The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out our most popular articles of the week on a variety of subjects, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan Surfaces 120 Years Later

Hallelujah For American Idol, Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen

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Nicole:

Google Gives Free Voicemail to San Francisco Homeless

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Turnes 80

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Giulia:

Patrick Swayze’s Cancer Battle

Koby Bryant’s PSA for ASR

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Gina:

Reese’s Empowering Bracelet

“Chop Shop” - Dreams In a Place of Despair

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Kerry:

Bamboo Laptop: Will Apple Be Green with Envy?

The Explosive Truth About Twinkies

Steve Jobs recently proclaimed a new commitment to greener product design, but a Taiwan-based company called Asus has topped Apple’s new Air laptop in the sustainble sweepstakes with its Eco Book. Yeah, it’s cool that the Air is clad in recyclable aluminum, but the Eco Book’s laminated with strips of sustainably harvested bamboo, according to the Guardian.

Asus designed the Eco Book in response to the growing demand for alternatives to plastics. Jellent Sun, a senior director at Asus, told the Guardian “Bamboo is the most sustainable raw material there is.” The Eco Book was unveiled yesterday at the computer fair CeBIT, in Hanover, Germany, but it won’t go into production till June.

Other companies are introducing their own “ecolutions” at CeBIT, such as Fujitsu Siemens’ O-Watt monitor, which uses no electricity when in standby mode. This is exactly the kind of innovation we need to solve the “vampire energy” problem I blogged about yesterday.

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