Solar panels placed as sound barriers on Australian road expected to make back investment in 15 years.

Even if that's an optimistic estimate, this could be a really good idea. You could install solar panels on roads and use that money to maintain the infrastructure once its built. Of course that would mean that we would have to keep politicians' hands off of it.

Mystery solved. Aerodynamics now allows bumblebees to fly.

Thanks to Calvin Smith (via Twine)

For some reason this update from UPS fascinates me.

I don't really think about optimizing our ground transportation network but it's pretty interesting. This short snippet really got me thinking about what must be going on at UPS. They must have a bunch of guys on supercomputers back there trying to optimize routes. It's also interesting how UPS thinks of their traffic. They seem to call each major city pair that they service a Lane, much like a shipping lane. I would really love to get my hands on some of their maps!

Mozilla's Ubiquity looks awesome! Scroll down a bit for a nifty video.

Clearly it has a long way to go, but allowing people to quickly make mash-ups on the fly sounds like a good idea. Now all they have to do is make it simple and intuitive enough to be useful to the masses!

Thanks to Marc Pous (via Twine)

Gym in Portland, OR hooks up its equipment to generators in hopes of generating 100% of the energy it uses.

I wonder if there will ever be a time when energy prices are high enough and generators on exercise equipment efficient enough that gyms can replace membership fees with the money they make from energy generation.

Thanks to JDP on Twine