Nifty Inventions

This seems well done: The LifeStraw can give a person clean water for a year and uses no energy except suction from the user. It filters up to 15 microns and also treats water with iodine impregnated beads. At a cost of $2 a pop, it seems like this would be great for most 3rd world, or disaster operations. I was wondering if it would be used for camping, but the straw wont do well with giardia (aka beaver fever) as giardia is only 5 microns wide and resistant to iodine.

I own a Cressi Big Eyes mask, supposedly with 30% more viewing angle than most. I really like it. But it looks like someone else has come up with something better: Hydrooptix’s curved lenses offer panoramic vision. The style of the mask is a tad B-movie science fiction, and their claims seem a bit of a stretch – “See 5X More!“. But it seems like they could be a really cool – while wearing the mask you don’t see any of the frame. At $200 it is also 4x as expensive as my old mask. Ouch. Think I’ll wait for a sale. A big one.

Might not work well with ultra light backpacking, but this looks pretty cool: Suspended-load backpack generates its own electricity from the motion of the person carrying it

How retro cool: Sky Sails is a system that puts giant sail kites on freight ships to use high-altitude winds to help pull them across the ocean.