In places where there is no grid, houses can be dark. But a simple solution--a plastic bottle stuck in the roof--can light up a room.
We have lightbulbs made from glowing metal filaments, fluorescent gas, and LED diodes. And now we have one made of water. There is also a virtually unlimited supply since the 'bulb' is composed of nothing more than one-liter plastic bottle, water, and bleach. The simple technology can be installed in less than an hour, lasts for five years, and is equivalent to a 60-watt bulb.
It works simply: The water defracts the light, letting it spread throughout the house instead of focusing on one point. The bleach keeps the water clear and microbe-free.
Developed by students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology focused on 'appropriate technologies,' the solar bottle bulb is illuminating poor settlements across the Philippines, where the organization Isang Litrong Liwanag ('A Liter of Light') has already installed 10,000 of them. “With the Solar Bottle Bulb project, a brighter Philippines is going to become a reality,” Illac Diaz, a social entrepreneur installing the bulbs, told a Filipino publication. You can watch a video of the bulbs in action here.
Millions of poor homes in Manila--and far more around the world--are left in the dark because metal roofs block all light and there are no connections to the electrical grid in cramped informal settlements. This simple bottle bulb, installed through a sealed hole cut in the metal roofs, provides a surprising amount of light by deflecting sunlight into gloomy interiors.
It's just one more innovation in the growing movement to design appropriate technologies for the developing world, where a little ingenuity goes further than a lot of technology.
Update: We've also learned that
I have seen some folks wear energy pendants around their neck which is said to offer better balance – and during product demonstrations, it does seem to work wonders. Well, here is a slightly more scientific approach to helping people obtain better balance – through the SCRSA (Sponge Core Soft Rubber Actuator) that will see action with shoe soles, helping folks compensate their lack of balance (especially the elderly) by maintaining a flawless center of gravity all the time through the control of the stiffness of the shoe sole. Seems to be the perfect accessory for the elderly, but I am not too sure just whether this technology will be cheap enough to be made accessible to all and sundry. Perhaps if it is too expensive, those energy pendant peddlers won’t run out of business anytime soon.
While most of us play video games just so we can have fun, in the future some people might get to play video games to get better. Some researchers in Spain have developed a device that is said to help people with neuromuscular disabilities, such as stroke victims, regain function. It is called the ArmAssist, it is made up of a mobile-based device that is connected to the user through an 
Don’t you wish you had a hole to crawl to sometimes in life? Perhaps, as the everyday rigors of office work might end up being rather stressful for many people. Singles are better off in this aspect since they can have their personal time outs without having to meet with anyone, but those who are married or have a family will find this to be much harder to achieve. Perhaps when everyone is able to afford one of these conceptual Amniotik personal relaxation capsules, things might just change.
If you’re always working in front of the computer all day, you should know how important it is to have a good posture when you’re seated. But how do you remind yourself to sit up properly all the time? Well, a group of high school kids who call themselves the Back Straight Boys seem to have a solution called The Posture Pad.
Despite the term laptop, chances are you’ll probably be more productive and slightly more comfortable if you were sitting at a desk, or if you had a more stable surface to place your laptop on. Sure there are laptop stands currently available which claim to provide ergonomical features, but are they as beautiful as the Lounge-Wood laptop stand? We think not. 
In what seems like an ironic situation, a draft horse is being used in Vermont to lay fiber-optic cables that will be used for internet access. It’s like how “old” technology is being used to install newer technology, but the reasoning behind it is far from ironic, but instead quite practical.