A USB device is suppose to connect intelligently to your computer without any hassel. Not printers. If the even come with a USB cord (some printers actually make you buy this separately), you inevitable have to install an entire CD...

I really love Google Maps. There's one problem with it though. When you search for something and get a typo, you typically get a left-hand sidebar with suggestions about what you might have done wrong. This is vaguely useful,...

This is truly brilliant. A group in San Francisco concerned witht the lack of greenspace in the city recently asked the question: As long as you put money in the meter, who's to say a parking space has to have...

A website devited to Haikus about the various bus lines in San Francisco. Some of them are brilliant, some are painful. Kind of like Muni....

is a project to build a decent - Caen style transit system in Milwaukee. It looks like a darn good idea, and ought to be considered. I worry that this time of transit system won't be a...

The Government of Canada, in partnership with IBM and UN-HABITAT, have put together a 72-hour online event in preparation for the World Urban Forum, to be held enxt summer in Vancouver. It's called "Habitat Jam" and it'll basically be a,...

I have a feeling this is more novelty than preacticalisty, since a cell phone could probably charge itself off a car's idling motor without any added deleterious effects. Nonetheless, here's a taxi with a wind turbine on the roof that...

San Francisco: On extraordinarily rare occasions the opportunity presents itself to develop a piece of land in ideal, truly brilliant fashion. Treasure Island is a former military facility on landfill in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It's laid largely...

LA County has placed solar panels on two key bus depots in the San Fernando valley. The panels should save the system $185k a year in electricity costs. Plus, it's a cool public display of solar potential. For a bigger...

This website, ipodsubwaymaps.com, is one of the coolest, most useful web technology apps I've ever seen. William Bright has put a tremendous amount of effort into creating astonishingly accurate subway maps that you can download onto your iPod for handy...

One of my biggest complaints about my alma matter, Washington University in St. Louis, was the severe lack of interaction between the students and the city of St. Louis, which was always just a stone's throw away. St. Louis is...

Pabst Farms is NOT brilliant. It's yet another exurban zone of tacky strip malls and low-grade McMansions. Well, is has a few minor merits - a bit more greenspace than average, for example. But basically it's another tragic waste of...

There's little I can say about this other than it's awesome. A welcome maship from google....

Take a look at this. I don't know anything about Tulsa, but this is one of the most well thought out urban renewal ideas I've seen in a while and to see it coming out of the bible belt is...

Rubber Sidewalks seem to be taking off. The city of Boston may start requiring them - article here. That's a pretty bold step for something relatively unproven, but will be very useful for other cities to watch and represents the...

This article's gotten a lot of play and it sound's like a truly brilliant idea: Make sidewalks out of recycled tires - it's cheap, they apparantly last longer, they are easier on the feet, they don't have freeze/thaw issues in...

I normally like Alaska Airlines. They're generally very nice, and in the case of a major delay (during which we had to turn around and return to the airport of departure) they were polite and professional. No big deal. To...

I know I'm not the first person who's complained about these things, but my respect for TSA security is so low I could scream. Twice recently I've had these idiots rummage through my bag in search of liquids and when...

In Sydney, Australia multiple groups of commuter bicyclists have gotten organized and adopted routes with scheduled stops calling themselves a "bike bus". The brilliance is the purposeful combination of the age-old tactic of safety in numbers, social interaction, and...

San Francisco The city has recently proposed a 17 cent tax on plastic grocery bags. This is a brilliant idea, which has been proven effective elsewhere - most famously in Ireland where plastic bag consumption has been reduced by 90%...