Maldives
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Inhabitat's Week in Green: solar panel roads, floating golf, and the 2,564.8 MPG race car
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Building technology got a tremendous boost this week as Inhabitat reported on a new type of graphene super paper that is 10 times stronger than steel and six times as light. We also took a look at several remarkable new infrastructure projects popping up around the world - from a self-sufficient floating golf course in the Maldives to London's gleaming new cable car system, to the Netherlands' plan to supercharge its roadways with solar panels. Speaking of hot asphalt, this week the ultra-efficient Alerion race car blazed a trail at the Shell Eco-Marathon, clocking in an incredible 2,564.8 miles per gallon. Meanwhile, Fisker announced that its sexy electric Karma sedan will hit the road this summer, and we were surprised to hear that Marcelo da Luz was forced to pull his solar-powered X of 1 car across Ontario due to road regulations. The New York Auto Show also kicked off with a blast this week as Lexus unveiled its next-gen LF-Gh concept hybrid and Porsche rolled out a 911 GTR 3 in a Facebook colorway that got a lot of "likes". Finally, we looked at several futuristic example of wearable technology this week including a pair of RoboCop-like glasses that are capable of scanning 400 faces per second at public events. We also brought you a brilliant LED backpack that lets cyclists send signals to drivers, a pollution-detecting t-shirt, and a clock that tells time by knitting a new scarf every year.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Ferrari, Porsche, and the Glucowizzard
The Week in Green is a new item from our friends at Inhabitat, recapping the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us. This week Inhabitat marveled at all of the incredible, efficient, and oh-so-sleek vehicles unveiled at this year's Geneva Motors Show. We were excited to see Ferrari roll out its first hybrid vehicle, the 599 HY-KERS while Porsche upped the ante with its stunningly beautiful 918 Spyder hybrid. Finally, Tata unveiled the Nano EV, an all-electric version of the world's cheapest car. The Maldives also made waves this week with hopeful plans to float their sinking nation using miniature man-made islands. That may be a while off however, so in the meantime why not enjoy the comforts of home at sea aboard this bizarre sofa boat -- a steal at only $16,064. Rounding off our flotilla of floating news, Hexicon unveiled a smart design for a floating array of wind turbines that can be easily installed in deep seas. We also saw several developments in wearable tech that stand to change how we interact with the wired world. The Glucowizzard is a tiny solar powered chip that can be implanted in a person's wrist to easily monitor glucose levels. If implanting gadgets gets under your skin, then you might be a fan of Microsoft's Skinput system, which uses a micro projector to beam a touchscreen display onto your arm. And to power all that gear on the go, look no further than Bourne Energy's backpack power plant -- a bright blue generator that provides portable hydroelectric power.
Windows Mobile 6.6 (aka 'not Windows Mobile 7') set for February release?
The sometimes-believable, sometimes-not fellows over at DigiTimes are reporting today that Windows Mobile codename "Maldives" is going to break out as version 6.6 (a name we'd previously heard associated with version 7) with native support for capacitive touchscreens next month -- a launch window that would line up nicely with Mobile World Congress, where 6.5 was announced a year prior. HTC's HD2 has already proven that it's possible to cleanly support capacitive touch on a 6.x-based device, so it's reasonable to think that this is legit -- but what we don't yet know is how this dovetails with 6.5.3, whether they're the same thing, and if Microsoft is doing this simply to buy itself a few precious extra months to bake WinMo 7 to a crispy, golden brown perfection. We'd already heard before that 6.x and 7 will have an opportunity to coexist in the marketplace, so it's entirely possible that 6.6 is the version that'll carry that torch on the 6.x side of things -- but if this gets announced alone without a mention of Robbie's ground-up rewrite at MWC, we'd wager there'll be riots in Barcelona.
