Puff is attached near the exhaust pipe of your vehicle. Its color changes dynamically, visualizing the amount of pollution your car is producing. Green indicates the lowest rate of pollution, red the highest.

Modern artists have often tackled environmental and ecological issues head on, such as through incorporating litter and refuse into sculptures, while other artists (such as photo, video and film artists) have sought to document industrial waste and/or have taken strong oppositional/advocacy stances in their works.

In recent years, many artists have sought to move beyond these “reactive”, commentary, and  documentary approaches and create objects and devices that serve practical purposes (if still a bit fanciful in appearance). One such artist/designer is Karolina Sobecka, whose car emissions monitoring device, ‘Puff’ , provides colorful feedback to the car owner on how “cleanly” (or efficiently) he/she is using/burning gasoline.

This author recently contacted Ms. Sobecka and asked her about this device (’Puff’) as well as her other designs, and her artistic/social/environmental goals.

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From green gadgets and gizmos, to DVDs and loose-leaf teas, I get the occasional product sent to me for a review.  In most cases, I like to give it a thorough once-over before I’m comfortable putting a stamp of (dis)approval on it.

If I take a long time to review a product, it is usually because: the product stinks and the manufacturer wouldn’t want me to publish anything anyway; the product really stinks and I don’t want to waste my time or my readers’ time with it, or; the product is actually quite good and the length of time spending reviewing it is extended because I’m trying to find something bad to say about it — but can’t. In the case of the DOT-it LED lights Sylvania sent me, the reason for my slow turnaround is definitely the last one. These lights are great.

The first of the two lights sent to me by Sylvania was the DOT-it Golden Dragon (pictured top). The ninja-sounding Golden Dragon is the Cadillac of Sylvania’s puck-style LED lights.

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Fairview has become the first town in Texas to build a street lit entirely by low-energy LEDs.

There are 82 light-emitting diodes on the newly constructed Fairview Parkway. The LEDs came from EvoLucia, a division of Sunovia Energy Technologies in Sarasota, Florida.

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The old electromechanical electric utility meter changed little in principle over the last hundred years. In the next coming decades the smart meter will progress as much over this meter as the PC has over the typewriter. It will utilize a microcontroller as sophisticated as any PC. It will have its own web page that can be part of your home page and your social network. It can evolve to best serve the most efficient use of renewable energy.

The present meters are also called “Thomson” meters after the supposed inventor Elihu Thomson the first CEO of General Electric (after restructuring of Edison General Electric). Thomson’s meter was like a clock with a torsion pendulum. Instead of a spring, the force between two magnets governed the speed of the pendulum.

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Do you dread getting your December electric bill?  Holiday lights and decorations can be a drain on your wallet, as well as the environment.  However, new technology can help you save money and lower your carbon footprint.

LED holiday lights:

• Are safer (they don’t heat up like normal incandescent lights)
• Use less electricity (40 watts for a 100 light incandescent strand, versus approximately 8 watts for a similar LED strand)
• Last longer (average expected life is 25,000 hours)
• Can be strung together in larger amounts (up to 25-75 strands in one long string, versus 3-5 for incandescents)

Sounds great, huh?  But, as I discovered, there may be some hidden issues with LEDs.

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The lights are still bright, but thanks to theater owners and The Broadway League teaming up with the NRDC and the city, the lights are also LEDs and compact fluorescents on Broadway.

On Tuesday, the cast of Wicked and Mayor Bloomberg announced the roll out of Broadway Goes Green. Along with replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs and CFLs, theaters are taking steps like using eco-friendly detergent to wash their costumes and icing performers’ sore muscles with bags of frozen peas rather than chemical ice packs.

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I went to visit a friend, Cameron Sinclair, who’s doing great work through his organization, Architecture for Humanity. One person he mentioned in our conversation was Sheila Kennedy and her project Portable Light. From the website:

“Portable Light is an interdisciplinary research, design and engineering project to create and implement new models for energy efficient electrical power and lighting. Portable Light applies creative processes and strategic integrative thinking to optimize existing semi-conductor technologies and create new applications to serve the large number of people—more than 2 billion—who do not have access to electric light or power. Portable Light is based upon the principle that global needs for technology development are inevitably interconnected. Knowledge, techniques, market solutions and data produced by the project benefit the “third” world and the “first” world where the need to imagine, design and develop energy efficient alternatives to the centralized and increasingly costly electrical grid is becoming ever more important.”

We’ll be keeping a close eye on LEDs, HBLEDs and OLEDs. Lots of design bandwidth in these lighting technologies.