I think some of my favorite gadgets are those that re-imagine the seemingly unimprovable. Take the humble hammock, now become an asymmetrical Goretex sleeping pod, a rain fly- and velcro-sporting, tree-hugging artifact of high tech artisanship.

A drug in development at St George’s, University of London, helps allergy sufferers by making the skin impervious to allergens, thus preventing exposure. On the other hand, maybe a lack of exposure to allergens is the problem in the first place.

There’s definite story potential in this Harper’s article about the business of International Marriage Brokers. Although it’s just touched on, there’s definitely an element of long tail, Internet-enabled new economy magic here.

The thing is, planetary rovers are pretty cumbersome. There’s a lot of places they can’t get to very easily. So in place of one large exploration device, MIT techies propose sending a swarm of baseball-sized miniature probes to Mars instead, where they could roll and bounce around the surface, gathering data and exploring in great detail. It would mean a lot less worries over attrition rates, for starters.

Whoa, stop the press! Sandia National Labs have had a great idea. It’s called energy surety – basically, you supply power to, say, a military base, not from one centralised power station, but from a distributed network of generation technologies! Huh? Someone thought of it before? Well, maybe Sandia will actually get the US military to buy into the idea…you never know your luck.