Boeing 797: the future of air travel?

According to NewTechSpy, Boeing is developing the 797 to compete directly with the massive, but more traditionally built, Airbus A380. Featuring a blended wing/body co-developed with NASA, it introduces a completely new design, looking more like a stealth bomber than a 747. Able to hold 1,000 passengers on two levels, the new design increases the efficiency of the aircraft by 33% while increasing its speed to mach 0.88, or 654 mph — a significant bump from the A380's speed of 570 mph. This speed increase is a result of the 25% weight reduction and improved aerodynamics that the new body design features. The wingspan of 265 feet is over 50 feet longer than the 747's but only 3 feet more than the A380's. There's no word on when the 797 will be hitting runways near you, if ever, but it certainly has the potential to herald in a new era of commercial air travel. If it features improvements in airplane food as drastic as its improvements in energy efficiency, it might actually get us to travel more, too.

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Everyone's happy with Sharp's two-way LCDs

Sharp has begun showing off its two-way LCD screen, which shows different images depending on what angle you view it from. The company plans to use the technology in things like car navigation systems, allowing the driver to see a map in the center console while the passenger sees the Easy Rider DVD playing from the disc in the trunk. The main problem with two-way screens is that when you look at them straight on you see a combination of both images, meaning you have to view the screens at an angle for them to really work. However, the technology could be a real lifesaver for those road trips where the kids fight over what to watch in the back seat, although you'd presumably need two DVD players hooked up to service both the right-side people and the left-side people.
— Adam Frucci

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Honda: fuel-cell vehicles on the road by 2010

Hydrogen fuel-cell cars may be hitting the streets sooner than everybody thought if Honda lives up to recent promises. Despite predictions that the prohibitively expensive nature of hydrogen fuel-cell technology meant that consumer vehicles would be over a decade away, Honda has announced that it plans to produce a consumer model "in three to four years." Hydrogen fuel-cell cars by 2010? Hot damn! It's not clear if Honda has figured out a way to make the vehicles more affordable or if they're just going to charge $100k+ for them, but in any case the cars will run on simple hydrogen and emit nothing but clean, safe water. Honda is also working on an energy station for the home that creates hydrogen out of natural gas, allowing drivers to fill up in their own garage and wave bye-bye to gas stations forever.

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Datamancer's Steampunk Laptop

This may look like a Victorian music box, but inside this intricately hand-crafted wooden case lives a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop that runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It features an elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents, claw feet, an antiqued copper keyboard and mouse, leather wrist pads, and customized wireless network card. The machine turns on with an antique clock-winding key by way of a custom-built ratcheting switch made from old clock parts.

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