To all ladies reading, you might as well forget about Victoria Secret because Triumph International is in the house! This daring manufacturer from Japan has designed probably the most useless piece of clothes ever: the Solar Brasserie.

The Bra generates electricity and can display small messages because it is wired to a mini electric bulletin board. That’s not a joke and it gets even better. The bra padding can be used to store water or vodka or whiskey and to drink it by using a straw that you insert inserted into the brasserie cup.

If there are any thoughts running through your mind about pollution or the ozone layer, you must breathe easier now because the brasseries is made of organic cloth (cotton grown without fertilizers and pesticides) only.

Now for you boys, enjoy the pictures and fantasize about it, if you can.

via GreenLaunches

We may not need futurist and inventor Raymond Kurzweil to tell us that solar energy is going to rule in 20 years or the fact that nanotechnology could give global warming a big chill (pdf link), but it’s always a good thing to be reassured. He is one of the distinguished futurists that predicted the demise of the Soviet Union and foresaw the explosive growth of the Internet and wireless systems.

Getting back to solar energy, Kurzweil said that we already have 10,000 times more sunlight than we would need to convert into electricity and serve the whole world. However, 1% of total energy we use comes from sunlight and wind. He also stated that we may be 5 years away from the point where solar power becomes efficient and competitive to fight fossil fuels.

“We also see an exponential progression in the use of solar energy,” he said. “It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we’ll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.”

A bright future

The technology is going to develop and becoming efficient is similar to using nano-engineered materials for solar panels which not only makes them lighter but also easier to install. This is something Google likes and invested in it ever since the technology was developed.

Other technologies that will bring solar power mainstream are solar concentrators made of parabolic mirrors that would collect solar energy from a very large area and sends it to a small collector or a small but efficient steam turbine.

“You could, for example, create hydrogen or hydrogen-based fuels from the energy produced by solar panels and then use that to create fuel for fuel cells, he said. There are already nano-engineered fuel cells, microscopic in size, that can be scaled up to store huge quantities of energy”, Kurzweil said.

Knowing Raymond Kurzweil’s history as a futurist, we can only be happy that the technology is on the right track to “rule” in 20 years. If you trust him and would like to know more on what is going to happen you can read his predictions : The Age of Intelligent Machines(from 1990), The Age of Spiritual Machines (from 1999) and The Singularity is Near (from 2005).

photo by Jan Egil Kristiansen

Exploiting the solar energy has become a aim for many companies. So, Voltaic which has a great history in producing solar powered devices, has recently released a laptop bag able to recharge your gadgets. The Generator features solar panels that produce 14.7 watts per single panel. Calculating the total amount of energy produced, they estimate it could fully charge a laptop in a sunny day.

However, the Generator has its own battery to cover the lack of solar energy for cloudy days. The bag comes with many connectors and adapters for mobiles, mp3 players and other geek gadgets. Unfortunately, its price of $599 could be too much for the average customer, but if you calculate the advantages of using the solar energy in places without electricity it would be a nice addition.

via Engadget