It’s only a prototype at the moment (one of many that have come out lately focused on saving energy), which probably explains why it still looks like a child’s toy. Not a good idea when you consider that it sits between the wall outlet and the plug of your gadget. At any rate, PowerZoa transmits details on your power usage to a secure website, where you can use the interface to turn specific devices on or off.

Sooner or later something like this will be widely available, and there will be a mobile phone app that would allow me to control everything. And when that happens, I will be all over it. [Powerzoa via DVICE]

Tokyo company HiBot is developing a robot to transfer the dangerous duties of high-voltage wire inspection from meat-based humans to metal-based robots, in a move intended not just to decrease the likelihood of flash-frying technicians, but to make the inspection process — vital, now that many countries’ electrical infrastructures have components approaching 100 years old — more efficient.

The HiBot Exliner, pictured above and set to deploy in Japan, is the second such robot, and the most ambitious: While the LineScout, pictured at top and currently in trials in Canada, only inspects one line at a time, the Expliner will cover four. And unlike their human counterparts, Exliner and LineScout don’t even care if the lines are left active while they’re doing their respective things, because they ain’t got nothin’ to lose, y’know? Also: because they’re properly insulated. [IEEE via Make]

There’s no real info on this thing, but it appears to offer most major plug types by spinning the three segments around. It’d be the perfect thing to put in hotels, where people are continually unable to charge up their razor or laptop. [GadgetLab]

In other words, you could use duct tape to actually pimp something out as opposed to simply keeping it together. That must be what designer Keywon had in mind when he came up with a prototype called Sculpt-a-Light. By rolling the tape and connecting the ends, you complete the circuit. Of course, you would need a smaller and more effective power source before anything like this could actually be considered for the mass market, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. [Keywon via Architectradure via OhGizmo]

Yes, coconut-shell charcoal plays a key role in a facility which is estimated to turn into a $US10 billion project because for some weird reason the stuff acts like an “environmental sponge” and sucks up helium and hydrogen byproducts like nothing else. Experiments with the Tokamak reactor which is the heart of the ITER facility won’t even start until 2018, but I’m already getting concerned about what’s going to happen to the world supply of coconuts now. [H+ Magazine via Slashdot]

Whether it’s Blu-ray playback, gaming or just idling the system, the PS3 Slim uses less than half the power of the original.

So is that impressive? Yes and no.

Yes, because the PS3 Slim now uses about half the power of the Xbox 360 while gaming (96 watts vs. 187 watts). No, because the PS3 Slim still uses about four times more power during Blu-ray playback than you see in a Samsung standalone player (81 watts vs 22 watts).

In other words, the PS3 Slim is efficient for an HD game console, wasteful for a Blu-ray player. [Crave]

Meanwhile, take a trip pretty much anywhere else in the world and things change:

Looking at an EU dishwasher label…The machine is rated not only on total energy and water consumption, but also on cleaning performance, drying performance, size and noise. At a glance, consumers get a sense of how this dishwasher stacks up against every other dishwasher on the market….The American EnergyGuide label lists the manufacturer-submitted annual kilowatt-hours consumption estimate, compares that to the other manufacturer-submitted estimates, then crunches those numbers with another set of assumptions to project how much money it might cost to operate the machine for a year. It’s up to the shopper standing on the dishwasher aisle to figure out whether 100 or 1000 kilowatt-hours per year is a reasonable cost for clean plates.

Basically, the rest of the world gets a free issue of Consumer Reports on the label of every appliance they’re about to buy. The Americans need a subscription. [Popular Mechanics]

Reading this retrospective, I’m both surprised and unsurprised at how innovative and well-designed the Dustbuster is. It was rechargeable, wall-mountable, used a high-tech (for the time) design based on a familiar product (the dustpan), had an immediately catchy name and was instantly indispensable for every suburban family in the country. I remember sitting on the carpet and playing with it, which is certainly not something I was likely to do with a damn cleaning product, and the product’s name quickly became both a universal noun and verb (”Oh yeah, I Dustbusted the stairs yesterday.”).

The Dustbuster is, I’m comfortable saying, the gadget nerd’s cleaning tool. It’s portable, battery-powered, cute, and versatile, and has definitely made our lives better. Cleaner, at least. [Popular Mechanics]

In theory, a standby PS3 uses about $US250 a year when in the off standby position. An Xbox 360 uses a little bit less than that. Both those consoles use a little bit of power to maintain the wireless receiver (and USB charger, if you’re charging a controller) while the main power is off. If the Tricklesaver shuts this off when the TV is off, you theoretically won’t be able to charge your controllers or turn on your console wirelessly.

The solution is to just turn on your TV before you activate your console. But there’s not much you can do about that controller charging. It’s also $US35, which is kind of steep for something that only has space for one TV and one console. [PR Web via Go nintendo via Oh Gizmo]