It’s one thing to tinker in your garage to restore that old gas-guzzling muscle car that you think will get you some action. It’s something entirely different to invent an electricity-generating wind turbine out of scrap parts that could revolutionize personal power in developing nations, especially if you’re in college. Max Robinson has done just that, designing a turbine out of spare parts that costs less than $40 to build out of readily available parts and can power a home’s lighting for up to two and a half days or a radio for over a day. No word on how long an OLPC would last. [Daily Mail]

Original post by Matt Hickey

Original post by Matt Hickey

The organization is divided up into 25 teams, which encompases stuff like Applets and Gadgets, the File System, Core User Experience, Find and Organize, IE, Kernel & VM, Media Center, and Security. Of course many features span various parts of the OS, and it’s up to the management to coordinate between the numerous groups. What would we want to see more of? Better and smarter integration between various apps on Windows, for example having their Mail application be tied into Calendars for meeting schedules and Contacts, or making Gadgets able to access various parts of the OS. These are just two examples we came up with in as many seconds, but you get the idea. More integration. [Windows 7 blog]

Original post by Jason Chen

Original post by matt buchanan

The IE 8 Beta 2 release should be hitting any day now, so we shall see soon enough whether or not this feature made it into the build. But, the question is, would private browsing make IE more appealing to you, or is it a non-issue? [istartedsomething via ZDNet Image via ninamariebarbuto]

Original post by Sean Fallon

However, they claim that the kit could be the first step towards replacing conventional batteries in portable devices like iPods or mobile phone chargers. I don’t know how practical a commercial application would be, or whether or not I would be willing to give up a single drop of my precious vodka, but you can pick up the kit now for $99. [Horizonfuelcell]

Original post by Sean Fallon

Original post by Sean Fallon

Original post by Jason Chen

Click the headline once and you see a paragraph summary—click again to read the whole article, which only takes 10 secs to load on EDGE. And you can save stories for subway or air reading. No word on an iPhone version specifically, but the Journal told us that the reader is “currently in development” for “other smartphone platforms.” It makes sense to hit BlackBerry first since that’s what the suit-and-tie, richer-than-you crowd—the WSJ’s audience—are toting by and large. If you’ve got a BlackBerry, there’s no reason to not grab this. If you don’t read the Journal, try it, it’ll make you smarter (maybe not the editorial pages, but the rest of it will). [WSJ via Silicon Alley Insider]

Original post by matt buchanan

I believe a working prototype could be made, but it would take a great deal of time and engineering. This isn’t fantasy. It’s a green vehicle, and all of the numbers are based in the real world.

But who would actually use this? Sure, it looks pretty amazing and you can park it vertically in a garage to save space, but imagine having to unfasten yourself from this every time you get to work. Or the supermarket. Or grandma’s house. At least with a Segway you can hop off and do your business. [Popsci via Crunchgear via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Original post by Jason Chen