Facilitated Living and Nano Drones Take Flight at CES 2016
One thing we’ve learned over the years is that drones can come in a variety of shapes and sizes from friendly to nefarious. One of the more prolific and innovative vendors is MOTA, whose JETJAT Nano has won praise on Amazon and has stood out from the crowd for its tiny size. Able to perch on the tip of a finger and fit adorably in its own controller, it claims to be the world's smallest, lightest drone at a reasonable price point ($39).
Now MOTA is already seeking to improve on this synergy of by adding camera capabilities to its new JETJAT series models, including the tiny JETJAT NANO-C—basically the same winsome model with a 0.3-megapixel camera added on. The larger JETJAT Live-W will have Wi-Fi capabilities, allowing you to stream live video.
MOTA has also branched into other areas of consumer electronics that complement their cause. For those who prefer to use a GoPro mounted on a previously cameraless drone to capture their adventures, MOTA has designed a wireless charger that is perfect for replenishing the device’s power.
Another intriguing device is their new SmartRing, which despite some setbacks with shipping units on its Kickstarter campaign seems to offer an unprecedented visual element—a display that helps you keep track of what your gestures are actually accessing and doing. A working prototype will be on display at CES.
“If there's one thing the SmartRing and Wireless Charger have in common it's how they facilitate everyday life," said MOTA's Kevin Vera. "The SmartRing lets you discretely stay connected whether you're at the office or on a date, while the charger eliminates the hassle of battery swapping and tinkering for GoPro users everywhere."
The NANO-C and six more drones that are adaptable for both personal and professional use, and which Vera describes as "plain ole' fun," will debut in Q1/Q2 of this year.
Get the most out of this year's CES with PSFK CES 2016 Guide, featuring the best booths and events, as well as daily schedules and recommendations. Check out our coverage on PSFK and head over to our SlideShare page to download the full guide.
Top-Of-The-Line Portable Charging...In a Handbag [CES 2016]
Our portable devices have become such an indispensable part of our everyday lives—but their battery life hasn't increased to match. Rather than bringing all manner of unwieldy devices with you or making your phone or tablet physically larger with a battery case, a new phone-charging bag being introduced by Knomo is a seamless new way to make sure your device stays as charged and cozy as it is at home.
The Drop & Go Charge Pocket uses a magnet to automatically attract your iPhone to its built-in charger. The technology uses a new charging method to retain 95-98 percent of its power output, compared to the 60 or 70 percent achieved by induction charging, the technology that is usually behind wireless charging.
Knomo's magnetic connection technology use magnetic forces to center and attract direct leads together so that a direct physical contact is made, reducing any loss of power. Induction chargers, meanwhile, use radio waves to transfer power between a transmitter and receiver, resulting in energy transmission losses and longer charging times. The technology is also completely designed around getting the phone to latch on and start charging quickly. Knomo has designed their batteries with specialized PCB boards that auto-detect when a device is connected and deliver power quickly.
As a result, the technology is more than just a gimmick for personal convenience: it also provides top-of-the-line portable charging capability, whether you need the convenience factor or not.
Knomo has used magnets as a case and storage solution before, with the Mag:Collection providing a mount and a case fitted with a steel plate to keep phones handy within the home. But this is the first time the company has attempted to combine these multiple innovations. The bags touting the technology will debut in the spring, and include the Newbury Briefcase and the Vigo Top Zip Tote.
Get the most out of this year’s CES with PSFK CES 2016 Guide, featuring the best booths and events, as well as daily schedules and recommendations. Check out our coverage on PSFK and head over to our SlideShare page to download the full guide.
Could eBooks Be the Breath of Fresh Air the Tech-Resistant Novel Needs?
eBooks have been both praised and decried by readers. They conveniently provide the most important features of printed books while at the same time collapsing the tactile and, according to some research, read experience of the printed word. But the flexible designs and fonts (or lack thereof) seen in most eBook files have spoken to some experimentally minded writers as a wellspring of creative opportunity. Google's Creative Lab has provided a platform on which authors can answer this call.
The project is spearheaded by Visual Editions, a London-based publisher founded in 2010 that creates beautifully designed, typographically playful, and often illustrated editions of classic literature as well as contemporary publications of their own.
"People sometimes say that physical books have qualities that do not transfer well to digital. We want to show that digital has narrative qualities that cannot transfer to print," Visual Editions says of this new initiative, in its FAQ. In a fittingly linguistically playful way, the list of qualities they provide includes terms like "data-led, locative, generative, algorithmic, sensor-based, fluid, non-linear, expandable, cookie-ish, personalized, proximal, augmented, real-time, time-sensitive, adaptive, collaborative, and share-y."
The first wave of books, Entrances & Exits by Reif Larsen and The Truth About Cats & Dogs by San Riviere and Joe Dunthorne, already feature a smattering of these technologies. Entrances & Exits is illustrated using Google Maps; it's a Borgesian love story that allows you not to just see the locations being referenced in the story, but pan around within them and experience them like a true city-dweller.
The latter title is a collaboration between a poet and a novelist and features a visual identity of pulsating dots and the option to switch between the two authors' sections at any time. Though its narrative pretense isn't as invested in the technology as with Larsen's work, it sure beats flipping between the front and the back of a real-life book with a 'split' organization.
The books retail for $4.25 (though they are currently discounted to $3.25). Two more books will be forthcoming in the spring: Strata, by Tommy Lee Edwards & I Speak Machine, which "unfolds," and All This Rotting By Alan Trotter, which "loses its memory." One can only guess what web technologies they will bring into play.
Shampoo Bottle Is a Self-Contained Manifesto Against Disposable Packaging
Every insignificant thing we consume that is packaged in typical plastic takes hundreds of years to degrade. A stylish new prototype of a reusable container container called Nephentes doesn't let you forget its designer's original manifesto against plastic waste.
Designer Marilu Valente of Merged Vertice has often observed that, in terms of recycling, "in the cosmetics sector, the containers are especially problematic; usually their unique function is to attract the consumer’s attention." Her response to this has been to create a container for soaps, shampoo and the like that is equally eye-catching but designed to be reusable and recyclable.
To this end, the Nephentes container functions without a cap (the caps of even the most widely recyclable containers are often not believed to be recyclable and are thrown in the trash, even if they can indeed be recycled). Instead, the tip of the Nephentes neatly plugs itself up with its narrow, nozzle-like tip.
"The inspiration came from 2 main factors. The first one being that usual personal care packaging are made with different types of plastics (one for the cap and one for the body) so I wanted to have a shape which which integrated the body of the bottle and the cap," said Valente. "Since I follow biomimicry as a design principle, I have looked at the natural shape Nepenthes which are carnivorous plants."
But what's the use of yet another reusable container in this disposable world, other than the "travel" containers frequently marketed by companies that are often just more plastic to buy? According to an interview with Fast Company, Valente envisions her design existing in a slightly more eco-conscious world for it to achieve its maximum effect—a world where products like shampoo are sold in bulk and customers bring their own containers. If this sounds like a fantasy, just look at German supermarkets like Original Unverpackt; it doesn't seem far-fetched for other countries to emulate their example.
In a move that reduces product waste, the Nephentes also is squeezable, eliminating a problem spotted by Consumer Reports in which an average of 25 percent of the original product was deemed inaccessible and left behind in standard lotion containers when they were thrown out.
The Nephentes remains just a prototype-in-the-making, but it was awarded first place in the Concepts We Wish Were Real international design competition, encouraging its possible production one day. The fact that it has not been produced yet means Valente aims to one day manufacture it out of bioplastics – further in line with its eco-friendly cause.
Could eBooks Be the Breath of Fresh Air the Tech-Resistant Novel Needs?
Crowdsourced Parisian Block Would Embody the Tastes of the Masses
The battle for the visual heart and soul of cities is often characterized as being between two monoliths: the traditional beauty of old world-style architecture and the cost-saving glassy and metallic look of the modern. Either way, actual citizens of the city don't get much of a voice in the matter.
Périphériques Architectes, in response to a design competition called Reinventer Paris for affordable housing in a plot in Paris's Rive Gauche urban development zone, thought differently. They proposed a "crowd built" agglomerated structure called Paris Par Nous Paris Pour Nous ("Paris By Us, Paris For Us"). It weaves together many different styles and tastes to house a pluralistic community.
The building's styles include Haussman-style 19th-century architecture, suburban structures, the postmodern, and even some Moorish-inspired windows — all wrapped in a postmodern, pluralistic fantasia of a building that looks like something out of the film Howl's Moving Castle.
As part of the Paris By Us, Paris For Us initiative, local residents would be able to pool their funds to have affordable housing built for themselves — in effect, crowdfunding the project. Different crowdfunded levels will offer rewards like an inscription on one or more bricks of the facade; interested parties can also buy shares of the Civil Society of Real estate investment (SCPI) to invest in apartments which will then be leased.
A promotional video exclaims that tenants and owners will "partagent le meme palier" ("share on the same level"), but it is difficult to foresee such conditions in such broad terms. The architects were particularly focused on making the apartments inside diverse and appealing to a variety of different demographics and price points, ranging from € 12.10 / m² to 29 € / m².
Though the laureates of the initiative, which was headed by Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, ended up being 23 tame and tasteful projects like the Morland by David Chipperfield Architects, Paris By Us, Paris For Us only sees this as a beginning. Perhaps the judges were startled by the idea, but Périphériques is eager to prove that the world is ready for it.
The World's Tallest Manmade Structure Will Be Overrun By Plants
The tower, a project done on commission with a yet-undisclosed client, was designed with help from German engineer Schlaich Bergermann Partner and British design studio Atmos. It would be populated with hundreds of different plant species, with the goal of creating a complete mini-ecosystem.
Though it would be planted from top to bottom, the building would also have a park at its apex, creating a fitting climax for a visitor. Visitors would travel upward in elevators designed like translucent capsules. The structure's imposing height meant a special engineering study that found it would have to be a lightweight structure supported by a network of pre-stressed cables.
Somewhat unusual for a building, the Mile was not designed with any particular city in mind. Director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab and architect Carlo Ratti's works focus more on innovative ideas than adaptations to the culture of particular locations. As it dwarfs the Burj Khalifa, The Mile's height, however majestically planted, would most likely be accepted in a city known for the height of its buildings, like New York, Hong Kong or Shenzhen.
How would a building populated completely with plants be profitable? Ratti says he will explain this next month at the Cannes real estate fair MIPIM. The model for such a striking and tourist-attracting building would be similar to that of the Eiffel Tower and the London Eye; Ratti told dezeen that the profit for The Mile's 'host city would be substantial.
Crowdsourced Parisian Block Would Embody the Tastes of the Masses
E-Ink Sneakers Provide Customizable Fashion for Sneakerheads
Could we finally be entering the era of digitized, fully customizable fashion? If a project called ShiftWear raising $928,777 on Indiegogo—3092% of the goal—is any indication, people are seeing new creative possibilities in the surface of shoes, and flexible e-paper technology has finally caught up with the robust demands of the sneakerhead's gait and lifestyle.
ShiftWear shoes integrate a networked app wearers can use to change the sneakers' displays. They will then be able to buy and sell designs from each other on a networked app – and keep 70% of the cash themselves.
Though such focus on a resource-intensive new feature often cause designers to neglect other, more traditional basics of a product's functionality, such as comfort or durability, the founders of ShiftWear have taken pains to point out that the shoes will also be quite practical. Less tech-centric features include waterproof Kevlar-coated soles, machine-washability, and bespoke sizes that are measured by your foot size rather than shoe size. The shoes will feature three classic basketball and skate-inspired designs, dubbed the L1, M1 and H1.
ShiftWear has also pointed out how natural and paper-like the designs look (unless you turn on the backlight), something that runs counter to the usual progression that display manufacturers try to make toward the brighter and the more striking.
After reaching several stretch goals, the developers will be able to add several features, including color screens and designs, motion sensors that will change the design based on your movements, and a battery that recharges kinetically with your footsteps. All of these features are likely to make it into the final product thanks to the existence of investors outside Indiegogo that can fill any gaps in funding.
Though the campaign was funded in December, ShiftWear still has some work ahead of it for actually getting the product into people's hands, and they hope to have a prototype available this spring, with the resulting business partnerships fueling more investment and designs featuring entertainment, sports and footwear brands. They hope for the shoes to ship this autumn, and thereafter they will retail from $349-$499.
Giving A Second Life To Unused Design Samples
Many architecture and design offices are familiar with the feeling of having hundreds of different unsolicited product samples laying around the office that were sent to them by client companies. On their own, they're cool-looking the first time you see them (hey, who knew that there was a granite called 'Stormy Night'?), but their use seems only ephemeral and momentary. But an initiative called Save a Sample! seeks to give these fragments a new life in design students' projects.
The initiative, which started in 1999 and took place on April 6-7 this year, is similar to Materials For the Arts in New York City, which collects all kinds of odds and ends and brings them to nonprofit organizations with arts programming, government agencies, and public schools. Participants in Save a Sample! receive all kinds of design goodies, like colorful slabs of stone and pamphlets for collaging that companies have deemed outdated, and use them for design projects.
Save a Sample! is a wider-reaching effort than Materials for the Arts, touching several cities that hope to pair local design schools with local organizations in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Wilmington. This year, three Canadian cities also participated in the project. This year, schools received approximately 750 boxes (7.5 tons) of samples from over 100 design firms nationwide. 'Top-Boxers' from arts and design firms are also entered to win prizes for donating; this year, they were an Eileen Gray Adjustable Table from Gordon International, Different World Seating from Humanscale, and a Triscape Pouf from HBF.
Will the concept of real-world pamphlets eventually go out of style? "Most designers feel technology will never replace materials and finishes," said Suzanne Swift, Save A Sample!'s founder. "Designers need to touch materials and see what they look like under different lighting scenarios."
Swift is also the founder of SpecSimple.com, which helps companies manage their samples, so that isn't exactly an outsider's perspective, but examples of student work made using the samples prove that working with real materials as a starting point—especially when some of them are so unusual and eclectic—has a real benefit. At Pratt Institute, Won hyung Choi created a concept for a 'Hotel M,' where "Maasai Tribe’s earthy feelings and Harlem’s industrialized materials bind two culture[s] together."
This earthy, hands-on perspective seems to be exactly what some budding designers need.
How Does Your City's Subway Stack Up To Others?
Many cities claim to have better transit than others, and some get an undeservedly bad rap. As cities around the world continue to vie for the status of the next hip, sustainable, car-independent place to live, wouldn't it be nice to know the truth behind the hype? The nonprofit research institutes Center for Neighborhood Technology and TransitCenter Center for Neighborhood Technology have come together to create an impartial metric called the AllTransit Performance Score that precisely and transparently monitors various factors that go into the transit-friendliness of a given area.
AllTransit takes advantage of the open data now being released by many municipalities to compare the many factors that go into the quality of a city's transit: jobs, economy, health, equity, transit quality, and mobility. As it turns out, all these measurements affect one another.
The statistics that go into factors like health extend the survey's reach into transportation alternatives like bicycling and walking, which in turn influence air quality and the availability of an easy form of exercise. Fresh food availability is also accounted for in the health category; for example, there are several statistics on farmers markets and their proximity to transit.
Compiling big data in an accessible way, as the AllTransit score does, keeps policymakers accountable, and open data policies have already created positive changes in many big cities. For example, Los Angeles created an app that helps riders choose between different mobility options for their route, including light rail, buses and bike share.
Of course, different cities may have vastly divergent ideas of what constitutes good transit. Most New Yorkers, for example, are quite 'spoiled' by this app's measure, living in areas that have a score of 9 or higher. However, that doesn't mean there aren't still gaps in transit availability throughout the area, with the difficulty of getting between different neighborhoods in the outer boroughs (without going into Manhattan) receiving more attention lately. A version 2.0 of the app, which is reportedly in the works, could ask questions of the data that match AllTransit's fine-grained, zip code-based approach.
Images:
Train platform photo - Rachel Pincus
Highway photo Reaperexpress | CC | No changes
These Blankets Are Designed To Look Like Abstractions Of City Skyscrapers
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a...blanket that looks like a skyscraper?! British textile artist and recent Royal College of Art graduate Danny Lee's fascination with skyscrapers began when he moved to London's Canary Wharf, a neighborhood teeming with tall buildings. He turned his sense of wonderment into a series of textiles that combined his own photos with Google Earth's bird's-eye perspective, then stitched and remixed them together digitally.
The resulting collection subtly weaves in nuances and textures in repeating patterns. Priced between $150 (for a cushion) and $385 (for a blanket), the line will be available in spring 2017 on Lee's website.
Street Furniture Gets A New Lease On Life As Art in Poland
Most small architecture interventions in cities require a well-trafficked area to actually get implemented. But the enterprising experiments of NO studio, which is a collaboration between Polish designers Magda Szwajcowska and Michal Majewski, brought attention to forgotten corners in the city of Wrocław during the Lower-Silesian Festival of Architecture. It's a reminder that good design can create demand for urban locales as well as control it.
One of the most memorable 'microinstallations,' which was created for a different festival called ARCHIBOX, was a series of bright-blue sunbeds installed on a little-used embankment staircase on the river Oder. Meanwhile, a modular, multi-use 'pavilion' called The Base was used as a gathering space and even for spontaneous parkour sessions. The BRAVE festival zone is similarly customizable; passersby can rotate the geometric forms to for a variety of uses and sit, stand or lie down on them.
Szwajcowska and Majewski's 'micro' budget ended up being a creative prompt for them, controlling the scale of their projects and helping them choose their site. They have referred to some of their projects as 'City Patch,' such as 'Waiting Space,' a staircase for the unusually shaped intersection between two streets and a social area for the top of a garage. These are spaces for which "the city or the owner has no idea/money," removing some of the pressure for the space to perform in any expected way.
"Small, temporary architecture doesn't have boundaries that normal ones have and it take much less time to go from design to realization. Additionally you can control all aspects of it and even take part in production. That is the most amazing thing," said Ms. Szwajcowska.
"Temporary ones are even better as you don't need to think about restrictions connected with the time. For example even with only cheap material you can make the project look really good. [These] days nobody really thin[k]s about building buildings that will stay for ages." Plywood saves the day here, and the pair have given it many creative finishes that add a unique look to each project.
Other ideas that the duo hope to implement at future urban festivals include a vertical museum of street art that could be built inside a chimney or silo and a platform built above parking spaces that reclaims them as public space for pedestrians without eliminating the parking. Szwajcowska and Majewski hope to collaborate with more architecture festivals in the future.
Could This Material Derived From Seaweed Replace Plastic?
Most of us are aware that our plastic use has a huge impact on the environment, but other than trying to choose lesser-evil products with less packaging at the supermarket, there is little we can do except feel guilty. A group of designers from Japan called AMAM (Kosuke Araki, Noriaki Maetani and Akira Muraoka), however, envision a future where the use of plastic packaging can co-exist with healthy oceans and less trash in landfills, and have developed Agar Plastic, a product derived from seaweed agar that can replace plastic film and foam packaging.
The Agar Plastic is created by boiling one of two species of red algae (one of which is already widely cultivated in Chile, Egypt and Asia) and dehydrating the resulting soupy substance. Melted agar is already used in food as a gelling and thickening agent, but AMAM is rapidly discovering new ways the substance reacts to various physical pressures: for example, it takes on a soft, cushion-like structure when frozen and becomes a plastic-like film when compressed. When thawed and air-dried, the agar maintains this quality even when it's no longer kept freezing.
The place in its life cycle where Agar Plastic has already proven its superiority is in disposability: since agar absorbs water, it can be mixed with soil in a garden to improve the water retention of plants, and it does not harm ocean life because of its marine origins. Because of its feathery structure, the agar would also be lightweight and easy to transport.
Agar Plasticity has already captured the imagination of Lexus, which has bestowed it with the 2016 Design Award, but more research is required to make it truly competitive with fossil fuel-based plastics. AMAM is looking for collaborators and researchers to help further its research into this natural miracle material. Their work, along with the other 12 Lexus Design Award finalists, was on view in Milan in the Spazio Lexus until April 17.
Robotic Drink Mixer Perfect For Your Next Spring Fling
No robot can replace the pleasure of watching the theatrics of a really skilled bartender flipping glasses and strutting their stuff. But drinkerBot, a bot created for the littleBits 2014 holiday party, offers a different, nerdier enjoyment, allowing you to see four different classic cocktails, as well as a variety of non-boozy drinks, made by a modern-day Rube Goldberg machine.
The drinkerBot, which uses a web app, a cloudBit, and an Arduino module, was designed in about a week by "a cross-disciplinary team of engineers, product designers, graphic designers, ux ninjas, media masters, and cloud aficionados" at the company.
The "ux ninjas" built the user-friendly app, which allows you to choose between a Salty Dog, a Moscow Mule, a Greyhound, or a Gin Ricky, which were chosen for the fact that all these drinks can be made with different permutations of the same six liquids (soda water, lime juice, grapefruit juice, gin, ginger beer, and vodka). A conveyor belt makes an even more entertaining show out of watching the liquids mix and bubble as your cup advances horizontally in the machine.
The drinkerBot shows an appealing face to the public—the designers even spruced it up for their holiday party with some acrylic trim, but since the bot was for the enjoyment of the maker community, they took some pleasure in showing off its guts. Behind its friendly wooden cabinet, which is conveyed on a kitchen cart, live a variety of logic modules that respond to binary signals—basically, voltage sequences—from the Arduino module. Information comes to the Arduino module through a cloudBit, which is the littleBits module that connects to the Internet and IFTTT.
The designers of drinkerBot admit that there were some glitches in the matrix. For example, carbonated beverages and unfinished wood don't work very well with a servo motor system designed for liquids—but they intend to keep refining the project and sharing more specific tips and results, making it easier to recreate wherever the party happens.
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Find the Exact Spot Where a Photo Was Taken With This App
With "checking in" and referencing specific urban locations becoming a mundane part of sharing our lives on social media, we tend to forget that digital photos, even those from the pre-smartphone era, have another, more fine-grained way of telling us where they were taken: the EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data, which, alongside vital photo information like focal length, camera type used and aperture, also gives a very precise geographic location in coordinates. Photo Find is an app that endeavors to make this information usable, which in its raw form appears as longitude and latitude coordinates that have very long sequences of numbers after the decimal point.
Photo Find uses these numbers, and your iPhone's built-in compass, to instantly tell you your distance in meters from the spot you want to revisit.
Developer John Ganotis noted that many features similar to what Photo Find offers exist in iOS, such as the photo map feature and in various third-party apps, but there was no app that brought them all together in the way that he wanted.
"I found myself trying to track our hikes with RunKeeper to have a track, then see where we started and try to get back to the car," he wrote. "It worked OK for getting back to the car, but wasn’t a great system for marking spots."
If, like many people, you like to photograph scenic or meaningful moments, you'll have an easy way of accessing the exact spot you photographed—a beautiful stream you found somewhere in the woods, for example.
With images that tourists take of landmarks somewhat visually redundant, it would be interesting to use this app's easy-to-use treatment of geolocation to map out the minute differences in the vantage points of different photographers, creating some sort of crowdsourced, experiential way of viewing photos of different locations.
With the brilliantly simple interface of this particular app, we look forward to seeing more like it (and more for Android, as well) that make users aware of location in unique ways.
Recycle Paper in Your Printer Room
Though self-sufficiency and "DIY" have been very trendy in recent years, there haven't been many analogs for the office thus far—that is, until Epson stepped up to the plate. The Epson PaperLab, for the ultimate in office self-sufficiency, is the first in-office paper recycler of its kind. Not only does it act as a highly secure paper shredder, but it turns around and uses the resultant confetti to produce new, bright white paper within just three minutes.
In keeping with its prowess with paper as well as inks, Epson offers enough customization options with the machine to satisfy a variety of needs that might come up around the office—you can tweak the thickness and density of the paper that comes out as well as its size, from A3 to business cards. Different binders for the paper fragments can also produce papers that are flame-resistant, scented, or different colors. The system is said to be able to produce around 14 A4 sheets of paper per minute, or 6,720 sheets in an eight-hour workday; depending on where you work, that could be enough to fulfill all your paper needs.
In an introductory video, Epson notes that paper recycling usually is an "extensive, external" process—and it is indeed one that generates pollution and in some situations has a questionable advantage over just letting some paper products biodegrade or be composted. 'Paper sludge,' noxious chemicals used to remove ink, and other unsavory byproducts would make anyone think differently about their virtuous habit.
What advantage might Epson PaperLab have over these conventional methods? Though details are vague, it appears that much less water is used than in normal paper processing: the machine is not connected to plumbing and only has a tank that needs to be periodically refilled. This requires a novel fiberization process, which according to one Epson patent could be a cyclone of air being used to remove the ink. Epson notes that the emissions associated with the paper's transport will obviously be sharply reduced, but doesn't make any definitive statements about carbon emission reduction.
The PaperLab will debut in Japan this year, but if it comes to western shores anytime soon, you might have to pitch in with your entire office building to buy one eight-foot-long machine; ars technica estimates its potential cost at more than $50,000. However, you can't put a price on the satisfaction of "closing the loop" on such an important resource as paper.