Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household

The UK’s now showing off what it claims to be the “first” zero-emission home design or, more specifically, the first to meet “level six requirements” of the Code for Sustainable Homes set to go in effect in the year 2016, according to the BBC. Designed by Kingspan Off-Site, the so-called “Lighthouse” design includes, among other things, solar panels on the roof and a biomass boiler on the inside that runs on various organic fuels, with a waste separation system also included to weed out trash that can be burned to provide additional power. The house also packs in additional insulation to cut down on heat loss, and boasts a “wind catcher” for ventilation in the summer. While those measures will apparently help to reduce the house’s annual energy bill to just £31 ($61), the house itself will demand quite a premium over less efficient homes, costing about 40% more, although Kingspan says that’ll come done if they’re produced en masse.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Storage

It looks like Samsung’s not the only one trying to build a better NAND flash chip, with Toshiba now joining the fray today with news that it’s made some advancements of its own. Much like Samsung, Toshiba’s apparently managed to cram more storage into roughly the same size chips by changing the way the various elements are stacked, in this case busting things out into three dimensions. According to Toshiba, the so-called “pillars” of stacked memory elements can be squeezed into a tighter space thanks in part to some shared peripheral circuits, although that apparently comes at the expense of a longer and more complex manufacturing process. What’s not clear, however, is exactly how big an increase that’ll translate to in terms of bits and bytes, nor is there any indication as to when we might actually see some NAND units based on the technology.

[Via TG Daily]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Portable Audio, Storage

For fans of Jack and Meg, it’s probably a long-standing dream of yours to purchase the Icky Thump album on limited edition thumb drives complete with cartoon renditions of the rockers, but even if it that understandably bizarre scenario never actually crossed your mind, you can still make it a reality. Apparently, the White Stripes are offering up their latest album on two fairly rare USB drives, each sporting 512MB of internal space, an artistic rendition of one of the band mates, and thirteen rockin’ tracks in Apple Lossless format. Only 3,333 of each will be created, and while just one will run you a whopping $57.50, you may as well grab the duo for a discounted $99. Of course, we’re still not entirely certain if these things are actually licensed by the band, but it’s safe to assume that a seven nation army of fans will have these bought up before the legal teams can even get their case together.

[Via BoingBoing]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Household, Networking

Microsoft has just announced a tasty banana for all you code monkeys out there, in the form of the first publicly available download (well, for non-beta testers at least) of the widely anticipated Windows Home Server operating system. Release Candidate 1, as this build is known, is said to offer a number of improvements over previous betas, and is the first version that participants in the Code2Fame Challenge can use to work on their entries. So go ahead, get your download on, and try to whip up some WHS add-ins that’ll net you a portion of the $50,000 prize package.

[Via Windows Home Server Blog]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Transportation

From the same company that let consumers create their own ads belittling it as an eco-terrorist and worse, comes a new promotional stunt that earns one lucky winner the right to drive home in a vehicle that’s been scratched up by several thousand fellow contestants. Billed as the “world’s first ever Scratch Car-d,” the specific Captiva that Chevrolet gave away in the UK’s Covent Garden this morning spent two months getting coated with the same silver latex used to make instant-win lottery tickets, which was then divided up into 16,995 tiny boxes to reflect the Captiva’s price in pounds sterling. No word on who ended up with what’s bound to be a pretty atrocious-looking vehicle, but we’re sure that this one won’t be too hard to spot on the streets of London.

[Thanks, Omar]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!