The truly excellent WorldChanging.com has a post about the Wattson, a device for visually displaying the electricity consumption in your household in realtime – plus it can connect to a computer and network with other Wattson users. UK only at the moment, but demand is sure to spread this little fella far and wide.

US company Space Adventures has announced its intent to build a spaceport and a fleet of suborbital spaceships ‘for commercial purposes’ (ie space tourism). These projects include collaboration with Prodea (Texan investment company founded by the family that brought you the X-Prize) and the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Japanese physicists have been experimenting with new bonding methods, and have found that ‘entirely end-bonded’ multiwalled carbon nanotubes can superconduct at temperatures 30 times higher than the regular type. Is there anything you can’t do with these little things?

Over at Forbes.com, Bruce Sterling has posted a short article speculating on the way money and banking might move in the future. Playful and serious at the same time, it’s a fascinating brainstorm from a visionary futurist.

More research at the University of Notre Dame has led to a first working prototype of magnetic processing technology. Processors using magnetic domains rather than semiconductors will have numerous advantages: they’ll be faster; denser; less power-hungry; more adaptable; and impervious to the hard radiation of space environments.