Not a Flying Car...

...it's a drivable airplane.  It runs on unleaded gasoline instead of the leaded gas that many planes still use.  The idea is that if you're a pilot, you just land and instead of paying through the nose for hangar space at the airport (which might not be available), you simply drive home.

As always, click the title to view the article...

Upgrading Humans?

Darpa, the US government agency in charge of blue-sky, far out research, is working on technologies that will enhance the human body--strength, endurance, cognition, survivability, etc. They're constrained by unwillingness to endanger test subjects, which brings up some interesting questions. Looks like they've got some stuff I need to get my hands on...

As always, click the headline above for the full article...

End of the Mouse?

Jeff Han was a New York University computer scientist minding his own business when inspiration suddenly struck. Looking at a water glass one day, he was intrigued by the way his fingers interacted with the glass and he hit on an idea to take touchscreen technology to a new level.

Word of his multi-touch interface reached last year's TED conference curator, Chris Anderson, who invited him to give a brief demo, sandwiched between other lengthier talks. Han was the surprise hit of the show and became a geek rock star overnight. Since then he's had a crazy year developing a company, Perceptive Pixel, with Phil Davidson, and has sold some of their first products to the CIA. He's back at TED this week by popular demand. -- from Wired.com -- click above for the full story

Underwater Logging

It turns out logging has sunk to a new low, literally speaking: harvesting underwater trees. Turns out that there is billions of dollars of lumber preserved under lakes made by dams, and one company has designed an underwater remote-controlled logging robot to go get them. As an added bonus, there is no forest wildlife or neighbors to disturb, and since the trees are dead anyway it's a home-run with conservation activists. The wood can be sold for a premium as "green", environment friendly, and it turns out it's actually cheaper to harvest this way. Gotta love free enterprise. (Click the headline above for the full story.)

Dilbert: The Knack

I think I have a light case of The Knack. (Thanks to David for the Dilbert email)

Update: Sony made YouTube take the video down, but you can still see a longer version here...

Run, Boy, Run!

This one goes out to David and Curt, who believe I should be posting more =-)

Check out the new version of Honda's ASIMO (pronounced Awesome-O). He runs, with his feet actually leaving the ground for 0.08 seconds on each stride. A great technical achievement to be sure, but watching this little guy go I can't help but feel that the state of the art in modern robotics surely would be a disappointment to all the little kids in the '50s who envisioned aircars in every skygarage and robots in every home by now.