It's my life, you're just along for the ride!

Good design often tackles multiple issues with one swoop, and good green design does this while helping to create a better world. The Hydroleaf is a striking design that is part bus shelter, part street light, part rain catchment system, and — get this — part water dispenser. Conceived by Iranian Industrial Design student Mostafa Bonakdar the Hydroleaf is intended to be used in developing arid regions.

via Solar-Powered Hydroleaf Shelter Collects Light and Water | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World.

via Well, Thats One Way to Stop Your PC From Overheating.

Last night I quoted Marco Armant asking if Android phones would ever achieve iPhone-level polish and usability and a lot of Android enthusiasts fired back that they could do things on Android that they couldn’t do on iPhone, so Android was more usable.Well, no.That’s not usability, that’s functionality. Those two can be as diametrically opposed as simplicity and complexity…Copy and paste on iPhone is broadly consistent system-wide. On Android, even Gingerbread, there are at least three or four different ways of doing copy and paste in different apps, including Google’s own Gmail. They’re both functional but iPhone is more usable. FaceTime on iPhone 4 is locked to Wi-Fi but works the same way as placing a phone call. Android and before them, Nokia devices had front-facing cameras first but relied on 3rd party apps to handle the video call, even over 3G, but with decidedly mixed results. Android is more functional, iPhone is more usable.I’ve mentioned other things before as

via iPhone, Android, and the difference between usability and functionality [Sticky] | TiPb.

What comes to mind when you think of newspapers? Whatever it is, it’s probably not streaming video. And yet, one of the interesting facts in a new survey of the online video market (PDF link) from video-hosting platform Brightcove and analytics provider TubeMogul is that newspapers overtook broadcasters in terms of the total number of video minutes streamed in the third quarter of 2010. As news publishers of all kinds try to move their operations online, more and more seem to be getting the message that the future includes video.The Brightcove and TubeMogul report shows that the number of video titles uploaded by newspapers climbed by more than 50 percent in the quarter to almost half a million, and that was more than double the number of videos that newspaper sites uploaded in the same quarter of 2009. The total number of minutes streamed rose to 313 million in the most recent quarter, the report says, compared with 290 million for broadcasters. As Brightcove and TubeMogul note in the study, their figures are not necessarily representative of the entire video market, but the data is still interesting.

via Video Killed the Radio Star, But Might Save Newspapers: Tech News «.

 Weve already marveled at the Chevy Volts ability to let you turn up the AC while its still plugged in to the A/C, courtesy of its OnStar app. Now we can confirm the European model of Nissans Leaf is getting the same sort of functionality, and its said to be standard — no monthly fees like youll be stuck with on the Volt. Were still not sure whos providing the wireless connectivity in the US, but abroad it comes courtesy of Telenor Connexion, which will enable a mobile phone or PC to access the Carwings Data Center remotely, to check charging status and modify the cars climate controls. In an EV the cars heating and cooling can be two of the biggest sinks for the onboard battery packs, so this ability to get the car up or down to temp while its still plugged in could help you spend more kW driving and less on acclimatizing.

via European Nissan Leaf gets always-on connection, lets you turn up the AC wirelessly — Engadget.