A more attractive Green alternative

Huge solar panels on rooftops could be considered very ugly as they are unconventional and stand out against a brown or red, etc. rooftop. That's where designer/architect meets engineer/scientist. While its still difficult to change the basic color of the crystal material used, it can be shaped or bent to a more satisfactory tile.

Case in point: A company, SRS Energy, has been making Terracotta tiles made of the stuff, and not that it beautifully blends with the red tiles, but the blue/black tiles do appear to fit. If you're comfortable with a blue roof, then go for the look! Back in Kansas City, there is a home with a blue roof:

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and I'm sure this guy would be glad to change over.

And what if you don't own a spanish villa? Well there are traditional Solar power shingles as well.

A big deciding factor on whether or not to proceed with such a large and expensive project is looking at the watts per dollar. How soon will this free energy pay for itself as well as the carbon footprint that was created to make the tile. As technology advances and more and more bleeding edge tech leaks into the private sector, there comes a point where you just gotta invest.

Ambitious Input!

So I just saw the video from Microsoft and 3DV for Project Natal and it is mighty impressive as a future input for a xbox 360. As ambitious as it is, if Microsoft could remove the need for a remote I can see it surpassing the Wii as the most friendly gaming system (friends as in RL not interweb friends).

One of the things I suspect will limit this system is the natural latency of capturing video input without some sort of glyph or consistant input.

And I do forsee some thrown out shoulders or broken coffee tables.

Of Interest, when 3DV does complete this project for the xbox 360 series, I would hope that Micosoft would then go ahead and make input for computers. This similar to the last few seconds of the video would be great for HTPC--Being able to swipe your hand like in Minority Report to flip through pictures or video would be sweet.

Currently the closest thing to this is Gyration Media Remotes, a Wii-like remote, and rightly so, as the remote's technology is the same in the Wii remote.

The penultimate hardware prior to this Project Natal aired previously on TED: Pattie Maes demos the Sixth Sense