New Florence. New Renaissance.

Car of the Future

Courtesy of Dennis Howlett I saw this video...hydrogen fuel, vapor emission, left and right hand drive, seating easily reconfigured...now with the spare power if it could also brew coffee!

Technology Innovation and Circuses

Like clockwork each January the Ringling circus comes through town. Tradition demands the "Greatest Show on Earth" continue with trapezes and tigers. But competition from the likes of Cirque du Soleil demands more technology. So last year Ringling gave up the tradition of the three rings and added a jumbo video screen and much more interactive format.

The Bus of the Future

Courtesy of the Economist (sub required)

"It is an electric bus designed to be able to switch seamlessly between ordinary roads and dedicated supertracks, on which it can reach speeds of 250kph (155mph). It could thus present an alternative to much more expensive magnetic-levitation trains"

Intel's Next Generation Transistors

New Scientist on Intel's next gen faster and more energy efficient chips. And Scoble.

Pattern Recognition at Digg

"With more than two years of experience and statistical and behavioral analysis into the patterns of how legitimate content is submitted and promoted--represented by over 1,200,000 content submissions and 50,000,000 Diggs to date--we have a very detailed understanding of the process,"

MIT Technology Review

The New Elliptical Flight Simulator

No, not from Nautilus

but from HotSeat

I have a feeling you sweat more on the latter.

The State of Blade Servers

InfoWorld reviews the state of Dell, HP and Sun blades.

Technology Innovation and Blockbuster Video

New York Times on how NetFlix has changed the brick and mortar video rental store and how digital downloads will change it even more. In fact, Robert Scoble thinks both are due for some shocks as P2P downloads grow.

Technology Innovation and Railroads

You don't always think of iron rails as innovative, but look at all the neat stuff Union Pacific and other commercial networks in the US are investing in

Train monitoring technology and consoles to improve fuel efficiency and operating conditions
End of Train devices - with sensors and GPS to monitor all kinds of external to train data
Wireless broadband technology to improve rail yard operations
Safety technology

and more...

Multi-Finger Touch Screens and Fluid UIs

MIT Technology Review

"When Steve Jobs demonstrated Apple's new phone at Macworld recently, the feature that elicited the most "oohs" and "aahs" from the audience was the touch-screen interface: it allowed more than one touch at a time."

"But the full power of multi-touch technology might be unleashed in screens far larger than those on phones."

Also, Om Malik writes here about "Fluid UIs"