Wind turbines don't seem to have changed very much in the last few decades. Yes, they've gotten a heck of a lot bigger. And I will tell you that the innards of the devices have been the subject of industrial espionage and patent wars.

But they look pretty much the same.

Which might lead you to believe that there's not much we can do to make wind turbines much more efficient than they already are. But "FloDesign" seems to think that is not the case. For the first time since I started EcoGeek, I'm seeing horizontal axis wind turbine that doesn't look like a great-big propeller.

What it does look like is a great big jet engine. And maybe that makes sense, as jet engines are more efficient than props in driving airplanes. I'm afraid I can't explain the technology, because fluid dynamics are way over my head, but the designers of the turbine are making some fascinating claims.

There is a theoretical limit to how efficient wind turbines can be. But the designers of this turbine say that it removes whatever limitation makes that constant apply, and thus these turbines can be far more efficient and cost-effective:

A stator-rotor turbine cascade design is used to more effectively extract energy from the flow. For a given wind velocity, a MEWT having a maximum diameter 50% smaller than an existing 3-Bladed HAWT can potentially generate over 50% more power, and can potentially cost 25-35% less than the same HAWT.

So we're talking about a 25% decrease in cost with 50% more power generated. If I'm doing the numbers right, that makes wind significantly cheaper than coal throughout the entire Midwest United States. But this is still at the early stages of research and development. There needs to be a lot of work done before we'll know anything for sure. But I will say that FloDesign is officially in my RSS reader...I can't wait to hear what news they've got next.

Jamie Hyneman, the famously beret-clad Mythbuster, recently just wrote a fantastic list of lame-ass (and coincidentally environmentally disastrous) things about today's consumer electronics industry. It's great to see him coming to agree with EcoGeek from a completely different angle.

He bemoans the fact that there are no standard battery sizes for new lithium-ions, and you can never find the battery you want for the device you need powered. Jamie points out that no one would buy Chevys if you needed a Chevrolet battery to start the thing.

Useless software, preloaded onto computers, wastes space and creates a constant drain on your processor, and thus your power grid. "Obnoxious" electronics in cars only make the things go obsolete and break more quickly. And, of course, everything in a car is designed to be completely impossible for an amateur (or even a mythbuster) to fix these days.

It's a fascinating and entertaining look at how the gadgets of our lives only make us more frustrated and less capable people. But there are also a few good examples people trying to fix these problems. The problem of 10,000 different chargers for 10,000 different phones, for example, is nearly ready to be tackled:

Miraculously, the industry appears to be working on a solution to this problem. The Open Mobile Terminal Platform (omtp.org) is supported by a number of manufacturers that would like to see the micro USB become the stand­ard connector. It's too early to know if they will succeed; let's hope they do.