Now here’s a neat piece of technology – a bamboo speaker for your i-phone from designer Anatoliy Omelchenko of Triangle Tree. It consists of a single piece of bamboo — one of the world’s greenest natural materials — with a slot cut into it where the iPhone is placed. The natural shape of the speaker amplifies the tunes, producing a pseudo-stereo effect that requires no electricity. Neat isn’t it.
I’ve seen few of these energy free speakers on the market but this has a number of distinct advantages. Firstly the one-foot-long bamboo tube is lightweight and durable, and because it’s made from natural material, no two speakers will be identical. Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world, and it produces more oxygen than an equivalent mass of trees.
Here’s another for your i-pad from Aplifiear.
This one is slightly different and in many ways is better than the bamboo speaker. Firstly it’s more portable and simply clips onto the corner of the iPad where it reflects and amplifies the sound coming from the speaker back at the user. According to the inventor, ‘with the Amplifiear, the higher frequencies, receive a considerable boost. This will allow us to hear the crispness of a snare drum on our favorite track. This type of sound is often mottled or even completely lost as the sound from the speaker points away from you.’
At the end of the day you could always do what my 11 year old has been doing with her i-pod since she got it – just placing it in a large bowl. Ceramic or glass is best and produces surprisingly good sound amplification.
Image: Courtesy of http://triangletree.com/ and http://www.kickstarter.com
British thriller writer O.C. Heaton, author of The Human Race, is fascinated by the past, present and future of human evolution. (Image credit: Ross Parry Agency)
