Project Loon - balloon powered internet for everyone

In a few hours time, thirty balloons will launch from the South Island in New Zealand as the pilot of Google's Project Loon.

The balloons are equipped with solar powered transceivers that communicate with each other and the ground to provide a network in the sky.



New Zealanders can join the pilot project. Learn more at http://www.google.com/loon/where/.

Music that is out of this world

Commander Chris Hadfield recently returned from 6 months aboard the International Space Station. An astronaut and guitarist, just before returning to earth, he made this amazing music video with his version of David Bowie's Space Oddity:

Chris also explains some of the challenges in playing a guitar in space:


And here is Jewel in the Night, an original Christmas carol written by Chris and recorded on the space station:

Happy birthday WWW

To celebrate the WWW turning 20 years old on Tuesday 30 April, CERN republished the first website. See it at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html and learn more about the restoration project at http://info.cern.ch/

Technicity

I am starting another Coursera course: TechniCity

This 4 week course explores how sensors and networks are transforming our cities, how to engage in city building through social networking and crowdsourcing platforms, some experiments with analyzing city data and how open data initiatives, hack-a-thons, and urban prototyping festivals are creatively innovating our cities.

iBeetle

Just the other day I was imagining what an Apple designed car would look like. This week Volkswagen is showing off their new iBeetle at the 2013 Shanghai Auto Show. 

Available in 2014 as Coupe and Convertible models in various iPhone inspired color schemes, the iBeetle integrates with the iPhone for navigation, hands-free calling, listening to music and location based applications  and more both wirelessly or through the docking station.

The iBeetle is first Volkswagen with newly developed docking station and a special iPhone® application

I was expecting a little bit more from Apple. Where is the aluminum unibody chassis? Slide to unlock? Still has windows. Will it be available in the iStore?

Read more at Volkswagen.