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It's no surprise electronic garbage commonly referred to as e-waste is piling up in our nation's landfills, but the Australian National Park Service has a creative alternative: Repeat Plastics Australia just opened a new bike path made entirely out of excess plastic materials from discarded printer cartridges.

The 10.6-mile bike path stretches between Alice Springs and Simpsons Gap in the northwest territory of Australia and sees over 120,000 visitors every year. According to Parks and Wildlife Minster Karl Hampton, the bridge echoes the Australian government's commitment to sustainable development, "saving landfill, trees, and ensuring … Read more

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif.--One of the technologies that always catches my eye is a screen technology called Mirasol, which aims to marry the best of e-reader and traditional liquid crystal displays.

Mirasol uses tiny mirrors, known as microelectronic machines, to create its display, which has the low power characteristics of E-Ink displays and the video-playing and color abilities of LCDs. Qualcomm isn't making devices itself, but said e-readers using Mirasol should be out early next year, if not by the end of this year.

I got a chance to see the demo up close, and shot a quick … Read more

The earliest known reference to medicine in pill form dates back to 10th century Arabic medical literature, long after Egyptians were rolling active medicinal agents into breads and clays but some 900 years before the first patent for a tablet was granted in 1843.

Not much about the technology has changed in a millennium of pill production. Each tablet, shaped for swallowing, acts as a carrier of medicine. The active ingredient is typically one-thousandth the volume of the pill, meaning 99.9 percent of a typical pill is essentially filler material or agents that help digest the drug. (It is … Read more

The technology that powers your Kindle may soon have military applications. For soldiers in combat zones, gadgets like GPS and heads-up displays are fantastically useful, provided they have the battery to power them. One of the most power-hungry components in these devices is the screen. While we may have reached a point where a gadget can run for days on a single charge, it's still not sufficient for grunts who may be in the field for weeks without access to power.

Hewlett-Packard's Information Surfaces Lab adopted a two-pronged approach when designing the flexible wrist display for troops. One, … Read more

At this point, I've looked at sites that have given me the power to create fake hair, Wii-free Mii avatars, and one that did virtual makeup. Now it's time to try one that does fake tattoos. Is the human body a sacred thing? Yes, but certainly not on the Internet.

Meet Obsessive Ink, the latest site to create a "virtual you" that can be modified with realistic tattoos. It lets you see what you'd look like with a tattoo, given you put in enough effort to make its virtual avatars look like your own face … Read more

While the world awaits the birth of the Apple tablet, there is another touch-screen device that may have more of an impact--at least technologically. Notion Ink has announced that Adam, an Android-based tablet PC, will ship in June 2010 for around $325. However, what is really exciting is that this machine may be the first to sport the new 10.1-inch Pixel Qi display.

What's the big deal with Pixel Qi technology? While it can perform like a standard LCD display, the Pixel Qi panel has a low-power transflective display, which allows ambient light to illuminate the screen, and … Read more

A group of researchers from Stanford University have figured out a way to transform ordinary copy paper into storage units for electricity.

This week a group led by Yi Cui, professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, demonstrated (see video) the use of an ink consisting of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires. Once dipped in the ink and then baked, ordinary paper turns into a black paper that can act as a battery or supercapacitor. The paper retains its ability to hold a charge regardless of whether it's bent, crumpled, or rolled.

The ink looks identical to common … Read more

Believe it or not, the fourth host on today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast is the Nook, Barnes & Noble's e-book reader with a color touch screen and Wi-Fi. The device is currently sold out and on back order throughout B&N, so it wasn't easy to obtain. We had to walk 500 miles and battle a Nazgul to get it, but the in-studio demo was worth the wait. If you haven't seen a Nook up close, you're in for a treat.

Speaking of treats, the holidays come early for The 404 this year! Today's episode starts off normal enough, with another story about a crazed girlfriend who destroys her boyfriend's precious PS3 and a couple making their own paranormal activity to fund their wedding, but the real story is the package we receive halfway through the live show from dedicated 404 listener Cori (Sadacori in the chat room). We've received care packages before, but this one is definitely the best. Just check out the picture up top! Thanks a million Cori, we really appreciate all the Yuletide pounds! :)

Our ill-deserved holiday break is coming up in two weeks, and we get awfully lonely if we don't hear from you, so won't you leave us a voice mail at 1-866-404-CNET and let us know how your holiday season is going? We'd love to hear your voices, but you can also e-mail us at the404(at)cnet[dot]com or add us on Twitter and Facebook as well!

It all started when anesthesiologist Vernon Huang wanted to figure out a better way to streamline his billing. How could he bridge the gap between what's written on paper and what must be entered into an electronic database?

Huang, who's clocked in time as a senior manager for health care markets at Apple, designed the application for a digital pen whose tiny camera embedded right next to the ink cartridge captures every stroke of the written word on film and whose images are uploaded wirelessly and automatically to a remote database.

He knew such an invention has a range of applications well beyond billing, and founded Shareable Ink (headquartered in Newton, Mass., with a branch in San Mateo, Calif.). Medgadget caught up with Huang at TedMed and posted a shaky but informative demonstration:

There is, of course, competition.… Read more