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Media Platforms Design TeamAnd you thought the beach was fun enough already: More than 40 years ago, PM looked into the mind-blowing (and romantic?) future of sunbathing couch potatos. That and the increasing miniaturization—and flattening—of the American television.“Flat TV picture tubes are really here… And you’ll soon be seeing them in a new breed of portable TVs,” PM reported. “While only small-screen versions of the flat picture tubes have been built so far, there is no limit to the size tube that can be built....

Pity the poor Falcons. Atlanta’s NFL team has always played second fiddle to the South’s near-religious devotion to college football, and been the butt of jokes about its less-than-enthusiastic crowds. Last season the Falcons allegedly turned to tech to pump up the volume, but it’s going to cost them. The NFL has stripped the team of a draft pick in 2016 and fined it $350,000 for using fake noise during games....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn 2003, social entrepreneur BP Agrawal was sitting around his Virginia house with some friends. Everyone in the crowd worked in the corporate sector, and people started bragging about the tens of thousands of dollars they’d contributed to charity in their native India. Suddenly, someone posed a provocative question: “‘What difference would it make even if you were to contribute $100 million to India?’” Agrawal recalls. “And everyone was quiet....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamWASHINGTON — A big focus here at the IEEE’s IEDM conference has been on devices for energy harvesting—sometimes called energy scavenging. Essentially, they can produce their own electricity from ambient sources. This “free energy” comes from solar, vibration, pressure and temperature gradients, as well as human power (solar obviously being the most well known and technologically developed of the bunch).Richard Swanson of SunPower Corporation spoke today to give an update on solar photovoltaic technology, predicting that panels should reach $1....

Media Platforms Design TeamSome potentially bad news for small-displacement turbocharged engines: Today Consumer Reports delivered their test results on a wide swath of new cars with small turbo engines. The verdict: Generally, CR says, turbocharged cars not only performed worse than naturally aspirated autos in the same segment, but also failed to meet their own EPA fuel-economy estimates. The most egregious underachiever, they say, is the Ecoboost Ford Fusion.The performance part of the study shouldn’t come as a great surprise....

View full post on VimeoThere’s nothing quite like the feel of real buttons. Despite the proliferation of digital keyboards, most of us tap the traditional mechanical keys when we can. The same goes for music creators, who often want the feel of traditional buttons and knobs while pumping out the jams.Florian Born set out to create a modular interface for the iPad that would bring haptic feedback to the device through physical buttons, sliders, and knobs....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe U.S. Air Force is looking for new ways to get its spy and GPS satellites into space for less money through their EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) program. Currently United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, launches these satellites. But the rocket establishment is facing some in the form of Elon Musk and SpaceX. competitionIn ULA’s favor: It has completed 68 consecutive missions for the Air Force....

Media Platforms Design TeamPeter Lewis’s treehouse, built in a 105-ft. pine tree in southern Maine, rests on a steel hexagon base suspended by cables. Joists made of 5 x 5 hemlock timbers form more hexagons that support the structure. The massive trusses below were built with 5 x 5 and 5 x 7 timbers. (Photograph by Russell Kaye)Any kid in Bridgton, Maine, would want to have Peter Lewis’s playhouse in his backyard....

MORE BRAND-NEW REPORTING FROM PM’S GEEK THE VOTE SERIES* PLUS: 10 Foreign Policy Questions We Want at First (Delayed?) Debate* ENVIRONMENT: After River Pact’s Backfire, McCain Counters Obama on WaterAs the nation reels from the impact of a financial crisis there’s another slow-motion disaster on the horizon. Infrastructure in the United States, from the bridges we commute across to the dams we’ve learned to ignore, is in a state of disrepair....

Hazardous waste should never be placed in your home garbage for pickup, or poured down the drain or in your backyard. Instead, take the time and do a little research to determine the best way of disposing these toxic fluids and materials. You’ll save yourself a fine and you’ll do the environment good. There are around 750 million gallons of used motor oil recycled in this country every year, and it takes only 1 gallon of improperly disposed oil to contaminate a million gallons of groundwater....

Gone are the days when Clippy would pop up, offer to help you write a letter when you were typing up a resume, and generally insist on improperly formatting your Word document. Still, we haven’t come that far. If you stick with the design defaults in Microsoft Word, you’re not much better off than you would be with Clippy doing the legwork.It’s not that hard to outdo an animated paperclip, though....

Backup cameras are a nearly universal option on new cars and will likely be mandated for all cars by 2014. And for good reason: The compact cameras provide a view of what’s behind the car, reducing the chance of backing over a bicycle or, worse, the kid riding it. Plus, the device greatly eases parallel parking.But the average age of a vehicle on the road is 10.8 years (up from 8....

Media Platforms Design Team The lexicon of carpentry-speak is littered with registered trade names. Through widespread use, these brand names are now considered generic terms. For example, a circular saw is often referred to as a Skilsaw, and a reciprocating saw is called a Sawzall. Ever heard anyone ask for a pair of self-locking pliers? Of course not, they ask for Vise-Grips. Well, the same recognition has been bestowed upon an ingeniously simple layout square known to all carpenters as a Speed Square....

This little squirt of a car has both impressed and disappointed in equal measure during its first several thousand miles. Impressive is its ability to carry four adults hundreds of miles at a clip in a high level of comfort. Disappointing is its lack of fit and finish.Extremely impressive in its frugal thirst for fuel – day in, day out, through some of New York’s worst commuting conditions, including ice, snow, sleet, slush and totally snarled traffic – the Versa returned a solid 28 mpg running on cheap 87 octane....

Media Platforms Design TeamThey’ve found oil in Greenland. The success of a massive deep-water drilling rig operated by Cairn Energy, a Scottish company, could mean that the world’s newest oil-and-gas rush is underway, this time in one of the globe’s most remote, rugged and pristine locations. For Americans used to hearing about huge fossil fuel deposits in Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Russia and other locations that are politically unstable or intermittently antagonistic toward the West, this could come as welcome news....

Media Platforms Design TeamAt New York City’s American Museum of Natural HistoryMedia Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamThe Mingle. That’s PM Assistant Art Director Michael Friel to the left.Media Platforms Design TeamPM Editor-in-Chief James Meigs (facing far left) and PM Publisher Bill Congdon (facing far right) honor award recipients.Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamPM Home department Senior Editor Roy Berendsohn (right)Media Platforms Design TeamPM Deputy Editor Jerry Beilinson (foreground) and PM Researcher Ben Chertoff (far right)Media Platforms Design TeamHearst Magazines President Cathleen Black shares her opening remarks....

Media Platforms Design TeamTo reduce the need for dangerous, high-speed car chases, police across the country are discreetly shooting GPS tags onto vehicles attempting to flee. The suspects’ whereabouts are then plotted on a digital map so officers can cut them off, follow them home, or watch them from a safe distance. StarChase uses a double-barreled compressed-air unit installed in the grille of a police car and loaded with twin 4....

Media Platforms Design TeamGerman graphic designer Peter Dahmen really loves paper. Where most of us see a plain white sheet, he sees the raw material for works of art. And there’s a philosophical quality to his creations, because the paper is at once so lightweight, and so resilient.But necessity is the mother of invention, and it was necessity that inspired the incredible pop-up art that he makes today. While studying graphic design in college, Peter was given the assignment of creating 3D structures out of paper....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen I was growing up, my family always had a full-size van in the driveway. Not a conversion van, mind you, but an 8-passenger model with two rows of bench seats. It left an imprint on me that continues today. I’ll admit it: I like vans.It’s for that reason that I’m anticipating the arrival of European-style commercial vans to the US market with more excitement than the average car nerd....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe gaming console wars of 2013 have begun, and in the weirdest possible way. Last night, Sony unveiled its next-generation PlayStation 4 console—without actually revealing the console.Company executives did dole out some tantalizing details. The PS4 is promised to have an X86-based 8-core AMD CPU and Radon graphics inside. That’s some seriously powerful processing capability (estimated at around 1.84 gigaflops), but it also points to a future for the Sony gaming ecosystem that is more PC-like and less console-like....