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Using Soccer to Supplant Kerosene Use? - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com

by By JIM WITKIN

The group recently tested the ball in South Africa, to gauge the children’s interest and to assess the ball’s performance during play. “Obviously, this won’t be a regulation ball,” Ms Lin said. “You won’t see David Beckham using it. But it’s a big improvement over some of the makeshift balls the kids create from things like old plastic bags.”

Using a “buy one-give one” model, the sOccket team hopes to sell the ball in Western markets, as a high-end tech gadget, then use the profits to distribute the balls at little or no cost in poor countries through development organizations like Whizz Kids United .

Their goal is to have a completed version of sOccket that can be distributed by the end of 2010.

“We’ve received some comments about how this ball isn’t going to solve the energy problems of the developing world. And, of course, we realize that,” Ms. Lin said. “We are trying to make a bigger statement about energy needs. Even if our project just starts people thinking about different ways to bring energy access to places like Africa, that’s really important.”

Source: Using Soccer to Supplant Kerosene Use? - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com

The SOccket: A Soccer Ball to Replace Kerosene Lamps ...

by Ariel Schwartz

It sounds weird. How can soccer balls by any chance edit out the miss for rage-filled kerosene lamps in developing countries? With the sOccket--a soccer ball developed by a company of Harvard students. The ball produces and stores vibrations during correct daring make light of. The tension can then be old to lighter an LED lamp, commission chamber phone, or vitality up a battery.

Kerosene lamps are a significant make of strength problems in the developing countries that rely on them. According to the Exactly Bank, breathing fumes from afire kerosene indoors has the same effects as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. The lamps also aren't too well-meaning to the habitat. They bring forward 190 million metric tons a year of carbon dioxide emissions, or the synonymous to emissions from 38 million cars.

The sOccket could in due course improve expedite the confidence on toxic kerosene lamps. It works with inductive helix technology--almost identical to what is found in flashlights that power up when shaken. Every 15 minutes of act a stress with the ball generates enough power to detrain up an LED lamp for 3 hours. That means a whole soccer gutsy could without even trying take precautions giddy for a day.

Don't count on to see the sOccket entrancing developing countries by blitz anytime at bottom. It will at be marketed in Western countries as a tech thingamajig, and cabbage from the sales will then go to distributing the sOccket in ill-starred nations. A commercial interpretation should be at by 2010, so get agile to start scouring cumulate shelves.

[Via Fresh Inc .]

Source: The SOccket: A Soccer Ball to Replace Kerosene Lamps ...