Hasta La Gadget!

Recently, Google announced the winners of their Project 10^100, which awarded multi-million start-up funds to promising, world-changing ideas. One of Google’s million-dollar idea babies was for New Zealand-based Shweeb and their innovative take on public transportation. But Shweeb–if it ever manages its way down from an ivory tower and into reality–isn’t innovative as much as it is revolutionary.

Like all truly forward thinking ideas, Shweeb seems completely nuts at first glance. As a tech blogger I’d love nothing more than to mock Google and it’s choice of Shweeb with its poor-man’s take on the Jetsons opening sequence. But the more you read about it, the more Shweeb’s innovative take urban transport makes a whole lot of sense.

The idea in a plexiglas nutshell is to combine the concept of a subway with urban bike lanes (like many cities, my own Brooklyn has been crosshatched with newly designated bike lanes over the past year). Shweeb transport consists of self-propelled “pods” that are tethered to ultra-thin (8-inch) monorail tracks that extend over and through urban landscapes. The pods are completely encased and aerodynamically-designed to cut down on wind resistance. Additionally, the user leans back within the pod with the legs forward, further cutting down on wind drag. According to the Shweeb site, riders should be able to go much faster than a conventional self-propelled bicycle with less work. Or as they boast, their tech “requires less energy to cover a given distance than any other vehicle on earth.”

The current concept is that, like a subway, the Shweeb lines would run between population and business centers. Riders would pick up a pod at a hub in their neighborhood and ride them into a hub near work. Overall, the system might work something like a self-propelled city-wide ski lift. Shweeb promises that they will “soon announce the location where we will
build the first transit Shweeb for public use.”

But the main advantage of Shweeb is that it is completely carbon-free in its everyday function. All the energy is muscle powered. As populations explode, dense urban living is an inevitable reality for our species. Sustainable technologies like Shweeb will help make the civilizations of the future keep themselves civilized.

Video of Shweeb in action after the jump.

The beloved Roomba: Star of basic cable infomercials. Mechanized vanquisher of dust bunnies. Tormentor and companion of domestic cats throughout the YouTube-iverse. And now, it takes on its most important role: that of beloved 1980s digital pizza pie, Pac-Man.

Despite the campy concept, Roomba Pac-Man is the product of some serious engineering. It utilizes military grade Unmanned Aerial System software to monitor ol’ 2Pac, Blinky, Inky, and the rest of the crew and to alter their behavior accordingly. Pac-Man searches throughout the maze sweeping-up paper “pellets” and is chased by his undead stalkers. When the ghosts get close enough they “chase” him according to a set of rules. Of course, when Pac swiffers up some of those special pellets, the tables are turned and the hunters become the hunted.

It’s actually pretty impressive. But I can’t help but imagine that we’d have a flying car and a cure for the common cold had these guys not spent all this time and dedication on Roomba Pac-Man.

Video after the jump.

It’s safe to assume, I think, that Steve Jobs has a pretty nice little nest egg set up for himself. And it’s not just because of all of that sweet Apple and Pixar money. I’m guessing that the Apple CEO doesn’t have all that many expenses for a rich guy.

I mean, for one thing, he’s got access to all of the computers, music players, and phones a guy could want (he probably gets a pretty good discount from AT&T, as well). Also, his wardrobe expenses are no doubt fairly low. What’s he got to buy, like 10, 15 black turtlenecks a year?

Still, even with all of these factors in place, Jobs has been passed up by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on Forbes’s annual rich people list, the Forbes 400. Zuckerberg and Jobs now rank numbers 35 and 43, with estimated values of $6.9 and $6.1 billion, respectively.

Not that it was a bad year for Apple’s head, by any stretched–his net worth actually jumped $1 billion since last year.

Zuckerberg, for his part, recently announced that he will be donating $100 million to schools in Newark, NJ. All in all, thinks seem to be looking up for Facebook’s 26-year-old CEO. Not like they-decided-to-cancel-that-movie-about-me good. But still, pretty good.

Oh, science. You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you? Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research believe that Moses’s parting of the Red Sea may actually be based one fact–and they’ve got the computer simulation to prove it.

The biblical parting, they believe, may have been based on “wind setdown,” a natural phenomenon in which wind moves water. The actual location described in Exodus has long been the subject of scholarly debate, though it is commonly understood to have taken place at the Red Sea.

Displacement of that much water, however, would require the wind strength of a hurricane. NCAR scientist Carl Drews and his team suggest that it’s more likely that Moses and the Israelites were stationed closer to the Nile. Says The Guardian,

Oceanographers have calculated that an ancient branch of the Nile River, the Pelusiac Nile, flowed into a coastal lagoon then known as the Lake of Tanis. The two bodies of water would have come together to form a U-shaped curve.

If wind blew at 63 MPH for 12 hours, a 2 to 2.5 mile landbridge would have appeared from under six foot deep waters, the scientists believe. “The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus,” Drews told the paper. “The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that’s in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in.”