'Earthships' in the Desert Save Owners Cash

Out in the desert near Taos, N.M., they're building houses out of garbage.

Using old tires packed with dirt, trashed appliances, and discarded bottles and cans -- the stuff that stays in landfills forever -- architect Mike Reynolds and his crew are turning our trash into solar-powered, self-sustaining, energy-efficient houses.

"It's kind of a machine, not a house," Reynolds said. "And it's a machine that involves biology and physics to make it so that the people can NOT need municipal utilities."

He calls his creations "Earthships." They are off-the-grid wonders of physics -- angled south to catch the sun's rays through solar panels on the roof so they remain naturally cool in summer and warm in winter. No heat or air conditioning required, Reynolds said. Earthships hover at about 70 degrees year-round, even when it's below zero in the high-desert winter.

"You just have to orient it right," Reynolds said. "Admit the sun in the winter, because it's low. And block it in the summer, because it's high."

Touring his "model" home, a three-bedroom, two-bath Earthship which Reynolds calls The Phoenix, he points out that Earthships are comfortable on homeowners' wallets as well.

"The total utility bill of this house would be $100 per year to run the propane for the cook stove," Reynolds said. "That's $100 per year total."

Earthships begin with a foundation of old tires, about one thousand per house, each individually packed solid with dirt so they're firm as bricks. Reynolds said he "contrived" the use of tires just to recycle them at first. "But now, as an architect, engineer, contractor, builder," he adds, "I could not dream up a better way to build. If somebody gave me $30 million to invent the best building block, I'd invent the tire."

The tires are stacked high and cemented with desert mud, interspersed with aluminum cans, to form walls. The recycled cans create an irregular surface to hold the next course of mud, Reynolds said. Walls are then built to form rooms, just like a regular house -- living room, bedrooms, kitchen, and baths. Rainwater is captured and used -- and re-used. What looks like stained glass is actually the bottoms of plastic bottles and cans, added to let in light and give interest to the walls.

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Ten most significant gadgets of 2010

-inch diagonal screen compared to the iPad's 9.7 inches. But with an almost identical 1024 x 600 pixel resolution, it's got just as much screen real estate -- and it's a good deal more portable.

Add the full Android market, a decent camera, the ability to turn itself into a mobile hotspot, and a removable microSD card slot, and you've got bragging rights that your Mac-loving friends can't match.

And although Steve Jobs sneered at the diminutive size of 7-inch tablets, there's clearly a market for them: The Galaxy Tab sold 1 million units in its first two months. -- Dylan Tweney

7. MacBook Air

Steve Jobs called the new MacBook Air the future of computers, and we like where this is going. Coming in 11- and 13-inch flavors, the MacBook Air weighs less than 2.5 pounds, with a wedge shape that thins down to just a tenth-of-an-inch.

Most importantly, it ships with a flash drive, which makes the Air a surprisingly zippy performer for its size. And at an attractive starting price of $1,000, who wouldn't consider one of these as their next notebook? We look forward to the wave of low-priced, ultrathin laptops coming from competing manufacturers in the coming years. -- Brian Chen

6. iPhone 4

Tainted by early reports of a faulty antenna, Apple's latest iPhone was perhaps the most controversial product of the year, but nonetheless a resounding crowd pleaser.

Reviewers sang praise for the device's gorgeous "retina" display, which makes reading from a digital screen as pleasing as a glossy magazine page. Add to that a front-facing camera for video chat, a fast A4 processor and iOS 4, which enables multitasking, and the iPhone 4 is a killer upgrade.

Its debut was made more dramatic than usual by the accidental loss -- and subsequent publication on Gizmodo -- of a late prototype, several weeks before the phone's official launch. The consumer electronics industry is notoriously tight-lipped about its upcoming products, and no company exerts tighter control of its messaging than Apple. Gizmodo's scoop was a rare exception to the rule.

Despite the leak, and despite claims about a "death grip" causing the phone to drop calls, the iPhone 4 was Apple's hottest iPhone yet, selling 14 million units in just one quarter. -- Brian Chen

5. Sprint Evo 4G

It's bigger, beefier and more badass than almost any other phone we've tested this year. And thanks to its 4G connection, 4-inch screen and ability to beam out a Wi-Fi signal, the Sprint Evo makes an excellent traveling companion.

Granted, Sprint's 4G network isn't available everywhere in the United States yet, but the company has been lighting it up in an increasing number of metro areas. When it works, it delivers enough bandwidth that you might be tempted to cut your wired broadband connection.

The Evo's downsides include its bulk (though some people actually like that) and disappointing battery life. -- Dylan Tweney

4. Windows Phone 7 on Samsung Focus

In the wake of the iPhone revolution, Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS tanked in market share, and the software giant decided in 2008 to scrap everything and start over.

The company hired new managers, opened new lab facilities and shuffled around its entire mobile team to create a new Windows phone OS in a year. The result was Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's brand-new entry in the smartphone game.

Based on a fresh tile-based interface, Windows Phone 7 is an impressive start. It shines brightly on the lightweight Samsung Focus smartphone, which has a beautiful AMOLED screen and a solid overall construction.

Microsoft is pinning its mobile hopes on Windows Phone 7. If the Focus is any indication, it's got a good shot at getting back in the game. -- Brian Chen

3. Microsoft Kinect

Microsoft's Xbox add-on, formerly known by its code name of "Project Natal," may have been a latecomer to the motion-sensitive gaming category. But when it arrived, the Kinect blew Sony and Nintendo's wand-waving accessories out of the water.

Combining a visible-spectrum camera and an infrared sensor, the Kinect offers the most advanced real-time 3-D scanning and rendering we've seen in a commercial product. It's also got built-in face recognition. The upshot: Your Kinect can recognize you, and you can control it simply by waving your hands and moving your body.

The possibilities are even richer for game developers and hackers, who are already figuring out how to incorporate the Kinect's features into eye-popping demos and surprisingly intelligent robots. -- Dylan Tweney

2. Berkeley Bionics eLEGS

The feel-good gadget story of the year, without a doubt, was a lightweight exoskeleton from Berkeley Bionics that can help paraplegics walk again.

At the company's press conference, a person who'd been paraplegic for 18 years demonstrated the eLEGS by walking around onstage.

Her smile shows you everything you need to know about this remarkable invention.

You probably can't buy one, as it will cost around $100,000. But it's the sort of thing that a hospital or physical therapy clinic might buy to help people do rehabilitation exercises, which can be especially beneficial for people who were recently injured. That's because the eLEGS can help them get started on load-bearing, upright, walking exercises while they still have the muscle memory for walking.

The eLEGS exoskeleton is not the only such device: A company called ReWalk makes a similar, $100,000 gadget that appeared on Glee this month. -- Dylan Tweney

1. iPad

Thanks to Apple's iPad,2010 was the year of the tablet. The 9.7-inch touchscreen wonder created a brand-new product category that made digital content more attractive than ever.

The iPad checked off all the boxes where previous tablet computers completely missed the mark. Unlike its stylus-driven predecessors, the iPad offers a finger-friendly interface that people of all ages can learn in a few seconds, requiring zero antivirus software and barely any maintenance (apps update themselves with the tap of a button). In other words, it was the first true tablet -- not just a PC with a touchscreen skin.

The market reacted strongly. Publishers lined up to reinvent their magazines and newspapers for the shiny device, programmers embraced another new digital frontier to make innovative apps and games, and several competing manufacturers announced plans to whip up tablets of their own.

More controversially, the iPad extended Apple's dominion over its phenomenal media distribution channel, the App Store, for better and for worse. The tablet's beautiful 9.7-inch screen opens new possibilities for content creators to make money by selling apps through the App Store, but every so often Apple cracks the whip, demanding programmers to follow the company's vaguely stated but stringently applied rules. In short, the iPad unlocked an exciting opportunity for digital innovation, while also posing an alarming threat to creative freedom.

Nonetheless, the early numbers suggest customers are thrilled. Apple sold 4.2 million iPads during the tablet's first quarter of existence, claiming the title of fastest-adopted gadget in history. -- Brian Chen

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What's all this #CES business about?

42-1_53-50097595.html?tag=mncol;1n" target=new>"gadget Super Bowl" and "Christmas morning" for nerds.

Really, just pick a metaphor and run with it.

"It's the World Cup of technology. It is the geek gathering for the world," said Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts the annual, international event. "And everyone touched by technology goes there, with over 120,000 people in one location. They're all there. It's the who's who of technology. Nothing replicates it."

There's some history to back up those comparisons. Commercial VHS, DVD and Blu-ray formats all debuted at the trade show. The personal camcorder, the Atari game "Pong," Microsoft's Xbox console and HDTV all chart their origins to CES, too.

The show essentially sets the year's tech trends, hitting on themes that will keep popping up and evolving all the way through the holiday shopping season. Last year at CES, 3-D television and tablet computers -- or at least the promise they represented -- were all the rage.

This year's show promises to be grander than those in recent memory, which suffered in attendance and scope in part because of the economic recession. About 2,500 companies will show off new tech toys at CES this year, Shapiro said, and their eye-poppingly opulent showcases will cover more than 1.6 million square feet of space at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is up 11% over the size of last year's show.

"You can't even physically see the entire show in the four days of the show," he said, noting an issue that's always the talk of worn-out journalists and industry insiders who attend. "It's literally miles of exhibit space. There's over 20,000 products that will be introduced there. It's kind of overwhelming."

But bigger may not necessarily be better.

Ahead of the show, many bloggers and analysts are focusing not on the companies that will be at CES but the one that won't: Apple.

"Apple seems set to dominate CES once again next year, even though it won't actually attend the show," wrote a Computerworld blogger. Last year's CES was swirling with rumors about an impending Apple tablet device, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled as the iPad later that month.

This year, Apple "has two fangs to suck the blood out of CES," writes the blog TechCrunch, noting that two Apple rumors -- that it will soon announce an iPad 2 and an iPhone on the Verizon network -- may steal some CES thunder.

Apple is the world's largest tech company in terms of market capital. And, perhaps more important, it's arguably been doing more to advance consumer electronics hardware in recent years than Microsoft, Sony, Panasonic and the other big-name companies that exhibit at CES.

In 2007, Apple released the iPhone, one of the first touch-screen smartphones. Now everyone makes those. In April it began selling the iPad, the first successful touch-screen tablet computer, and created a market for an entire new category of consumer electronics.

Expect as many as 80 tablet computers to be on display at CES this week, said Shapiro. Bloggers have been calling this year's CES "tablet mania." But the iPad, the gadget everyone wants to compete with and that accelerated this frenzy for media-consumption devices, will be conspicuously absent.

Because it's so hot right now, Apple is able to take a go-it-alone approach to product releases, summoning the world's tech media to the Bay Area for press conferences that focus only on its new products and bottom line.

Others, however, still need the critical mass of CES to attract buzz.

Google is another missing player at the trade show, although its Android operating system -- which is competing most successfully with Apple's iOS -- will have a big presence at this year's CES, said Shapiro. That's because Google's Android powers many of the smartphones and tablets that aim to compete with Apple's products.

But Apple or no Apple, Google or no Google, CES still has a firm grip on driving the year's consumer technology trends and is worth the attention it gets, said Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst at Parks Associates, a research group.

"It's large and exhausting but at the same time I really find it to be the most important (event) of the year in terms of how it generates excitement about what's possible with consumer electronics and services," he said. "It's a really exciting show."

Shapiro said CES will "knock your socks off." We'll find out in a few days.

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