the villagers would throw the mud at one another in joy and to this day people still mark the event with the giving and receiving of pieces of earth.

Actually, that's a complete lie but it was a nice story, wasn't it? No, Earth Day is about awareness of the environment as started in 1970 by a gentleman named Gaylord Nelson and to do our part at Tech Digest we're going to look at the best Earth-saving gadgets that money can buy.

The 80s are back or at least that's what I thought when I heard that the future was all about power dressing.

Un/fortunately, Professor Zhong Lin Wang of Georgia Tech is not talking about shoulder pads and trouser suits but instead has harnessed the power of nanowires to come up with materials that can convert kinetic energy into electrical current.

The professor's main idea is to make clothing woven from these fibres that would allow your body's natural motion to power any electrical device you may be carrying.

Matt Prescott, who's Energy Saving Day actually saw a rise in energy consumption at the end of it, said it was still worth his effort as it helped raise awareness of the causes and led to energy companies simplifying their home insulation schemes. Awesome.

Even though E-Day clearly raised zero awareness with consumers, as everyone happily boiled more water than strictly necessary and left the oven on to keep the kitchen warm thanks to the cooler E-Day weather.

The failure was down to a lack of publicity, according to Matt, with mainstream media simply not doing enough to help get the point across. Matt is currently unsure if there will be another E-Day. Seeing as energy use went up on the last one, it's probably best not to bother.

(Via BBC)

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Northern Ireland has just surged ahead in the sustainable energy world-saving race, thanks to the efforts of Harland & Wolff - the very same Harland & Wolff of Titanic fame.

The shipbuilder has engineered what it believes is the biggest tidal power system in the world today, with its SeaGen setup capable of pumping out 1.2 megawatts - enough to keep the PCs and TVs on in around 1000 homes. The SeaGen system is, so they say, the first tidal-powered energy system to be hooked into a country's national grid, with the tides of the Irish Sea expected to start delivering guilt-free electricity by the summer.

Here's hoping H&W's latest adventure with the words "biggest" and "sea" turn out a little better for everyone concerned.

(Via Reuters)

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If you missed it Google Israel went all black yesterday in honour of Earth Hour (something to do with raising awareness of energy conservation). Offline, Israelis were invited to turn off their lights from 8pm - 9pm, which is utterly ridiculous. Why not ask people to make sure they leave lights off during the day, rather then ask them to sit in darkness for an hour in the middle of the night?