HungerStation.com in Saudi Arabia is a new online platform where customers can order food from a lengthening list of restaurants for delivery right to their doorstep. Wildly successful, the service has experienced a 500% increase in daily traffic since their launch last November, and is signing on new food chains at an impressive clip.
No news that first-class passengers have deeper pockets than economy flyers. Now the World Bank confirms their carbon footprint is about sevenfold that of the average airborne Joe.
With the dust of social anger still unsettled in Taksim Square and on the same day that U.S. President Obama unveiled his groundbreaking climate action plan, 500 young climate activists from around the globe have gathered in Istanbul to mobilize strategies for a cleaner energy future. Is the pendulum finally swinging green?
Byblos, the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city in Lebanon has been named the Arab world’s best tourist city by the United Nations World Tourism Organization, and it offers a host of lessons in greening too.
A ship carrying thick black bitumen, the same stuff found in Canada’s tar sands, sank off the coast of Oman on Sunday and its contents are now floating on the Gulf of Oman – about 40km east of the capital Muscat.
As part of a larger master plan to rejuvenate the downtown Beirut area, Swiss Architects Herzog & De Meuron have designed “The Terraces,” a green waterfront apartment tower in Beirut lush with vegetation and hanging gardens.
Google’s street view has taken us from the streets of Tel Aviv to the Grand Canyon and even under the sea, and now this incredible tool has reached new heights – 2,716 feet to be exact.Using their swanky new Street View Trekker backpacks, a team from Google has mapped out views from the world’s tallest building – the Burj Khalifa.
The intrepid Google team that set out to capture images from the soaring skyscraper in Dubai needed three days to get the job done.
Not only did they capture photographs from the 80th floor window cleaning gantry, they also ascended to the vertigo-inducing heights of the 124th floor, where they encountered 40mph winds.
Trekker backpacks and trolleys were key to the successful execution of this daring project.
These are new android-powered cameras, 15 five megapixel cameras in one resilient backpack, that Google designed in order to reach places that even a bicycle or snow machine can’t reach.
The 40 pound packs have two batteries that last all day, according to Google.
“The Burj Khalifa is special because it’s the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world” said Pascal Malite, Google’s Street View Program Manager.
“We are here to bring to the user the possibility to see this huge, immense, wonderful building,” she added.
This is the first time that Google’s Street View team has worked on a project like this in an Arab country, and now it is possible for just about anyone to experience the Burj without a costly, carbon-intensive flight across the globe.
:: Engadget
Islamic nations defer to astronomers in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Turkey (depending on political affiliation) to determine when the new crescent moon harkens the Holy Month of Ramadan. Dependence on real-time moon-spotting means heightened anxiety. Rumors reel about Ramadan’s start, leaving the requisite housecleaning and food prep open-ended.
Orlando De Urrutia has designed what he says is the world’s first building to get its water from the air. Called the Water Building Resort and powered by a facade of building integrated photovoltaics, the mixed-use structure designed for Dubai is shaped to resemble a water drop.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduced the “latest” in electric car technology – battery pack swapping for the company’s Model S – to a gushing crowd and an even more fawning press. “Really, it’s one of those things you need to see,” wrote Chris Velazco in TechCrunch before linking to a video of Thursday’s event complete with flashing lights and space age music.
If you are a designer eager to find more sustainable material choices for your creative inventions, you might want to hit the BioCouture workshop during Beirut Design Week.
The “Field Guide to Jordan” is a fantastically comprehensive book that uses beautiful photographs and concise descriptions to introduce locals and visitors to the kingdom’s natural wonders. The guide is the end-product of four years of dedicated research and photography by author Jarir Maani and his band of contributors (composed mainly of friends and family).
Here is a summer solstice challenge for northern hemisphere Green Prophet readers. How many outdoor electric lights are shining at the sunny sky during the longest days of your summer?
The ongoing Syrian conflict has put refugees at their highest number since 1994 – a terrible year for the people of Rwanda and Yugoslavia; this year – in time for World Refugee Day – IKEA and the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) have unveiled a solar-powered home.
Israeli artist and designer Ron Arad has expressed his love of Fiat 500s in a curious way as part of an art exhibition at the Holon Design Museum near Tel Aviv: he crushed them, then he embalmed them, and now they are hanging on the wall of an art gallery in his birth country.
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