Volvo has created a prototype vehicle that runs on 5 different fuels; hythane (10% hydrogen and 90% methane), biomethane, natural gas (CNG), bioethanol E85 (85% bioethanol and 15% petrol) and petrol. Volvo's press release has a great quote from the project leader, Mats Morén:

The idea is to make use of the fuels that are produced locally, says Mats Morén. This means that less fuel needs to be transported between continents, and you can fill up the car on the fuel that is available wherever you are.

Wow, that's a refreshingly good idea. Read on for more info, and links to pictures.

For anyone who's a regular at a coffee shop or quick-serve restaurant, this is sure to hit home. These days, most restaurants offer gift cards (or rewards cards), but they should really make that card able to save the customer's favorite orders. This would allow the customer to simply tell the cashier which favorite he'd like that day, without having to recite all the details. Such a system would prevent orders from being made wrong, and speed up the whole ordering process (i.e. shorter lines). Something like this would be perfect at Starbucks, that not only has regulars, but has tired, irritable, rushed regulars who expect their overcomplicated coffee to be perfect each and every time. Read on to see something like this could work.

Well it isn't exactly my proposed printer with a built-in USB hub but it's close. Western Digital has a line of external hard drives with a built-in 2 port USB hub, one port on the front and another on the back. The hard drives are available in capacities ranging from 120GB to 320GB, and can connect to Mac or PCs via FireWire or USB 2.0.

At last I can ditch my little USB hub, and free up an outlet on my power strip.

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At Apple's September 12 event, Steve Jobs announced the iTV, a little device that allows access to your iTunes Library on your big screen TV. The iTV won't be available until early 2007, and while the demo was very impressive it still leaves a lot of questions about what the final version will do. In particular whether or not the iTV has a built-in hard drive is not yet known for sure. However, this may not be so important because the iTV definitely has a USB port. So the real question is: "What can I plug into that USB port?" While the USB port is probably for connecting an iPod, perhaps it can also be used to connect an external hard drive to the network. Read on to learn why the iTV may just be the NAS (network attached storage) solution no one expected.