Turn boring old trees into power for your awesome iPhone
Going camping this spring? And by “camping” I mean hiking or biking with your home on your back, and heading out into the wilderness. I don’t mean loading up your SUV and dragging a grill, a tent the size of a European house and enough ball games to keep an entire schools-worth of kids occupied for a month.
So, if you’re heading out under your own power, how about taking a stove that a) requires no liquid fuel, b) burns fast and hot and c) charges your iPhone? What’s not to like?
Some combinations are so obviously good when you see/hear/taste them that you wonder why they haven’t existed forever. Of course, some *have* been around for that long.
Just 6,000 years ago, when the universe winked into existence, the Lord blessed us with such holy wonders as apple pie (or apple crumble in the King James bible) and vanilla ice-cream; Dungeons *and* dragons; and of course hurtling, death-dealing two-ton automobiles and chronically distracted drivers.
Now we can add another devine device to that list: the solar-powered hands-free speakerphone.
Since I got the Changers solar charger to test, I haven’t plugged a USB-chargeable device into anything else (with the exception of my iPad). Changers comes as a kit containing a solar panel and a battery pack, along with a a bag of tips that fit most cellphones and gadgets. But this description doesn’t do justice to what is a rather excellent and useful device.
As Tim Cook put it at this morning’s event, Apple’s iCloud “just works” and 100 million customers love the lofty storage service.
Greenpeace, however, says Apple’s iCloud is an unsustainable coal-fueled mess and that the just-announced movie service will only make it worse.
“Apple is about innovation, but buying coal at really cheap source is not innovative,” Greenpeace senior policy analyst Gary Cook told Cult of Mac. “Those data centers [supporting iCloud] are fueled by about 60 percent coal.”
It's not the only bamboo iPad case around, but it's the only one that launched today
It’s light, it’s tough and it’s beautiful to both look at and touch. Is there anything better than bamboo for making an iPad case? Maybe not. And Silva’s bamboo case for the iPad 2 is finally, finally available to buy.
Your iPhone and iPad are great paper replacements, but they couldn’t actively stop it. Until now: PaperKarma is an iPhone app which lets you stop paper junk mail, just by snapping a photo of it.
Apple takes pride in making its products environmentally friendly. It has worked to reduce its carbon footprint by keeping its product packaging to a minimum, removing toxic materials from its entire product line, making its devices more energy efficient and lots more.
However, the company isn’t the greenest of tech companies. It ranks fourth in Greenpeace’s “Guide to Greener Electronics,” with HP, Dell, and Nokia leading the way.
![Explore The World And Its Hazards With Fragile Earth Photo App [Review]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/fragileearth1.jpg "Fragile Earth")
![Changers Charger Powers Your Phone With The Sun [Review]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/changers-3.jpg "changers-3")
