The latest off BMW's concept assembly line is a stubby, decidedly unsexy eco-car -- equal parts Mini, VW bug, and Trabi -- that's getting its very own sub-brand. They call it the Megacity Vehicle or MCV, and its latest design was just revealed last week.
This infographic by accounting firm Grant Thorton purports to show how efficient 30 different countries are at innovation. How? Simply by showing the ratio between patents granted in a country, and the total R&D expenditures there.
Thus, the bigger the box in each country, the more innovation (as measured by patents) it gets for every R&D dollar:
![Novel Interfaces Yield Car the Blind Can Drive [Video]](/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/642x368/BlindDrivingInterface.jpg "Novel Interfaces Yield Car the Blind Can Drive [Video]")
Ford is about to put out the world's strangest car. Developed by researchers at Virginia Tech, it's based on a hybrid Escape with a unique, non-visual interface, which will allow for something we never thought possible: Blind people driving.
Boxel is a summer pavilion that combines architecture students? two favorite pastimes: pretentious archi-speak and beer.
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Who else could make Tokyo look more like a stained glass window? Of course it's a gorgeous new open-source mapping tool created by the San Francisco-based firm Stamen. In June, you'll remember that Stamen won a $400,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, for another, not-yet-released project named City Tracking.
If we have one complaint about the iPhone 4, it's how quickly the glass on the back becomes a scratched up mess. Frankly, we don't think cases are much of a solution: Why would you want to hide that beautiful design, especially when so much of what makes it wonderful is how it feels in your hand?
A better solution is a faux-leather skin guard that you simply stick on to the back of the phone:
Just when you thought End Timers couldn't get any loonier, they've gone and started building themselves a maze of underground hotels. Not just any hotels. Chichi hotels. Hotels that'll let you sleep soundly, veg out in front of a flat-screen TV, and get your pearly whites fixed all while the world explodes--and all in decor that they liken to a "luxury yacht" (and which we liken to a Best Western). The cost: $50,000 for the "extended stay package."
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