Like an incandescent bulb, an ordinary LED shines light in all directions. An Austin TX company, Illumitex, is making LEDs that are much more directional. The package Illumitex is manufacturing is a square array of 16 LEDs that actually projects light in a square pattern. (There is a video clip showing this from Greentech Enterprise.) This means, for many lighting purposes - including illuminating signage, worksurface lighting, and so forth - more of the light goes where it is wanted.
While the Illumitex package only puts out 500 lumens, compared to the roughly 900 of a typical 60 watt incandescent bulb, the lighting is comparable, or even better, because the directional nature of the square LED package puts all of the light out in the direction where it is needed, instead of spreading it out in all directions. This also means that a light fixture using the Illumitex package would not need secondary reflectors or other directional lighting control, meaning that the fixture could be much smaller in size. And the Illumitex LED package only uses 6.5 watts.
via: Inhabitat
AT&T has just announced a USB-based telephone charger that does not pull electricity from the wall when it's not charging a phone. I don't know about you, but my charger is plugged in 100% of the time. That charger pulls a tiny amount of energy from the wall 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Multipy that by 100 million chargers in America and there's probably at least one coal-fired power plant in America dedicated entirely to that wasted power.
