InksEnd

Flying car implies it will replace anybodys car, said Carl Dietrich, chief executive officer of Terrafugia, which is developing the Transition, a personal aircraft designed to travel on skyways and highways. Flying car brings out a lot of connotations and The Jetsons.

A quick look at what it takes to control normal automobile traffic in our cities and states gives it away. We won’t be getting flying cars anytime soon, but I still just enjoy the fact that Paul Moller does what he does. I was a bit surprised to hear he’s 70 years old and I assume that means at some time in the next few decades we’ll lose updates on this story.

Fortunately for all of us, the X-prize and Google’s recent move to back the endeavor promise to bring us loads of fun for years.

• Google offers $30 million for the first commercial lunar rover
• Rover must safely land on the moon and beam back images and video to Earth
• Google partnered with the X Prize Foundation for the moon challenge
• Ansari X Prize contest led to the first manned private spaceflight in 2004

In my excitement over streaming video to my mobile phone from my home PC, I recently asked Where’s my flying car? While I’d like to think someone was listening, chalk one up for coincidence as Business Week recently published survey of flying car developments. There’s nothing terribly practical or available soon, but I guess I got my answer.

This is an amazing piece of work and reminds me of the mult-function terminals in Star Trek NG and a bit like the Minority Report user interface (except no gloves). Information week describes the device.

At the O’Reilly Emerging Technology (ETech) conference in San Diego Tuesday, Jeff Han, a consulting research scientist at New York University’s Department of Computer Science, demonstrated a multi-touch system that he insists “will change the way people interact with computers.”