SWITCHED: The World's Ugliest Gadgets
by Tom Conlon, posted May 24th 2007 at 1:49PM

..."We've found the ugliest gadgets ever made, so you don't have to," the article proclaimed. Only, we here at Switched think there are plenty of criminal acts against good taste that weren't mentioned. So, inspired by CrunchGear, we present our nominees for the tech design hall of shame. Read the full story>

According to cnn.com air-powered car technology is now available and the US will put into the street by 2009. These air-car will still require gasoline but will greatly improve its mileage (106 mpg), a very revolutionary way of conserving gas. Among its main features are: (1) The car would be powered by a combination of compressed air and fuel; (2) A New York company is pledging to build the first models in the U.S. in 2010; (3) The mileage claim is "at the edge of possibility," an engineering expert says; (4) India shows interest in the technology; car to compete for the Automotive X Prize (a non-profit prize institute that designs and manages public competitions for the benefit of humanity). Read full story>

Invisible Carpet Idea Close to Actual Invisibility

July 17, 2008 -- Invisibility cloaks are cool, but an invisibility carpet is more practical.

That's according to scientists from Imperial College London, who recently published a paper detailing the creation of a material that would be the first to hide objects in visible light, something no cloaking device has ever achieved.

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The only way to channel light in that fashion is by using structures smaller than the wavelength of light being used to detect an object. In 2006, Duke University scientists cloaked an object from light centimeters long by creating a metamaterial with structures millimeters in size.

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"It's a lot like a mirage," said Pendry. "The sun heats the air above the desert and creates a temperature gradient, so when light from the sky comes down the graded refraction bends the light and it enters your eye and you see a mirage the looks like water." READ MORE>

I came accross this article at cnn.com and found this amusing. A good read actually...

Futuristic windshield aims to help older drivers

WARREN, Michigan (AP) -- When Coke-bottle glasses just won't cut it for safe driving, a futuristic windshield might do the trick.

General Motors Corp. researchers are working on a windshield that combines lasers, infrared sensors and a camera to take what's happening on the road and enhance it, so aging drivers with vision problems are able to see a little more clearly.

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GM's new windshield won't improve their vision, but it will make objects stand out that could otherwise go unnoticed by an aged eye.

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For example, during a foggy drive, a laser projects a blue line onto the windshield that follows the edge of the road. Or if infrared sensors detect a person or animal in the driver's path during a night drive, its outline is projected on the windshield to highlight its location.
Read the FULL STORY>

Beam me up: Just how close are we to teleportation?

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Admit it -- at one point or another we've all dreamed of being able to teleport. How much easier and less stressful life would be if, at the flick of a switch, we could whisk ourselves direct from home to work without the intervening two hours crushed onto public transport, face wedged into the armpit of a man with a sweat gland problem.

Now teleportation, long a staple of the world of science fiction -- what episode of Star Trek would be complete without Captain Kirk et al "beaming" off the Enterprise onto the surface of some distant planet? -- is being talked of as a serious scientific possibility.

More than just talked of, indeed: over the last couple of years physicists working independently in Austria, Australia and Denmark have all achieved a rudimentary form of teleportation, albeit at the quantum level of atoms and photons rather than the macro level of objects and actual people.

"Exact teleportation was thought to be impossible," Charles H. Bennett of IBM Research, part of the team that first discovered "quantum teleportation," told CNN.

"Now, however, it is known to be possible."

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