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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.
Skinput: because touchscreens never felt right anyway (video)
Microsoft looks to be on a bit of a hot streak with innovations lately, and though this here project hasn't received much hype (yet), we'd say it's one of the most ingenious user interface concepts we've come across. Skinput is based on an armband straddling the wearer's biceps and detecting the small vibrations generated when the user taps the skin of his arm. Due to different bone densities, tissue mass and muscle size, unique acoustic signatures can be identified for particular parts of the arm or hand (including fingers), allowing people to literally control their gear by touching themselves. The added pico projector is there just for convenience, and we can totally see ourselves using this by simply memorizing the five input points (current maximum, 95.5 percent accuracy), particularly since the band works even if you're running. Make your way past the break to see Tetris played in a whole new way.
