A new program of pavement trickery called "Drive CarePhilly" is being put into practice in... well, Philly. Around 100 intersections will be stuck with 3D decals that they think will fool drivers into thinking there's chalky-looking speed-bumps in the road.

They probably already realize that people are going to get used to this and in a year, the only purpose it'll have will be to play pranks on your extended family when they're in town. That means there's probably something on the way that'll be even better!

Wait, what? There's nothing else on the way? Well at least you still have brotherly love.

[KYW]

I ran across this web page that claims to be able to teach you how to turn your car into a water powered vehicle or a water/gasoline hybrid. Can anyone give me any insight into this? If it's the real deal, this could change so many things. God, even the idea of filling my tank from the tap just made my day!

This Fox News report looks pretty convincing, too!



[Daves Daily]

In Tibet, there are two ways to cook your food: an open fire fueled by yak dung or wood (which isn't exactly easy to obtain); or solar cookers, which consist of two-inch-thick concrete covered with tiny glass mirrors.

Fire produces lots of smoke that leads to lung disease in people who do most of their cooking indoors. Solar cookers are much cleaner, but are so heavy that they need 4 people just to move one. Plus their focus isn't always dead-on, which can damage food, cooking equipment and even start fires.

Scot Frank, a student at MIT, and Catlin Powers of Wellesley College took a trip to Tibet in 2006. One thing they heard regularly from the villagers is that life would be so much easier if there was a light mobile version of their solar cookers. This way they could go take care of their flocks or fields and still eat. But it need to be strong enough to handle the fierce winds that whip across the plateau.

Ask and you shall receive.

Some MIT students and some students from Qinghai Normal University in Tibet's Amdo region cooked up exactly what they were looking for. The cooker they made, which was inspired by the nomadic tents in the region, is made from yak-wool canvas panels, the supports are bamboo, and the dish is covered with a reflective mylar. It can be assembled and disassembled easily and one person can carry it. Plus it can be anchored to hold against the wind. The students will begin testing a prototype of the cooker this fall, and make it available for mass production in local factories.

The students called themselves SolSource Tibet, and entered MIT's yearly IDEAS comp., winning one of two Yunus Innovation Challenge awards and $3k to put towards the project.

The solar cooker cost about $17 to make and, for an additional $26, can be fitted with an extra attachment and used to heat homes.

[MIT News]

Just in case you wanted to save some dead presidents of your power bill AND keep playing video games on your PC 8 hours a day, boy does LG has a pitch for you! The Flatron W2252TE-a monitor claims to be "the world's most energy efficient." It uses roughly 45% less power than a traditional display, which means about 40 watts less. But it still looks great with a 1680 x 1050 resolution, 2ms response time, 170 degree viewing angle, and a 10,000:1 contrast ratio. The price has yet to be set.

[Pocket-lint]

Now that's a faucet. 300,000 gallons of water a second, which is part of a 60-hour flow of around 75,000,000,000 gallons of water meant to revitalize the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon.

Since 1995, 27 agencies have been working on a plan to mimic natural flooding that will redistribute sediment from central riverbeds to the riverside. This would rebuild sandbars downstream and create a better habitat for endangered fish, such as the humpback chub, and create better recreational spaces for people to use.

The first discharge was in 1996, and carried a small amount of sediment through the Grand Canyon into Lake Mead. Blast number two, in 2004, didn't move enough sand.

Results for this flow should be in within the end of the year and will provide a benchmark to base the next one on. So far, the initiative doesn't look too successful.

[Popular Science]

Paper airplanes of the future will be feared. This paper is made from cellulose like normal paper, no big deal. The thing is, science nerds at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden made the fiber so tiny and free of defects that it 7 times stronger than that legal pad of yours.

To achieve this, they break down the pulp with enzymes, beat it with a machine, and treat the fibers with carboxymethanol. I don't know what that is or does.. neither does Google Search :) Anyway, this process gives the paper a tensile strength of 214 megapascals, compared to the 30 MPa you get with regular paper.

This wouldn't really mean much to us regular folks except it could replace other plastic items, the manufacturing of which would put out petroleum waste. Green team go!

[OH GIZMO!]

The New York Times is reporting that the "Roadrunner," an American military supercomputer, has reached a long-sought-after benchmark by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. Part of it's insides comes directly out of the Playstation 3.

This (world's fastest?) computer contains 116,640 processor cores, with 12,960 chips that are an improved version of the Cell processor used in the PS3. "The Sony chips are used as accelerators, or turbochargers, for portions of calculations," said the New Work Times

"Roadrunner" takes a lot of power.. like enough to power a large mall, and requires three different programming tools since it has three different kinds of processors. Plus all 116,640 processor cores need to stay occupied at once for it to continue running. What a chore.

[NY Times]

Another fancy gadget gets released to prey on the sun, hippies rejoice. The Eclipse Intuit, (which appears to be an iPhone with a pullout keypad) would include a 5 megapixel camera with it's own photo editing software, a large touchscreen, and an ultra thin solar skin that would charge the batteries.

This probably wouldn't serve me much purpose since my phone, when not in use, lives in my pocket for 95% of the day. But if you talk on it outside a lot, this will be a welcome addition to your picnic basket.
[Yanko Design via Gizmodo]

For those of you who have big-ass flat screen TVs but don't want them to distract from your tasteful Monet print, VisionArt's got your back... I can totally relate.

They offer classy units alongside Triad speakers that include front left, center and right channel speakers underneath your flat-panel television. The artwork pulls up when you hit the power button and leaves the speakers hidden behind a black matte material. Installations are pricey, but it's a pretty sweet setup. You rich bastard.

ElectronicHouse
via
Gizmodo

This is the prototype for the next "$100 laptop" project. The design is incredible, the colors, the functionality, and both halves are separate screens!

More details here, I just thought as many people as possible should see this.

Foxconn showed off a tiny handheld Pico Projector at Computex this week, sporting a .3-inch Texas Instruments DLP chip and 854x480 resolution and weighing only 65 grams. Though Pico Projectors have been supported by many heavyweights such as 3M, Texas Instruments and Motorola, the technology has yet to make an appearance in the consumer market. It's only another prototype, but how long could it be before it makes its way to the mainstream market? Sounds like a perfect addition to anyone's dorm room.

AVING
via
Gizmodo

As part of a research project involving GM and the US Department of Energy, the station is the first of a string of stops to feature hydrogen fuel in the LA area. The idea is to create a network to push production and adoption of hydrogen-powered vehicles forward. As a short-term solution, all the hydrogen is created on-site with an electrolyzer.

But all parties involved agree that to serve a heavier load of vehicles down the line, a petrochemical plant will be necessary to produce the hydrogen. That is until it becomes possible to manufacture it from cleaner sources like carbon capture and storage, bio-feedstocks and municipal solid waste.

This isn't the first hydrogen station on the block, but the fact that it is backed by GM could be the catalyst needed to start making progress.

EcoGeek

Childhood dream come true, right? Lunatic Construction makes these pieces of modern art in a plethora of colors and materials but the main idea is that they're made to be stacked together however you see fit. From there, all you need to do is accessorize with some throw pillows or a sheet of glass and you're living the dream.

Created by Thierry Nahon and Philippe Landecker, LunaBlocks come in a number of types: the basic LunaBlock; LunaGlass, which is the same, but transparent; LunaSoft, blocks made of heavy-duty polypropylene and meant for the kiddos; LunaLight, pillow-like blocks to relax in; and LunaMetal, for the industrialist in you.


You can buy the blocks online from Homology at $20 to $55 a pop. Still, on a worth-it scale... 10! Check out the gallery at DVICE link below.

Lunatic Construction
via
DVICE

How great would it be to see your shower head change colors when the waters finally warm enough to dip your toes in? Not that great. But the option is there if you want it. Think Geek is selling this puppy at $40 a pop and it's LED's are powered by a small water turbine. The downside? It only changes from blue to red when the water gets to 89 degrees Fahrenheit. Luke warm usually isn't good enough to get my eyes open in the morning. The last heat-sensitive color shower head was only available from China. Now the US is getting in on the action. Lucky us.

Think Geek

In the past few weeks, two surfers were killed and one injured by shark attacks off of Mexico's Pacific coast. To prevent any more uninvited trouble, biologists are going to tag hundreds of sharks in the area. The study will begin in about two months and last about a year. This will help the scientists understand the sharks' movement and when and why they come so close to the coast. But if someone kept sending out free food on a surf board in your back yard, what would you do?

Reuters.com

I just saw this and thought you all might like it. It's huge, but I wonder if we really need all that extra room for peripheral vision. I really don't need to see Master Chief in DLP widescreen. But it does look pretty cool.

Would any of you gamers go this far with your setup?

Tata, and Indian car company, has brought car ownership to a whole new level by bringing down the price while blowing away the fuel economy of many American-made automobiles. The Nano (above) can fit five people (tightly), but the base version is a little sparse on luxuries: no radio, no passenger-side mirror, and only one windshield wiper.

Still innovative and practical. The sacrifices are part of what brings the Nano into the reach of modest-income families. On a worth-it scale... 10.

There is concern that the range of people, who can now afford one of these things, could overcrowd India's roads and cause environmental troubles. But i think we all know that a car that cost this little, and puts out around 50 mpg isn't going to destroy the environment near as fast as some of the elephant-sized monsters we have wheeling around the United States.

Safety is another concern. Chairman of Tata states that the car will meet safety standards and pollute even less than motorcycles, but some critics are saying that Tata will sacrifice quality and safety standards to meet the target price.

ABC News
The $2,500 Car: An Environmental Nightmare?

At the suggestion of TechToll, I am trying out a new web service called rssHugger. Guess what it does. That's right, it's designed to boost your rss sucribers and help you promote your blog. The website says it

"...aims to bring bloggers and readers together... provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader... rssHugger aims to help visitors be able to easily find blogs that write about subjects they are interested in. If the visitors find a blog that they had not previously heard about, they can easily add it to their RSS readers or bookmark it.”

The site is clear and easy to use, but you have to get your blog approved before you can add it to their rss listings. The whole process seems simple and innovative. I will update you when I get a better idea the results and how it works.

A patent filing on July 3, 2006 may foreshadow the next big thing from Apple: an ultra-mobile Macintosh. The patent filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office defines "a docking area configured to receive a portable computer."

Nice.

It's also supposed to enable the mystery device to communicate with the docking station using Bluetooth and IEEE 80.2.11 wireless connections.

Nicer.

Rumors about Apple working with Intel to make a new line of utra-mobile processors have been abound for a several months, but neither company will confirm it. It makes sense that Apple is interested in the ultra-mobile market, thought.

Regardless of what plans Apple has for the patent, I'm sure dudes with shiny black glasses and carefully mussed up hair will call it awesome.

Yahoo.com
Apple patent reveals innovative docking station

Dell is known for simplifying PCs and the supply chain beginning 23 years ago. What they're not known for is sleek, beautiful designs like this one.


Glass and metal in all the right places is a refreshing change of pace from a company that's been more about bottom-line discount computers and basic needs hardware. The Crystal may be a step in the right direction to put Dell back into contending with hipster eye candy computer companies like Apple. Only time will tell if the aesthetic trend continues.

1680 x 1050 resolution, 2ms response time, 2000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, built-in 2 megapixel webcam, built-in speakers, DVI and HDMI with HDCP and DisplayPort inputs, and it's available now for $1,199.