The 360 Paper Bottle: On Guilt, Inspiration, a Better Idea, Birds & Oceans

Posted on December 15, 2009 by J.A. Ginsburg

Leave it to an 8 year-old. Specifically, the 8 year-old son of Jim Warner, managing director of design consultancy Brandimage, who took one look at a plastic bottle his dad had helped create and said, “Oh. You make trash.” Once the sting of that nasty little unvarnished truth wore off, Warner set to work to [...]

Filed under: climate change, innovation, oil, recycling, water | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

PopTech 2009 Take-Aways: On Amateurs, Mining Cross-Disciplinary Gold, FLAP Bags, Science Fellows, $12 (well, $10) Computers, the Solar Hope, a Few Ideas for Next Year & Some Darn Fine Fiddling…

Posted on October 27, 2009 by J.A. Ginsburg

It was a wonderful little bubble while it lasted. Getting up before dawn. Dressing in easy-to-peel layers for whatever the day might bring. Walking over to Boynton-McKay, a diner of rare perfection, where the wi-fi was as reliably good as the pancakes (a boon in connectivity-challenged Camden…) Ascending the stairs and more stairs of the [...]

Filed under: agriculture, climate change, disease surveillance, energy, food, forests, innovation, lighting, maps, oil, rain forests, rapid diagnostics, recycling, reforestation, solar, transportation, visualization, water | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

PopTech: Day 1 – Reimagining and Beyond Imagining

Posted on October 23, 2009 by J.A. Ginsburg

Blame it on the birds. And the elephants, lions, biochar, Indonesian agroforestry, dirt batteries, mechanical caterpillar waves, global maps, messenger bag-cum-lighting systems, a cyber-dance experience and one very lovely essay about migration. But not too far into the first day of PopTech, the conference’s “Reimagining America” theme disappeared. Which was fine. It seemed too limited [...]

Filed under: agriculture, charcoal, climate change, energy, eWaste, food, forests, innovation, lighting, mobile devices, rain forests, recycling, reforestation, solar, traffic, visualization, water | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Phone Riff: Hope Phones, Healthy Texting, Conflict Minerals, Ecological Intelligence, Blue Sweaters and Doing the Right Thing

Posted on May 26, 2009 by J.A. Ginsburg

Hope Phones is one of those “Gosh, yes!” ideas: Get people to donate old cell phones to a recycling company Get recycling company to assign each phone a value Use value to trade for refurbished phones Donate refurbished phones to clinics in developing countries to use for sending health-related text messages Good begets good Stanford [...]

Filed under: conflict minerals, disease surveillance, energy, eWaste, innovation, mobile devices, recycling | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Toolmaking for the Greater Good: from Amy Smith’s D-Lab to a Cambodian Innovation Lab, Going Local for Better Answers

Posted on October 27, 2008 by J.A. Ginsburg

As part of Popular Mechanics magazine’s annual conference on world-changing innovation, Amy B. Smith, MIT’s pied piper of Design-That-Makes-a-Difference, was named this year’s Breakthrough Leadership award-winner. It was an easy choice. Smith and her team of “D-Lab” students have helped set the bar for practical brilliance. Whether they are making charcoal from plant waste or [...]

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