Datexx SuperBattery is an all-encompassing solution to most any battery-operated gadget with a USB connection. Here I sit with wires spewing out of my laptop – iPod, digital camera, PDA…and rather than suck power from my computer, which in turn sucks electricity from the grid, I could plug these gadgets into the SuperBattery, crank away, and get powered batteries and powerful biceps at the same time. Who needs a Wii Fit?

The 600mA Mega Power Battery provides instant power - if fully charged, that amounts to basically a fully charged cell phone battery. If you’re feeling lazy, you can charge the SuperBattery via its AC adapter, though the whole point seems to be to get away from wall plug-ins.

It does require quite a bit of cranking – you have to put in 2 minutes of effort to get 6 minutes of talk time for your cell phone, and should you need to crank while talking, you run the risk of being hung up on as some sort of heavy breathing pervert. Should you be looking for this kind of exercise, you might want to go bionic instead and charge up while on a walk. But, for something useful to have during power outages or on trips, it’s a pretty handy sidekick. And no new gadget is legit without having a few extra “and it cooks too!” features – the SuperBattery has a built-in flashlight! If you like this kind of wind-up toy, there are others to play with.

Via Inhabitat

We spend an awful lot of time talking about cars here at EcoGeek. And that's not necessarily something that we're proud of. We think that cars, in the end, can never be green...only greener. Which is why we love Carectomy, and also why we love these bike trees.

In general, bike racks suck. They're used improperly, often there aren't enough around, and they can even be downright insecure. Parking and walking away from your thousand-dollar investment is never fun, especially when we all know that any lock, with enough persistence, can be cut.

Enter the bike tree, a marvolous bit of technology which will keep your bike safe in any situation (save a meteorite.) Abhinav Dapke of Bahrain and India designed the trees to deal with theft, and with congested bike parking. The trees actually use significantly less space than traditional bike parking.

Just hook your bike into the device, push the thumbprint scanner, and the bike gets lifted to safety. When you return, scan your thumb again your bike comes down to meet you. A simple system, and one that could also be performed with RFID or a swipe card, to lower the costs of thumb-scanning.

In any case, one more way to make biking more convenient. Now if they just put a roof over the whole thing we  wouldn't have to worry about soggy-butts after a rainstorm.

Via TreeHugger