Lilt looks like a righteous application: it uses output from the ambient light and sudden motion sensors on recent Apple laptops to trigger user-defined scripts. With something like Lilt, interacting with your laptop can be a lot more physically demonstrative than typing. Tilt, shake and roll. Makes me want to upgrade this aging PowerBook G4. [lifehacker]

Researchers in Australia have developed a technique for aerating showers so they use as much as 30 per cent less water without feeling like a trickle dribbling out of the shower head. I’m beginning to detect what feels like a big shift, in which environmentally friendly practices and products are becoming both practical and attractive. It’s a heartening development. [digg]

Recent studies have demonstrated that applying a light current to sleepers’ brains can improve memory, although it sounds like the jury is still out on why that’s so.

A company called Draganfly Innovations has released a self-stabilizing remote control helicopter with on-board wirelessly streaming video camera for $2,500. That’s not spare change, but neither is it beyond the reach of the amateur paparazzi. [engadget]

The space elevator is a wonderful vision of a new route to space – but every road to low Earth orbit has its hazards. One such obstacle to overcome is the huge amounts of radiation that the climbers and their passengers would be exposed to while passing through the van Allen belts, but (unsurprisingly) the engineers working on beanstalk projects are already taking this into account in their speculative designs. Of course, it’s different for those who travel by rocket, as they spend a fraction of the time in the hot zone – which might explain why there’s been no shortage of applicants to the Russian space tourism program.