In our battle of the home screen launchers, we found that ADW and LauncherPro filled pretty specific niches in the Launcher world. If you don’t want to pick between them, and you don’t need some of the more advanced features, Go Launcher is a great alternative. It includes the themability and screen gestures of ADW, while adding the scrollable, customizable, gesture-filled dock and smooth performance of LauncherPro.

It also has a pretty interesting setup for the app drawer, which lets you sort your apps by those running and your recent apps (as well as a full list). It also includes a task killer in the app drawer—which you know how we feel about already—as well as some pretty intuitive ways of organizing and uninstalling apps right from your home screen. You can even have up to thirty home screens, and reorder them through a handy home screen overview.

Overall, this is a pretty great launcher. It’s fairly young, however, and still missing the more advanced features that let you, say, really speed up older phones—but if none of the available launchers have made you perfectly happy yet, this is definitely one you'll want to try out.

Go Launcher is a free download for Android only.

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We gadget freaks obsess over gear, big and small: cameras, phones, notebooks, desktops, home theater speakers, HDTVs, and much more. But how often do we pay attention to the technology surrounding our gear, the packing material that keeps it safe?

Whether organic or man-made, squishy or rigid, there’s a deliberate method to every type of packing material madness. Why use cardboard inserts instead of polyurethane cushions? Why use those newfangled air pouches instead of traditional bubble wrap? Which packing peanuts are safe to eat, and why are some colored green or pink? All of these questions and more will be answered on the following pages. Behold! We submit 36 things you (probably) didn’t know about packing material.

Styrofoam

Since its humble beginnings as a lab experiment in the late 1830s, polystyrene-you might be more familiar with its “foamed” format, aka Styrofoam-has emerged to become one of the world’s most useful man-made materials. And thanks to its form-fitting moldability, it’s a pretty good packaging medium to boot. Styrofoam isn’t great for the environment, but it will protect your gear on its journey through the currents and eddies of the global shipping infrastructure.

If you think these molded Styrofoam pieces look like modern art, then you haven’t seen the amazing Styrofoam sculpture on michaelasalter.com.

Humble German Origins

According to legend, Styrofoam’s path to greatness began in 1839. That year a German apothecary named Eduard Simon accidentally discovered polystyrene when he distilled an oily muck from storax, the resin of the sweetgum tree. The substance thickened, and a primordial version of Styrofoam’s base material had formed.

Early Military Applications

Spearheaded by Hermann Staudinger’s Nobel Prize-winning research on the elasticity of polymers, scientists at BASF were able to begin commercial manufacturing of polystyrene in 1930. By 1937, Dow Chemical jumped on board, and introduced this new material to the US market under the brand name Styrofoam. We can thank a Dow scientist named Ray McIntire for combining polystyrene with isobutylene, a highly flammable gas, in order to create the foamy version of polystyrene that we know and love today. McIntire’s goal was to create a flexible insulation material, but by 1942 the US military began studying Styrofoam-which resists moisture and is extremely buoyant-for use in life rafts.

How Modern Styrofoam Is Created

You ever notice that Styrofoam has a “grain” to it? That’s because molded Styrofoam is really the aggregation of multiple small, foamed polystyrene beads. The beads start out relatively miniscule, but include a hydrocarbon expanding agent. When the beads are hit with steam, the agent grows the beads to about 40 times their original size. Then the beads are tossed in a mold, where they’re steam-heated again. Here they expand some more-and also fuse together to create the shape of the mold’s negative space. Voila! You’ve got your Styrofoam cup. Or egg carton. Or the precision-molded packaging for whatever gadget you just purchased.

Why Styrofoam Is a Good Packing Material

As a packaging medium, Styrofoam can create strong, coddling, form-fitting shapes of amazing lightness. In fact, that piece of Styrofoam that forms a sandwich around your LCD display or photo printer is about 98 percent air. In the world of shipping, extra weight means extra charges, so Styrofoam’s merger of strength and lightness has its attractions.

Styrofoam also does extremely well as a hand-me-down material. Large blocks of Styrofoam can be cut and reshaped to fit around different sized objects, and Styrofoam packing peanuts, which never really “age” (have you ever heard anyone complain about receiving “second-hand” peanuts?), can be re-stuffed into any box with an item in need of protection. Styrofoam and its polystyrene stablemates may not represent the cutting-edge of packing material science, but they get the job done. And they won’t cause any injury if you drop a palette of the stuff on your foot (though the wooden palette itself might hurt like a mother).

Styrofoam Drawbacks

Unfortunately, Styrofoam isn’t great for the environment. The substance can be recycled, but you have to bring it to a specific type of collection site. The biggest downside, however, is that Styrofoam isn’t bio-degradable-you can’t just toss it into landfill and expect it to quickly decay. Even worse, because of its lightness, Styrofoam pieces can blow away once they reach the dump. All it takes is a light wind.

“We flat out do not sell Styrofoam, and never will,” says Dennis Salazar, President and Co-Founder of Salazar Packaging.  “We would if they could come out with a variation that was eco-friendly, but I really don’t see that happening.”

Styrofoam By Any Other Name

If for some reason you’re not into brand name products, you can call Styrofoam by its generic trade name: expanded polystyrene plastic, or EPS. Also remember that Styrofoam is just what Dow Chemical calls this material. Owens Corning has its own version of EPS. It’s trademarked as PINK, and is marketed for construction insulation by none other than the Pink Panther.

Protective Foam

Protective foam-you might know it better as polyurethane or polyethylene. Don’t feel bad if you’ve ever confused these two substances for each other, or even gotten them mixed up with Styrofoam. All three materials can look, feel and even smell similar to one another. Nonetheless, if you really know your polys, you’ll know that urethane, ethylene and styrene are quite different animals on both an overtly physical and molecular level.

Left: Polyurethane is soft and squishy. Right: Polyethylene is rigid and hard.

Birth Story: Those Industrious Germans Are Back At It!

The story of protective foam begins with polyurethane in 1937, nearly a hundred years after Eduard Simon discovered the base material to make Styrofoam. This time around, another German scientist, Otto Bayer, was looking to create a truly flexible polymer. Bayer mixed liquid polyether with polyester diols, and-boom!-polyurethane was born. Unfortunately, World War II disrupted further research, and polyurethane foam wouldn’t become commercially available at reasonable prices until the late 1950s.

Why Polyurethane Excels as a Packing Material

Polyurethane foam is a cheap, flexible material that can be molded and trimmed into innumerable shapes and sizes to accommodate a wide range of packing tasks. It can be thinly sliced for use as a wrap, and molded or cut into form-fitting inserts like the gray ones you see above. Far softer than polyethylene (which we’ll get to soon), polyurethane can also be laminated onto other materials like pressure-sensitive adhesives. And let’s not limit ourselves to the world of packing and product protection. Chances are good that you’ve got polyurethane panels lining your walls for insulation, or stuffed in your car seats for padding. And, of course, we wouldn’t have modern Nerf warfare if Parker Brothers didn’t find success with the polyurethane Nerf ball in 1970.

Polyurethane Drawbacks

While polyurethane excels in flexibility and squishiness, it stands to suffer in protective power, especially when compared to polyethylene. Both materials are foams, but polyurethane is too spongy for some packing situations. Whether you bend it, ball it up, and or even use it to absorb water, polyurethane shifts back to its original shape. Polyethylene, on the other hand, feels and performs much more like Styrofoam. It’s quite rigid and can’t be bent or shaped without snapping into pieces. The softer, spongier protection of polyurethane could theoretically absorb more impact, but the stiff, armored shell of polyethylene could potentially help some products survive a longer drop.

Why Polyethylene Sometimes Trumps Polyurethane

Polyethylene differs from polyurethane on a molecular level-it’s a plastic-based foam that achieves extreme rigidity thanks to a complex, impenetrable cellular structure. It’s impossible for even water vapor to pass through the hardened material (in total contrast to polyurethane, which can actually absorb liquid). As such, polyethylene boasts a hardy resistance to damage from chemicals, solvents, and-most importantly, at least in the world of shipping-friction and collision.

Polyethylene Problemos

Polyethylene is not without its faults. First, it isn’t impervious to ultraviolet light, so exposure to sunlight can cause warping and degradation. Second, because of polyethylene’s rigidity, extremely fragile, brittle items are better left to the softer polyurethane foams. Indeed, while polyethylene offers a thicker, harder coat of armor, so to speak, the impact of a fragile item against a hardened polyethylene shell can create enough force to shatter delicate pieces. For this reason, in the world of packaging, polyethylene is synonymous with protecting larger, bulkier items, while soft polyurethane is better suited for smaller, more fragile items.

The Two Polys: Not Earth Friendly

Like Styrofoam, neither of our foamy friends are biodegradable, so leaving them to dissolve au natural at the dump won’t work. And while polyethylene can actually be recycled (if entrusted to the right hands), polyurethane, sadly, cannot. If you’d like to safely recycle your polyethylene refuse, bring it to a local recycler that has the capacity to handle the substance. Your polyethylene will be fed into a large, heated barrel that melts the material into a soft, pliable foam that can be reshaped via a new mold cavity. Once a new shape has been cast, it needs only to cool down to garner its rigid, hardened shell again. Needless to say, this is not something that you can do yourself at home. So put down that butane torch, Chester.

Polythene Pam

Folks in the United Kingdom shorten the word polyethylene to “polythene.” So when John Lennon sang about an obnoxious fan named “Polythene Pam,” dressed in her “polythene bag,” he was really commenting on her inappropriate choice of packing material.

Packing Peanuts

Nearly 30 years after introducing Styrofoam, the Dow Chemical Company threw the dice on a daring innovation. What if, someone posited, we took our beloved miracle substance, and split it into a plethora of tiny pieces for the unique protection and damage-absorption properties that “loose fill” particles provide? It would be like a big hunk of Styrofoam gave birth to millions of intelligent, self-adjusting babies! That fateful year was 1965. Someone greenlit this bold escapade, and packing peanuts were born.

Why Peanuts Form a Formidable Filling

Whether they’re made from polystyrene or one of the biodegradable, more eco-friendly materials in vogue today, packing peanuts have the uncanny ability to “loose fill pack” when added to an enclosed box. In effect, when peanuts are used in bulk, they act as a self-correcting packing material that can shift and tumble to fill air gaps. This is quite an advantage if your hardware item has a bunch of corners or easily damaged edges. While Styrofoam panels can’t shift or move within the confines of a shipping container, peanuts have the ability to alter their aggregate arrangement and density in order to take on the many shapes needed to fill loose spaces.

“They’re meant to fill all the nooks and crannies,” said Jason Archambault of Fastpack, a Florida-based packaging company. “If you really pack them tight enough, they should have no problem holding your product in place, though I’d still wrap the product in a couple of sheets of bubble wrap to be safe.”

When Good Peanuts Go Bad

The “adjust as needed” quality of peanuts garners mixed reactions among packaging aficionados. Dissenters point out that while peanuts can conveniently alter their arrangement within the confines of a box, simply not having enough peanuts can cause a product to migrate to one side of a container-resulting in a damaged piece of gear should, heaven forbid, the inevitable occur.

This may be true, but running into a shortage of packing peanuts shouldn’t be much of a problem. Peanuts don’t age, so you can re-use accumulated peanuts, stuffing them into any sufficiently sized box, along with your gadget that’s in need of protection. Also be aware that if you find yourself with simply way too many peanuts after unpacking your recently purchased display, espresso machine, Tesla coil or what have you, the fakey legumes can be taken to any local packaging company (Fed EX, UPS, MailBoxes Etc and so on) for re-use in other shipping endeavors.

Yes, These Peanuts Are Edible

Polystyrene isn’t good for the environment, and Polystyrene peanuts are no different. Luckily, many modern packing peanuts are made of cornstarch, which is biodegradable and eco-friendly. Additionally, packing peanuts made from corn starch have no electrostatic charge, making them a great alternative for safe-guarding electronics in transit. The cornstarch peanuts are also non-toxic, addressing many pet owners’ fears of poisoning their beloved pooches. Nonetheless, all these benefits aside, dissenters point out that public knowledge of recyclable peanuts is limited.

“People are always talking about cornstarch peanuts and biodegradable peanuts,” said Salazar. “Peanuts are like the holiday fruitcake of the packaging world—you get them and immediately try to find a way to get rid of them. The fact that they’re green doesn’t change the fact that they’re incredibly messy and inconvenient. I don’t know anyone who opens a box and says, ‘Hey, it’s filled with peanuts! Great!’.”

Peanut Disposal-Just Add Water (Sometimes)

Starch-based packing peanuts can be dissolved with just a little bit of water-so you could literally “hose away” any excess peanuts in your own backyard. However, attempting to dissolve Polystyrene peanuts (or Polystyrene of any kind) could prove hazardous to your health. The material is only soluble in acetone (the active ingredient in nail polish) and the resulting fumes emitted from performing such a task could be toxic. Even fatal.

The Packing Peanut Cubicle Prank

Imagine you’re the unsuspecting dude in the photo below. It’s your last day at work, and your send-off includes a cubicle stuffed to the brim with packing peanuts. “It’s not a cheap prank, but it’s a good one,” says Jason Archambault of Fastpack. “I’ve had people call me to deliver ten bags of peanuts, just to pull this prank.”

Photo credit: Noah Jacobs

While the cubicle stunt is impressive, the packing peanut office prank is far tougher to pull off, though the pay-off-seeing some poor schmuck open his office door only to be buried in an avalanche of peanuts-is well worth the trouble. It’s also an expensive prank, but Archambault relays a secret: Most people build false walls out of cardboard to reduce the cubic-feet of airspace inside the office to be filled.

Oh, and don’t worry about calling your local peanut vendor and sharing exactly why you need the peanuts. “Customers tell us they’re doing this all the time,” says Archambault. “And we sell them the peanuts.”

Air Protection

You can’t discuss the origin of Bubble Wrap-or any air-based protection, for that matter-without first mentioning Sealed Air, perhaps the largest player in the rough-and-tumble, hard-knock world of product packaging.

How Bubble Wrap Was Invented: The IBM Connection

The Sealed Air story arch begins in 1951 when two engineers, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes, bonded together two plastic shower curtains in a zany attempt to develop a new type of wallpaper. Air became trapped in pockets between the sheets, and thus begat wacky idea number two: greenhouse insulation. Makes sense, right? The sealed air pockets could theoretically be used as heat traps.

But, alas, no one was interested.

By 1960, messers Fielding and Chavannes had officially launched Sealed Air Corporation, but it wasn’t until a few years later that they found a willing evangelist for the madness they had concocted. The man’s name was Frederick Bowers. IBM was launching the IBM 1401, the world’s first commercially manufactured business computer, and needed a way to protect all those delicate computer components whilst the machines were in transit. IBM knew Bowers; Bowers knew Sealed Air.

Suddenly, the engineers’ previously fruitless endeavor had a purpose. Suddenly, the bubble wrap that fascinates us today was born.

How Modern Bubble Wrap Is Made

Modern bubble wrap manufacturing involves complex machinery, a relatively small amount of polyethylene, and lots and lots of plastic sheets. Pea-sized polyethylene pellets are fed into an extruder-a long, rotating cylinder that’s heated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The resin produced from this process is then melted into a liquid, and formed into flat sheets of plastic. One layer of plastic sheeting is wrapped around a rotating drum whose surface is full of holes. Via a nifty suction process, the sheet is sucked into the holes-creating air pockets-and then another sheet of plastic is laid on top. The two polyethylene surfaces bond to each other, trapping air inside the pockets.

And then, some many months later, some dude in an office park annoys his co-workers by popping the air bubbles at the most annoying moment possible.

Why Use Bubble Wrap In the First Place?

Bubble wrap offers some distinct advantages over other materials used to safeguard our precious commodities. “I’d say that 99.5 percent of people would choose to go with bubble wrap,” says Jason Archambault of FastPack. “It’s cheaper than foam, and easy to work with. Air bubbles can absorb shock better than a solid piece of anything. Any board-Styrofoam, cardboard-will generally transfer vibrations and shocks.

“Does Bubble Size Matter?

As pretty much anyone who’s ever opened a box already knows, bubble wrap comes in various sizes. So which size bubble gauge is appropriate for your packing project? Luckily, the formula to help you pick a bubble size (and also a bubble count) is relatively simple: The more air in any given bubble, the more protection it offers. Respecting this simple rule brings us to a staggeringly simple conclusion: The larger the item-and thus the greater potential collision impact if your item is dropped from the back of a truck-the larger the bubble you’ll need to protect it. Wrist watches? They get wrapped in 6/16th-inch baby bubbles. Audio speakers? Those deserve the respect of big-daddy bubbles, say, 1 and 1/4-inch wide.

Air Pillows: A Modern Innovation

If a bubble gauge larger than this is available, it certainly wasn’t manifest in the Maximum Tech Lab at the time of this writing. But air pillows, which can be found protecting some of the larger components shipped around the world, are a different story. Seems like the bigger your air chamber, the fancier it has to be named. You’ve got your AirPouch. You’ve got your AirSpeed. And Sealed Air makes a number of pillows-you’ve probably already seen its FillTeck and Fill-Air bags in action.

Air pillows are inflated “on demand,” saving warehouse space as a result. The EarthAware green pillows in this photo are fully bio-degradable.

These larger air receptacles (some of them up to eight inches long) provide a higher damage-absorption rate. And because the pillows are filled with air “on demand,” right on the warehouse floor, their raw material take up less warehouse space (because what’s the alternative-setting aside hundreds of square feet of floor space for pre-filled bubble wrap?).

Why Bubble Wrap is an “Uncontrolled Packaging Approach”

On the downside, filled air pillows and bubble wrap take up loads of room inside a box, especially compared to form-fitting Styrofoam and cardboard. From a manufacturing standpoint, this translates into larger packaging dimensions-as well as higher costs because fewer units can be delivered in a single shipment. Oliver Campbell, Dell’s Senior Manager of Global Packaging, says, “We try to avoid bubble wrap, because when we optimize a package for a notebook, we want it to be as small as possible. Bubble wrap is a much more uncontrolled packaging approach. When the packaging box is way too large, that drives up shipping costs, and also creates problems for customers because they have more packaging to dispose of.”

Bubble Wrap: Could It Save Your Life?

If you were buried alive with a diminishing air supply, but had a bounteous supply of bubble wrap with you, could you pop the air bubbles for more oxygen? The answer, technically, is yes. The oxygen in the pouches could be used as breathable air. Not for long, though. You see, every healthy breath you take leads to the exhalation of CO2, a poisonous gas. So even if you had all the bubble wrap in the world, you wouldn’t die from a lack of oxygen, you’d die from an overabundance of CO2 in your enclosed space. Our advice? Just try not to be buried alive.

Foam in Place

“Foam in place”: It’s a term that minces no words. You’ve got your foam, and it goes in a place. Simple. But it’s also a devilishly effective strategy for taking a time-tested packing material-polyurethane foam-and making sure it fills every nook and cranny between your delicate product and the cardboard box in which it’s packed.

Why Use Foam? Why Put it in a Place?

The key players in the foam in place game are IntelliPack and Instapak, the latter being the progeny of the ever-innovating Sealed Air Corporation. Both companies’ products can create a perfectly form-fitting foam sandwich around the contours and edges of whatever gadget (or glass vase or Roman antiquity) you need to ship. Bearing the eerie imprints of recognizable objects, foam in place pieces can look sort of creepy. But you know what? Deal with it. Foam in place provides excellent protection by completely filling void spaces with a known, effective cushioning agent. And because foam in place starts off in a liquid form, its base materials take up much less warehouse space than, say, packing peanuts. Instapak foam, for example, can expand up to 280 times its liquid volume, drastically cutting storage and handling costs.

A Dynamic Chemical Duo

So how do get the liquid to expand into foam? It all involves a chemical reaction between two chemical agents: polymeric isocyanate and polyurethane resin. As soon as the two substances are mixed together, they turn into a foam that continues to expand until the chemical sources are spent, or the expansion is stymied by opposing pressure. While researching this article, we mostly focused on Instapak (sorry, Intellipack), and we can tell you that Sealed Air Corporation has many different contraptions to help you mix up your foamy mojo.

How Foam In Place Is, Umm, “Made”

So how exactly do you pack your precious cargo in a foam-in-place sandwich? We’ll describe the process in the context of using the Instapak 900 system. First you grab your box or carton, and line the bottom with a generous sheet of Instamate film-the piece you use should be about double the size of your box’s bottom. Now grab your foam dispenser gun, and press the trigger over the Instamate. The dispenser sucks the key chemical agents from two separate drums (coyly labeled Component A and Component B), mixes them in real time, and shoots the goop on to the film.

The liquid wastes no time expanding into a puffy piece of foam, so take your excess film and fold it over the foam to keep it all enclosed. Now nestle your product into the rapidly expanding cushion. It should sink into the Instapak as the foam creates a perfect form-fitting nest. To complete your packing escapade, repeat the same process with a piece of Instamate sitting on top of your product. Now close and seal the top of your cardboard box. Congrats! Your cargo is now entombed in the middle of a polyurethane ravioli.

Variations of a Foamy Concept

Sealed Air makes a daunting variety of other Instapak equipment, and all rely on catalyzing various formulations of Component A and Component B to create the expandable foam. For example, Instapak FlowRite if your formulation choice if you’re looking for “extended rise, flowable foam-in-bag foam,” whereas GFlex QS is perfect for “high-performance, high load-bearing foam with rapid de-mold capability.” Instapak machinery can cost up to $6,500, which is a lot of money, even accounting for the fact that Instapak cuts down on warehouse space, and may be the most cost-efficient packing method for some companies in the long run.

Mixing Foam By Hand

Even regular folk can now work with Instapak in the form of the Quick Room Temperature Quick Start Kit-essentially a box full of pre-goopified Instamate bags that require no machinery whatsoever for inflation and use. To inflate your bag with foam, you press two “buttons” at its base (and, yes, the buttons are labeled A and B). As you alternate between the two buttons, you can feel Instapak’s famous liquid agents begin to mix below your fingertips, then drastically increase in temperature. After a final “pop” emanates from the base, the bag begins inflating with hot, quick-drying foam. Stuff the bag in a box, and then quickly put your product on top of the bag. That’s step one in creating your custom-fit Instapak sandwich. Now place another expanding bag on top, and close the box. The system is duly protective, if not close to air tight.

Foam in Place: Another Environmental Challenge

Whether their source materials are labeled A, B or Z, Instapak packaging is full of polyurethane chemicals, which isn’t easy to dispose of. The easiest way, according to Sealed Air’s website, is to take your used material to the nearest waste-to-energy combustion facility (your grandpappy might have called this place “the incinerator”). You can also return the foam to one of the 20 “foam return locations” around the world. Twenty locations? Really? We think there are more Burger Kings within a 5-mile radius of our office.

Instapaking Prehistory On a Ginormous Scale

On July 27, 2000, a startling find was made in Malta, Montana. It was the most complete, reticulated dinosaur fossil ever unearthed, and it needed to be transported 2,000 miles across the country to Houston, Texas. Enter Bill Armstrong, Sealed Air’s Technical Development Manager. He led a team of experts in developing strategies to safely transport the ancient fossil. The team assembled a base for the artifact to ride on, and shrink-wrapped the fossil in CorTuff film, a material typically used for industrial applications. The fossil was then braced on the base using Instapak foam, and reinforced with Stratocell H polyethylene foam, a high-density foam for extra resistance to shock and transport vibrations.

After unpacking the crate in a NASA hangar, scientists scanned the fossil to ensure nothing was displaced or damaged during the long journey across the country. It had arrived completely unscathed, leaving scientists with Leonardo one of only four existing brachylophosaurus (duck-billed dinosaur) specimens in the world.

Fiberboard

When’s the last time you received something in a wooden box? Yeah, that’s right: Wooden packaging has gone the way of steam-powered automobiles and handlebar mustaches. Today, everything comes in cardboard packages and for good reason: cardboard is cheaper, lighter and doesn’t cause splinters. But cardboard and other pulp products aren’t just container materials, friends. They’re actually a packaging medium in and of itself, and one of the most environmentally friendly ones to boot.

How Cardboard Is Made

Cardboard isn’t a recent development-it’s been manufactured since the early 20th century using machines called corrugators, which separate hardwood and sapwood into individual fibers. These fibers are than treated with a heavy dose of high-pressure steam, and compressed by weights to form a straight, flattened panel that’s ready to join linerboards coated in starch-based adhesives. When the process is finished, you’ve got yourself a thick sheet of cardboard ready to be re-shaped and die-cut into a corrugated insert, or simply adhered to other pieces for a solid box that’ll ensure you cart home your 52-inch HDTV in complete safety.

Big Bamboo: The Perfect Packing Material?

The ancient alchemy of cardboard production hasn’t changed much over the years, but an industry-wide focus on green technology is making cardboard one of the more innovative packaging materials in the world of shipping today. Whether being used as custom-built inserts, fill packaging, or just good ol’ fashioned boxes, almost all the materials used to make these protective pieces are created with environmental sustainability in mind.

Take computer giants Dell and HP, which mass-produce their cardboard pieces using bamboo, which offers some clever benefits. As panda food, bamboo is nutritious-which is create news for all those pandas. But as a packing medium, it can be molded into any shape that typical cardboard can be, and is typically more cost-effective for manufacturers. More importantly, bamboo is a rapidly renewable resource that grows in heavy abundance and at a much hastier speed than tree bark.

The Dell Streak we reviewed here came in fancy bamboo packaging – with a bamboo motifs pressed into each insert.

Why Big-Box Manufacturers Love Them Some Cardboard

Recyclability is a major benefit of cardboard. Virtually any “used” cardboard packaging material can be combined with other random cardboard piece to create a moldable pulp. The pulp can be reshaped into new cardboard-based flights of fancy, and because it’s made from trees and bamboo, it’s biodegradable.

“Cardboard is probably the most perfect sustainable packaging product, ” Salazar says. “People in the green community don’t agree very often, but we can all agree on that. It’s made with a high amount of recycled content. It’s compostable, re-pulp able, and comes from a renewable resource.”

Can Cardboard Really Offer Good Protection? Yes!

So cardboard takes the crown for environmental sustainability, but what about protective qualities? Oliver Campbell, Dell’s packaging guru, says, “If engineered correctly, a folded corrugated cushion can provide the same protective properties as Styrofoam or bubble wrap. The real question is whether it can be performed in the same amount of space, which translates more into a logistical cost.”

Unlike expansive foam or packing peanuts-which can either expand or fill to cushion empty spaces-the protective capabilities of cardboard are dependent on the amount of cuts or folds necessary to create the cushion. And the more folds necessary, the higher the manufacturing cost. This is an important consideration given the amount of folds found in the average corrugated insert, but it’s a smaller issue when using a cardboard mold, which typically uses form fitting dips and curves for protection rather than multiple folds.

And, Finally, It Often Comes Down to Saving Money

Lest you think cardboard is always chosen for its low environmental impact or even its protective capabilities, think again. Sometimes it’s used when shipping products to certain countries that heavily tax less sustainable packaging materials. That’s right: Even in the world of packaging, it’s not always about doing the right thing, whether that means helping the environment or making sure someone’s media streamer or notebook arrives safely. It often just comes down to which packaging solution costs less.

Maximum PC brings you the latest in PC news, reviews, and how-tos.

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Check Out the Video Here.

If you don’t think you have seen enough of the HTC Desire HD over the past week or so, maybe HTC’s own video detailing the phone in — what else — HD on their YouTube page. Take a look at the uni-body construction broken down to just the casing and a full run-down of specs in this over seven minutes video. Enjoy the calming overview, chant it as your mantra to get over hump-day, or just plain become convinced that this is the handset you need. Check out the video below:

[via Engadget]

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What if cellphones knew what sort of moods we were in? What if they could anticipate to whom we’d crave to talk? What if they knew which calls we’re waiting for? If Intel has its way, they soon will.

The cell phones of 10 years ago look like ancient relics compared to the smartphones of today. But our iPhones and Droids may be primitive compared to what’s coming next. Justin Rattner, Intel’s Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, explained in a keynote at Intel’s Developer Forum this week that the next big thing in mobile devices will be “context-aware computing” from devices that anticipate your needs and wants. Read: psychic cell phones.

How is this possible? PC Magazine explains:

All this works…by creating a cognitive framework for managing context. It centers on a context engine that unites information from extensible analyzers, inference algorithms, data stores, and sensors, and then distributes them to the appropriate applications. The framework protects context information by putting the user in complete control of it: The user may specify what context is released, when it’s released, and to whom it’s released.

For example, a sense system embedded in a cell phone might know whether a user is running or walking, and whether they are outside or in a well-lit indoor area. Combined with inputted information (i.e. whether a user is free at a certain time), the phone could offer suggestions on what a cell phone user might want to do next.

Eventually, Intel might actually produce truly psychic cell phones. Earlier this summer, we learned about Intel’s Human Brain Project—a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh that uses EEG, fMRI, and magnetoencephalography to figure out what a subject is thinking about based entirely on their neural activity pattern. The technology won’t be ready for at least a decade—and that’s just fine with us.

Fast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the future of business.

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Unless China and Japan can sort out their shit and the exportation of rare earth elements can proceed into Japan, the future of electric cars could be thrown into jeopardy. Production of cars like the Prius could slow down dangerously.

According to the NY Times, a tiff between China and Japan over the capture of a Chinese fishing trawler captain after he was caught fishing in Japanese waters (and then collided into two Coast Guard ships) has escalated to the point where China is reportedly refusing to export the sought-after elements for use in electric car manufacturing.

Cars such as Toyota’s Prius use 1kg of neodymium and up to 15kg of lanthanum (pictured) per unit in production, and with China holding 90 per cent of the world’s neodymium under lock and key, Japan will be wanting to sort out this “business matter” fairly quickly.

According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economics, nothing amiss has happened—but if Japan doesn’t get anywhere with their talks, they may be forced to take it up with the World Trade Organization. [NY Times via Salon]

Image Credit: Thermograde

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There’s lot going on in home automation giant Crestron’s new Core 3 OS, but up there is the fact that it runs on basically anything—from the iPhone and iPad to the Samsung Galaxy tablets sprinkled around their booth.

Core 3 supports HTML5, Flash, h.264 video, and from it you can control AV equipment, lighting, climate control and pretty much anything else networked into the system. [Crestron]

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The smartphone guts race just got a bit more interesting—dark horse Marvell has just outed the first ever 1.5GHz ARM tri-core mobile processor. The Armada 628 pairs two high-performance cores with one optimized for low-power. Take that, Snapdragon.

The Armada 628 also supports 1080p 3D video, USB 3.0, and DDR3 memory, and can project images to two LCD displays at the same time. But the killer feature is the ability to switch to that power-sipping third core for less intensive tasks. That means more playback time and better battery life—two things any smartphone or tablet owner could always use more of.

Marvell Raises Technology Bar Again with World’s First 1.5 GHz Tri-Core Processor Delivering Dual Stream 1080p 3D Video for Smartphones and Tablets
Game Changer: Ultra-low power, ultra-high performance ARMADA three-core processor first to feature 3D graphics performance with quad unified shaders for 200 million triangles per second delivered on mobile devices

Irvine and Santa Clara, Calif. (Sep 23, 2010) Marvell (Nasdaq: MRVL), a worldwide leader in integrated silicon solutions, today introduced the world’s first 1.5 GHz tri-core application processor, the Marvell® ARMADA™ 628. This product incorporates a full System-on-a-Chip design (SoC) with three high performance Marvell-designed, ARM-compliant CPU cores operating as the world’s first commercially available heterogeneous, multi-core, applications processor.

“Marvell has once again set the benchmark for the rest of the industry with the world’s first 1.5 GHz tri-core processor, delivering dual stream 1080p 3D video and 3D graphics performance with quad unified shaders for 200 million triangles per second delivered on ultra-low-power, long battery life smartphones and tablets,” said Weili Dai, Marvell Co-founder and Vice President and General Manager of Marvell Semiconductor’s Consumer and Computing Business Unit. “This is important because today’s consumers expect robust enterprise and consumer applications delivered to the palm of their hands. Marvell is uniquely equipped to lead this mobile revolution as the semiconductor industry’s one-stop shop solution provider. This is an example of Marvell’s unique ability to take a diverse cutting edge technology portfolio and integrate into differentiated solutions to give our customers game-changing advantage.”

The new ARMADA 628 tri-core processor incorporates a number of advanced processing and power management features. The tri-core design integrates two high performance symmetric multiprocessing cores and a third core optimized for ultra low-power. The third core is designed to support routine user tasks and acts as a system management processor to monitor and dynamically scale power and performance. The tri-core architecture provides superior performance and lower power over dual-core designs while maintaining industry compatibility and leadership – ensuring a richer, faster and smoother experience than any other ARM-based processor available today.

“Marvell’s groundbreaking tri-core architecture is a unique solution to a long-time problem-how to achieve PC-class performance without breaking the limited power budget of smartphones, tablets and other mobile consumer devices,” said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst of The Linley Group. “With Marvell’s ARMADA 628, consumers can anticipate better visual, dynamic experiences on an array of new mobile devices.”

The architecture is analogous to a hybrid muscle car. The ARMADA 628 is intended to perform like a race car engine on demand, while still delivering the frugal gas-mileage of a hybrid automobile. In real world terms, this enables the ARMADA 628 to play more than 10 hours of full 1080p HD video or 140 hours of music on a single charge while still providing 3 GHz of raw computational horsepower.

Marvell’s ARMADA 628 tri-core CPU comprises a complete SoC design – a first for the industry. In addition to the tri-core CPU, there are six additional processing engines to support stunning 3D graphics, 1080p video encode/decode, ultra high fidelity audio, advanced cryptography, and digital photo data processing – for a total of nine dedicated core functions.

The ARMADA 628 is also designed to be the first mobile CPU to provide high-speed USB 3.0 connectivity, which offers 10x faster performance than USB 2.0.

About ARMADA 628

The ARMADA 628 is based on a Marvell-designed ARM v7 MP compatible CPU offering 1.5 GHz performance. It offers support to use LP-DDR2 or DDR3 memory up to 533 MHz, a highly flexible display controller capable of driving four simultaneous displays at up t o 2K x 2K resolution, and a highly robust security subsystem that includes a secure execution processor. An integrated 3D engine renders 200 million triangles per second for an immersive game play experience and a multi-format video engine supports dual stream 1080p video for a true 3D visual experience. In addition, the ARMADA 628 supports DirectX, Open GL ES 2.0, and Open VG 1.1 – ensuring complete compatibility with the most hotly anticipated mobile game titles. ARMADA 628 supports RIM OS, Android™, Linux, Windows Mobile, and full Adobe Flash.

Marvell has a long history of delivering multi-core technology to customers for use in a broad variety of applications ranging from home networking, gateways, all the way up to computing-intensive enterprise applications. Most recently, Marvell announced the first implementation of quad-core technology for the ARM ecosystem, further demonstrating Marvell’s ability to deliver high performance, flexible technology that meets the silicon requirements of numerous tier-one customers, regardless of the end application.

Key Features

World’s first “tri-core” application processor
Up to 1.5 GHz for the two main cores and 624 MHz for the third low power core
“Heterogeneous multiprocessing” with “hardware-based Cache Coherence”
1 MB System Level 2 Cache
Platform leading multimedia capabilities, including support for both WMMX2 and NEON acceleration; and a highly optimized pipelined VFPv3 floating point engine
Member of the ARMADA family of processors for easy software porting
1080p dual stream 3D video applications (30 FPS, multi-format)
Ultimate 3D graphics performance with quad unified shaders for 200 million triangles per second (MT/s)
High performance, integrated image signal processor (ISP)
Ability to project images on multiple simultaneous displays
2 LCDs
1 HDMI
1 advanced EPD controller
Peripherals support: USB 3.0 Superspeed Client, MIPI CSI, MIPI DSI, HDMI with integrated PHY, UniPro, Slimbus, SPMI

Availability

The ARMADA 628 is currently available for sampling to customers. For more information please go to www.marvell.com.

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Sony Ericsson has finally gotten around to shipping yet another pedestrian Android offering, this time the Xperia X8. Much in the same vein as the X10 Mini, this handset features Android 1.6 and a custom SE interface. There is, naturally, a promised update to Android 2.1 by the end of the year, but seeing as SE has yet to deliver on promises for their other Android handsets, we’d suggest you not hold your breath.

The phone features a 600MHz processor, 3-inch capacitive HVGA display, and a 3.2MP camera. 128MB of on-board storage provide a basic amount of space for apps and other goodies.

We are still waiting for Sony Ericsson to deliver a truly top-of-the-line smartphone experience with Android, but more and more it seems like their development just isn’t moving at the same pace as the rest of the mobile world. If they do manage to release an Android-based PSP phone, forgiveness will be granted swiftly.

[via Android and Me]

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Using new computer fluid dynamics simulations, scientists at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research have demonstrated that, indeed, the parting of the waters was possible under a specific set of conditions.

First, the team lead by NCAR’s Carl Drews says that Moses and the children of Israel couldn’t have been camped by the Red Sea, but in a lake next to the Mediterranean sea called the Lake of Tanis. The Red Sea is too big and deep to be parted by any known force of nature except, maybe, Steve Jobs. The lake of Tanis was created by a now-gone branch of the Nile River called the Pelusiac Nile.

Following the oceanographic data, the NCAR team created a model of the lake’s basin and applied fluid dynamics to simulate the effects of strong winds. When a wind is strong enough and blows for a long enough time in the right direction, water inevitably recedes from the upwind shore, “exposing terrain formed underwater.” This is known by scientists, and now you, as the wind setdown effect.

Using the computer simulation, they calculated that:

• a 63mph easterly wind
• blowing for 12 hours straight
• could have exposed a 2 to 2.5-mile long and 3.1-mile wide land passageway.

Of course, this is a little far from Exodus’ epic description:

And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry, and the waters were divided.

Obviously, that’s exaggerated unless they really meant that Moses stretched out his hand for 12 hours straight, getting cramps for the next two weeks and thundering bad mood.

Or maybe—maybe the scientists are wrong and the Lord actually cracked the sea open when Moses high-fived Him, so the children of Israel, the dinosaurs, and Raquel Welch could escape from Yul Brynner and his cronies.

You can choose whatever theory you want. I’m keeping Raquel Welch. [PloSOne via The Register]

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As expected, Facebook’s big event today did involve some new design elements. But it’s the features being announced that give a crucial look at the site’s even bigger ambitions.

The first feature Mark Zuckerberg announced, Download Your Information, lets you download all of your photos, messages, videos, etc. Simple enough! It all goes into a single zip file, so that it’s all in one place, which will then be emailed to you. As for privacy concerns, you’ll need to provide a password and possibly answer more security questions. Whether you feel totally comfortable having all that info passing back and forth is up to you.

There’s also a new dashboard, where you’ll have the ability to see what permissions are granted each application and what information it’s using. It’ll also, crucially, make it easier to handle your app privacy settings by making them more transparent.

The third main problem, according to Mark Zuckerberg, is making sure you’re most connected to your Facebook friends that you actually, you know, care about. While he spent a lot of time talking about ways to optimize subgroups that won’t work—algorithms, separate friend lists—the actual solution will be a “social” one. Translation: tagging your friends like you would a photo.

The goal is to map all real-world groups in a way that’s all-inclusive and can be used in several different contexts. Facebook wants to be the place you go for group email, group chat, etc.

You can sort people by family, activities, sports teams—pretty much whatever you want. And just like anyone can tag a photo, each group can be controlled by any of its members. In terms of a design implications, Groups will live on the lefthand side of the page. You can send and receive email within the Group, even edit a document. It’s not clear if that collaboration can take place in real time.

Groups won’t replace your friend list, but it will be integrated across the site. Particularly, your news feed will show group activity, and Facebook Connect websites will show the activity of group members. If you don’t want to be a part of a group, you can leave (which, obviously), and no one else can add you unless you explicitly say it’s okay.

There are some questions left here; if I invite ten people for a group, it doesn’t seem as though there’s much to stop them from adding ten friends, and those ten friends to invite ten friends, and so on. The answer seems to be that common sense will save the day, since no one wants to be on a 250 person email list. You can also change your notification settings within a group to adjust how that group can notify you.

Groups themselves also have privacy settings—they can be open groups, meaning their information is public; closed groups, meaning that it’s not, and secret, meaning that no one can see who is in a group or that it exists.

Despite the questions, though Zuckerberg sees an 80% adoption rate “over time.” If you’re among that 80%, get ready for a quick landgrab for group names. While you can call your group “Family,” for example, there’s only one unique address on Facebook for a group with that name. So once BarrettFamily and Barrett_Family are gone, I’m basically going to give up on keeping in touch with my relatives. Sorry, folks!

Hard to make a judgment call on Groups until actually, you know, using it, but at first blush it seems promising. Better living through categorizing my acquaintances! Then again, most of my social circles have at least one Facebook holdout—which is partly what Zuckerberg is banking on. Either a Group forgoes the convenience of Facebook for the uninitiated, or the uninitiated cracks down and joins the network. If Facebook wins even half those battles, that potentially a huge amount of growth.

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The Israeli Department of Defense has cooked up the world’s smallest gyroscope—powered by lasers and as small as a single grain of sand. The new gyros are sensitive enough to track your position and movements anywhere—no GPS required.

The underlying tech is the same that’s found in aircraft and seafaring ships—minute physical changes are compared to each other, calculating a new position without the need for an external reference point. Essentially, the object (be it an aircraft carrier or something smaller) can detect itself moving. But for a gyro to be this tiny changes everything. Think of a smartphone that could pinpoint your movements in a cave—or, probably more realistically (and practically), a museum, or new apartment building. Sadly, we’ll still need GPS a little bit, as the gyroscopes need to be told exactly where they are from above before their own internal detection can kick in. But this breakthrough will mean GPS access could someday be of minimal importance—which is great news (especially for any city dweller, who knows lining up a signal can be a pain at best). Just get one little satellite zap, and the micro-gyros will take it from there, anywhere in the world. [Pop Sci]

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It sounds too good to be true, but researchers at the University of Cincinnati are convinced that they’ve developed a revolutionary electrofluidics display that combines the color and video capabilities of an LCD with the low power consumption of e-ink.

The technology, which was seven years in the making, sandwiches reflective electrodes between two layers of liquid and lets ambient light do the work.

Behind the display screen are two layers of liquid (oil and a pigment dispersion fluid like an inkjet fluid). Between the two layers are reflective electrodes. Think of these electrodes as a highly reflective mirror.

Ambient light enters through the display screen and through the first layer of liquid and hits the reflective electrodes. When the light hits that reflective electrode, it bounces back out to the viewer’s eye, creating the perception of a bright, color-saturated image…or text or video… .

A small electric charge powers the movement of these oil and pigment-dispersion liquids. The movement occurs between a bottom layer behind the reflective electrodes and a top layer in front of the reflective electrodes. When the pigmented substance is positioned in the “top” layer (sandwiched between the ambient light and reflective electrodes), it creates a reflected ray of colored light which combines with literally millions of ambient light rays to produce a full-color display.

Changing what’s displayed requires power, of course—and displaying video will require considerably more than changing the page of an ebook—but after that, like e-ink, the image can be displayed indefinitely with zero power. UC researchers say that their screens are two thirds brighter than Qualcomm’s Mirasol displays, which have also promised to bring low-power color ereaders to market sometime next year.

The displays can be manufactured with existing facilities, and researchers expect them to be used for applications like displaying product info in supermarkets within three years. Glad they’re getting to the important stuff first. [UC]

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It’s not often (ever?) that a convention center is anything worth being excited about, but Ireland’s new Convention Centre Dublin uses ingenius engineering and an omniscient mother brain to monitor and adjust itself. The result? Zero carbon footprint.

Every aspect of the CCD’s design has been finely tuned to prevent waste—despite possessing enough space for a performance hall, giant auditorium, and enough floorspace for 8,000 attendees. Engineers began with 6,000 tons of low carbon concrete. A good start. From there, things take a turn for the higher-tech: sophisticated heating and cooling systems that that use minimal amounts of juice, all linked up to a central computer that monitors environmental conditions in real time and adjusts electricity consumption accordingly.

When the building is stuffed with guests, it even traps their radiating heat and water vapor to be stored for later use. The CCD even produces its own giant stores of ice to tap for a quick cool-off, no air conditioning required. And it doesn’t hurt that the place is pretty damn pretty, to boot. [Inhabitat]

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According to the paper from Lux Research called “Bio-based Fuels and Materials Through 2015: Growing Capacity Past a Drop in the Bucket,” data pegs the potential market for biofuels at about 53 billion gallons by 2015. That represents an annual growth rate in capacity of about 7.8 percent, according to the report. Incumbent technologies including ethanol and biodiesel will have less of an impact in the future, Lux predicts. The analysts who produced the report believe these alternatives will give way to advances in bio-based jet fuel, algal oil, butanol and renewable diesel.

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We’re live at Sony’s Internet TV press conference, where we’re seeing the “world’s first HDTV powered by Google TV” (and its gnarly remote). Not bad at all, $1400 for the 46-inch model, available this weekend. Updated.

Check out our first impressions. We like!

The Hardware

There’s four Sony Internet TV models: 24 inches ($600), 32 inches ($800), 40 inches ($1000) and 46 inches ($1400)

They’re all 1080p edge-lit LED sets—except the 24-inch model, which is CCFL-backlit—with built-in Wi-Fi, four HDMI inputs and four USB ports

They’re available for pre-order at SonyStyle.com now and “on shelves” this weekend

Sony is also offering an accompanying, Internet-capable Blu-ray deck

The Sony TV will be the only Google TV-enabled HDTV available for this holiday season

The TV appears to lack much of the hardware functionality of the other Google TV device we’ve seen so far, such as the Logitech Revue’s video chatting.

The Google TV Implementation

The Internet TV uses Chrome for its Google TV browser and search functionality. Search will cull content from live TV, your DVR, and the web, as well as serving up bookmarked programming. The Sony Internet TV will be able to tap into the rest of Google TV’s Android ecosystem.

Navigating the menus felt less fluid than Logitech’s implementation with the Revue—lag was a bit noticeable through some parts of the interface. The menu structure itself is intuitive enough—standard Google TV fare—and a Sony rep confirmed that content-wise, the only thing they’re adding to Google’s platform is a couple dozen “Sony Recommends” video channels.

The Keypad

Sony is touting their button-encrusted, remote as a definitive, convenient way of managing its Internet TV and Blu-ray setup. We’re still trying to guess what all those buttons do. Sony says design elements have been borrowed from the PS3, in addition to a full QWERTY keyboard and mouse functionality.

Don’t wanna drop $1400 on Sony’s Internet (Google) TV? They’re building Google TV into a $400 Blu-ray player. Smart. Maybe a better value than the Logitech Revue, depending on what else it can do. We’ll see soon.

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