I have a solar tube in my house, and it’s incredibly effective — it’s so bright I often finding myself trying to turn the light switch off when I leave the room. Looks like the Suntracker is an evolutionary leap ahead. No longer content to passively accept the incoming rays, the Suntracker uses a solar-powered motor to follow the sun as it makes its journey across the sky. Make sure you check out the manufacturer’s site for great pictures.

The River Ribble in the United Kingdom is being outfitted with a grid of sensors that communicate via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to sense when the river’s rising, and predict if and how it will flood.

If you’re the type to buy a BMW, you’ll probably be pleased to learn your next one will learn your tastes in audio entertainment and retrieve a customized mix, while you sleep, over built-in Wi-Fi. I’m often dismissive about gewgaws in cars, but I have to admit it would be pretty cool to time shift NPR.

Don’t know about you, but I’m a total sucker for pictures of Mother Terra as seen from space. Lucky for me, then, that the ISS EarthKAM Archive is waiting to feed my jones…

Everyone’s headed for Second Life – the clothing outfitters, the motor vehicle companies, and now the book publishers. Penguin Books seem to be the first big player on the scene, that Doctorow fellow notwithstanding. Their first project was a launch of a virtual version of Neal Stephenson’s seminal Snow Crash, the novel in which the term ‘Metaverse’ was first coined. Now they are working on a proper bookstore, complete with books on the shelves that link to Amazon for your purchasing convenience. If the shopping malls in meatspace seem weird, the meta-mall is shaping up to put them in the shade.