Hmmmm … those trousers on eBay sure look nice, but how do you know whether the fabric is easy on the skin or more like wearing sandpaper? As things stand now, you have no way of telling, and that’s a gap in our online purchasing lives that needs patching desperately. Fear not, we Europeans are on the case – the HAPTEX project is developing devices that will simulate the tactile feel of textiles over an internet connection. How have we survived without this technology for so long?

Tim Haab over at Environmental Economics proposes a method for reducing fossil fuel consumption that sidesteps the drawbacks of a gas tax. He proposes a consumer gasoline allowance market, with supply capped at today’s consumption and reduced over time. Want a drive a Hummer? No problem, you’ll just have to pay more to buy up gas credits from people who are driving Priuses (Prii?). It’s probably no more palatable to America’s drivers than a gas tax, but it has the potential to be more fair.

Due to its very nature, our sun is a tricky thing to study in detail. Lucky for us that we have the power of advanced technology on our side, this time in the form of Japan’s Hinode satellite. Hinode has been in operation for almost two weeks, using special devices to take pictures of the solar surface. These early images are the equivalent of test runs, taken before the probe begins a full-scale scientific investigation of such mysteries as why the sun’s corona is actually hotter than its surface.

The Ecocity Farm packs fish and vegetables into a high density, vertically stackable, recycling and recirculating farming system. It’s farming for technology enthusiasts and urban culturati. You know it’s a brave new world when a farm is, “…packaged into a turn-key, IT supported retail franchise.” [treehugger]

The folks at Google Will Eat Itself are a seriously deranged bunch (witness the epilepsy-inducing background animations on their website), but their concept is admirable in a screw-the-system kind of aesthetic. They have websites, on the websites are Google AdSense ads, from the clickthrough they buy Google stock. Do you see how Ouroubouros eats his own tail? [z+]