WWF - The PDF you can't print...

Well, here's a pretty bold way to advance conservation: a PDF-like file format that can't be printed. WWF files (named for the World Wildlife Fund in a clever bit of branding) are essentially just like PDFs except for that curious lack of a "print" option. They're meant for documents that the author knows can be used just as well without a paper copy - especially in workplaces where the inclination is to print every possible thing before a meeting. Sure, hackers will find plenty of ways around this restriction, but that's not the point. Adding this little barrier, even if it can be overridden, will prevent a huge percentage of those documents from ever being printed - they'll stay digital, and stay green. Nice!

[via Lifehacker & Engadget]

Tie Tea Cup

I love it when a product's function and design doesn't even need to be explained. The Tie Tea Cup, by George Lee.

[via SwissMiss]

"Replenish" Cleaners: Bring Your Own Water.

Take a look at the cleaning products aisle in any retail store, and a good portion of what you'll see is regular old water. That is, almost every liquid cleaning product is mostly water, plus a few "active ingredients" that do the real magic. Replenish asked the excellent question of why people are paying to ship and carry all that water when they could just add their own, and voila, their product was born. You buy mostly-empty bottles, filled with just the concentrated good stuff; when you get home, fill the rest of the bottle with water, and mix. Done - and in addition to your shopping load getting lighter, the carbon footprint from start to finish just got a bit smaller. Not bad!

[via Gizmodo & Wired]

Phone-friendly gloves, thanks to a dog...

This is my brother Brian, who I saw over Thanksgiving. And this is his glove - which has been made conveniently smartphone-friendly by his dog, Wally, chewing through one of the glove's fingertips. Almost all modern smartphones use capacitive touchscreens, which are great for light-touch dragging and multitouch gestures but which don't respond to gloved fingers. Sure, there are phone-friendly gloves for sale out there, which include special capacitive-triggering materials in the tips or simple chopped tips just like this (but intentional). But hey, why buy those when man's best friend can do the job for ya?

Universal Wrapping Paper - Silver!

I recently had to wrap a gift for a person and occasion that I didn't know (a buyer requested a gift-wrapped Nautilus bottle opener), and had this problem: all of my wrapping paper seems to be themed. That is, it's "birthday" or "baby shower" or "winter" or "Christmas" - no all-purpose, generic wrapping paper! (I ended up using a red-and-green paper that didn't look too Christmassy.) And then I saw this advice from Erin on Unclutterer: use silver. And it's true, there's no situation that I can think of where silver won't work - and it can even be themed with ribbon color choice, like red/green for Christmas or pastel colors for babies. Sounds like a very usable supply to keep around!

[via Lifehacker]

Tube-Free Toilet Paper - Pros and cons?

Kimberly-Clark recently introduced the latest and greatest in bathroom technology: toilet paper rolls without inner cardboard tubes. So I thought I'd take look from the usability perspective - how does this score?

Pros:

-Less waste (K-C says tubes make 160 million pounds of trash annually).

-You can use that very last square because it isn't glued to the tube!

-You don't need to change anything else about your TP routine, it's all backward-compatible (ha).

Cons:

-Everything we use that leftover TP tube for! I'm sure there are countless household uses from spacers to storage to kids' projects. I guess we'll just have to live with paper towel tubes - until they nix those, too!

[via USA Today & Gizmodo]

Fire Safety: You're doing it wrong...

Here's a stunning photo that turned up from "Oscar" on Gizmodo - and as shocking (and funny) as it may be, it's possible to follow the train of thought that resulted in this caged extinguisher. The fire extinguisher is required in the building, sure; but then a building manager notices that it just gets stolen, or used for pranks. Or maybe someone broke the glass, and he said "I'm not cleaning that up again, let's just replace it with wire mesh." Either way, the possibility of actual fire isn't what's on the guy's mind - and it becomes a secondary goal, and eventually gets blocked entirely. The sad thing is that something like this could very well go completely unnoticed - until you really need it!