I'm kinda a fan of Heelys. I mean, I know that there is no way they could ever be, like, cool...or anything. But, honestly, there's no way I could ever be cool either, and I'm down with that. So when you combine my favorite rolling sneakers with a miniature generator...this ecogeek gets pretty excited.

A couple of clever artists hacked a Heely to power a small LCD screen and a little micro-processor. Now, the shoe, as is, just gives you completely random directions (that being part of the project, an exploration of transportation to no where...a journey vs. destination thing...I guess) but it could just as easily be used for less profound, more practical tasks, like charging your dying cell phone or iPod. Hopefully the folks at Heelys will catch on, and add another level of dorkiness to their product.

Via the extremely snarky Gizmodo

In an exciting experiment concerning energy content of fried food, a Minnesota television station, WCCO, is going to attempt to power several television broadcasts from the Minnesota State Fiar with fair go-ers on bicycles. Not only will they save on generator fuel, but I imagine it's getting them some good press as well.

The fair starts in about a week, and the WCCO team will be setting up their normal news coverage except that they will have a "power core" consisting of several electricity-generating bicycles. They're going to try to use these bikes to power the entire set up while they broadcast fair news live. 

So why would we even try something this wacky? Because we wanted to see if it could be done. We wanted to see how much power we use for a newscast at the fair … or maybe it was just because we wanted to know how many corn dog calories it took to create a watt of energy.

Regardless of the reason (or our potential for failure), it's just more fun this way. The power of the unknown is just so electric … OK -- we'll stop now. Enjoy the ride and the corndogs! Oh and thanks for the watts!

The fair is twelve days long, and WCCO will be attempting to power three broadcasts with the bikes. I have no idea how much power a news van uses, so I can't give odds on whether they'll be successful. But I will say that the maximum power output of a typical fair goer is likely to be around 300 watts. Enough to power a personal computer and monitor. Without batteries for storing the power, it's not gonna be easy.

Way to go WCCO.

See Also:
-Muscle Power to Electric Power-
-Sun Wind Strength Bike-
-Power Output of Healthier Americans-