Bare CFL bulbs give off harsh light. Soften it with the Bright Idea Shade.

The Bright Idea Shade is a project of the Eyebeam OpenLab, by Sustainability Action Group members Michael Mandiberg and Steve Lambert, with Simon Jolly, Peter Duyan, and Oscar Torres. We are converting all of our silver tipped incandescent bulbs into CFL bulbs (as they burn out.) The problem is a bare CFL bulb gives off very harsh light. So we set about designing a lampshade for the bulbs. We started with the Universal Polygon Lampshade and made it fit a CFL bulb, built it out of heat resistant photo diffuser material (found a diffuser material that could be laser cut, and built a laser cutter template. Stay tuned for an instructable with all the templates and other goodness. Plus a DIY kit.

Instructions on how to talk to anyone, written by hand. Based on an earlier project. Simple instructions, easy to follow.

The Power Cart is a mobile unit that delivers alternative power to people in the streets.
In most parts of the world, the street is a place where social interactions abound, commerce rules, and street vendors around the globe bring to local populations the things they need right at their door steps. Knife sharpening in India, refills of gas in Africa, fake Gucci bags in Paris and chair massages in New York, the Power Cart takes an old idea from yesterday’s streets and adapts it to serve the needs of today’s urban dwellers. Need a charge on your cell phone? Your laptop is about to die and you really need to check that email? Or maybe there is no power around you at all? Where ever you might be in the world, hail the Power Cart for a quick fix.

Real Costs (TheRealCosts.com) is a Firefox plug-in that inserts emissions data into travel related e-commerce websites. The first version adds CO2 emissions information to airfare websites such as Orbitz.com, Delta.com, etc, and to car direction websites such as Mapquest.com. Think of it like the nutritional information labeling on the back of food... except for emissions.
The objective of the Real Costs is to increase awareness of the environmental impact of certain day to day choices in the life of the Internet user. By presenting this environmental impact information in the place where decisions are being made, it will hopefully create an impact on the viewer, encourage a sense of individual agency, and provide a set of alternatives and immediate actions.
Experience the project by installing the Real Costs plug-in into your Firefox application. Currently, this plug-in pulls each flight/driving information from the page, calculates and reinserts the CO2 produced. It is configured to work on the websites of the major worldwide air carriers, and several car direction websites. A list of these sties and scientific documentation is available on the Wiki (http://therealcosts.com/wiki).

Due in good part to industrial agricultural practices, which rely on monocultures, chemical fertilizers and genetic modification to reap a predictable product, over 70% of our crop biodiversity was lostin the 20th century. Genetic erosion puts our food supply at risk from epidemics and infestations, which a more multifarious mix would guard against. To keep them from extinction, plants must be grown. During Sow-in, the general public, along with community gardening groups, will make seedling pots out of recycled materials and sow seeds of food plants on Slow Food's most endangered foods list and the Ark of Taste.
Together, we will distribute 100's of seed pots to community gardeners across New York City for transplant, care, harvest, and seed saving. Our focus plants are Chapalote Corn, Chiltepin Pepper, Native American Sunflower and Seminole Pumpkin, Beaverdam Pepper, Fish Pepper, Algonquian Squash, Boston Marrow Squash, Amish Paste Tomato, German Pink Tomato, Orange Oxheart Tomato, and Moon & Stars Watermelon.

The Off-Grid Outlet is a solar-powered AC outlet and 12V DC power port for patrons of the outdoor courtyard of the Brooklyn restaurant the Habana Outpost, to be installed in the summer of 2008 and controlled by a robot built by high school students. The system has a custom two-axis motorized tracking mechanism to increase the output of the solar panel by pointing it towards the sun. The Outlet's users can directly drive the solar panel using switches and observe the relationship between the panel, the sun, and the energy captured and consumed via embedded displays.

The restaurant is also working with student groups via its non-profit, Habana Labs, to develop systems for automating the tracking mechanism. Following the sun is a non-trivial, real-world robotics challenge. The problem is further complicated by the particulars of the panel's ultimate location, which will only receive direct sunlight for about half the day.

Students from Elizabeth Irwin High School and Friends Seminary are currently undertaking this challenge under the guidance of Tim Cooper, an educator at Little Red School House/Elizabeth Irwin High School, and will be installing and testing their work throughout the duration of the Eyebeam exhibit.

This project is supported by Habana Outpost: http://www.ecoeatery.com, Glide Design: http://www.glide-inc.com/, and the Little Red School House/Elizabeth Irwin High School http://www.lrei.org/.

The Revolution Door is a modified revolving door comprised of three parts - a redesigned central core replacing that of any existing or new revolving door, a mechanical/electrical system that harnesses human energy and redistributes electricity to an output, and an output device that maps the harnessed energy. By mechanically harvesting a negligible amount of human energy and converting it to a tangible display through the use of a generator, the Revolution Door will directly communicate a single person's contribution to an energy cycle possible through the metabolic relationship between people, technology, and architecture.

Far too often, in our own lab as in labs we visit, we leave computers on for hours if not days. We made screen savers attractive and interesting so that we would want to keep watching them. "Turn me off" is a screen saver that reminds you that the best thing to do with an unused computer is to turn it off.

File Download Coming Soon.

DIY Budget Gallery is an online resource for organizing guerilla outdoor art galleries. Between 2000 and 2005, the Budget Gallery coordinated nine exhibitions in busy urban areas around San Francisco (and another handful in other venues) with a branch opening in Los Angeles in 2005. DIY Budget Gallery attempts to cover every aspect of organizing a Budget Gallery, and can be used as a resource for organizing other, related events or interventions.

Ronald's Crisis demonstrates how a group of people can close multiple chain store outlets using paper and tape. McDonald's is used in our model and the documentation includes a video and script of how the project was done and how it can be repeated. Initially completed for the Conflux Festival 2007.