Sunday, July 22, 2007

Simple reminders

I bought this charger for my phone back in February, after my bags had been lost on a flight through Paris.

For a while, I thought it was a bit of a waste to have an LED light up whenever the charger is plugged in. LED's don't consume a significant amount of power, but over time, electronics left on standby or mobile phone chargers left plugged in to the wall drain up to 10% of a households total energy. This little red LED was yet another tip of the energy iceberg in my apartment. After some time however, that turned out to be a good thing. The red light serves as a reminder that the charger is still drawing power and, if I'm not currently charging my phone, I should pull it out. The LED's consumption turned out to be a tiny price for a much greater savings.

Labels: green, mobilephones

posted by Mike @ 2:09 PM   |   Permalink                                       

About

I'm an Industrial & Interaction Designer living and working in Los Angeles.

My main interests are design, interactivity, user experience, mobility, technology, and the emerging trends and intersections of all of these.

You can contact me at: mike at selfconstruct dot com

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• All-you-can-eat 3G
• One Laptop Per Child out of the box
• Payback is a mother, honey
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• Power-Aware Cable and The Element
• Designing for '99
• ABB Powerwall at DUX
• DUX 2005
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• Crash and Burn

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Mike Kruzeniski, blog, Interaction Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, User Experience Design, Umea Institute of Design, UID, Sweden, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, ECIAD, Vancouver, Kunstohochschule Berlin-Weissensee, KHB, Berlin, Designafairs, Erlangen, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Microsoft Smart Personal Objects Technology, SPOT, Seattle, Nokia Design, Los Angeles, selfconstruct