Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
Eyes in the design world turned to New York City this week as New York Design Week officially launched. We hit the floors of International Contemporary Furniture Fair today to bring you the best new green designs from one of the largest contemporary design shows in the US — including Blackbody’s gorgeous OLED light trees and Tat Chao’s ethereal LED lamps made from recycled wine glasses. We also checked out the locally focused BKLYN Designs show, where design duo Bower unveiled an awesome magnetic LED lamp, made from discarded pieces of scrap wood. Lighting designer Adam Frank unveiled three inspiring new designs at BKLYN Designs: the LED Lumen lamp, which casts tree-shaped shadows from a little candle holder; the incredible Reveal Projector, which projects an image of outdoor foliage and sky through a window on a blank wall (good for tiny NYC apartment dwellers); and the 3D Hologram-ish LUCID Mirror, which displays a 3D image of illuminated clouds over your head!
The European Commission believes that, alongside the rise of smartphones, tablets and other TV replacements, by 2016 connected TVs could be used in the majority of European homes — up from around 40.4 million today. Today it released a Green Paper to lay the groundwork for how it might cope with that. To be clear, this is not a re-writing of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the basic set of rules first introduced in 2010 covering areas single-market convergence, although it could lead to that. Initially, the purpose of the Green Paper will be to get a better handle on an area that is rapidly changing with the boom in mobile broadband, the rise of tablets and video apps, those connected TVs and more. It’s part of Kroes’ wider Digital Agenda strategy, which has covered areas like addressing the digital divide, the role of regulation in childrens content, cybersecurity, tech brain drain and more. As part of the Green Paper, the EC seeks feedback on things like how TV is watched, the limitations of digital content distributed on a per-country basis, exclusivity deals for films and other media, and whether self-regulation (used widely today) is doing enough — issues that could potentially impact, among others, device makers like Samsung, LG and (perhaps!) Apple; streaming companies like Amazon and Netflix; and publishers/creators. Neelie Kroes, the outspoken Commission VP who oversees this area, focuses her attention on connected TVs specifically today: “Connected TV is the next big thing in the creative and digital worlds,” she is expected to note in a statement today. But Kroes also acknowledges that even if it’s not a huge LG set in a TV room that will be the lever for how things transform, the evolution is certainly an issue regardless. “Convergence between sectors means people can enjoy a wider choice of great content – but it also creates disruptions and challenges. We need a converged and EU-wide debate to help deal with these changes.” Indeed, figures from Cisco’s most recent Visual Networking Index, a huge study it puts out annually, mobile video consumption worldwide exceeded 50% for the first time last year and shows no sign of slowing down, with Europe accounting for over 20% of all global mobile traffic. Part of the issue in Europe is that, at the moment, there are some cross purposes at work. For example, when it comes to content, deals
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