A Melbourne icon was shut down recently due to damages that were apparently too severe to bother fixing, but thankfully for the otherwise stunning Southern Star Observation Wheel, a few good men and women have their gears going about what to do next. Designer B?ro North, who also dreamed up the VEIL …

Mama always told us that there’d be trade-offs in life, but we aren’t so sure we’re kosher with this one. As the story goes, a team of Wolverines from the University of Michigan figured out a solution to an age-old problem: effectively lowering power consumption by a significant amount in electronic devices…

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here . The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. Name: routeRANK Quick Pitch: routeRANK finds the most ecologically …

They said it couldn’t be done. They laughed and questioned what would happen when the sun sets, but the man whose passport reads Piccard, Bertrand, and whose bold will and bald helm match a similarly named Capitaine , has now overseen the first solar-powered flight on the Solar Impulse HB-SIA…

Southwest Airlines may not own a plane with a headrest infotainment system, but it’s still far and away the most enjoyable commercial flight you’ll find in the US of A (save for Virgin America , naturally). Granted, we’d like to see in-flight WiFi offered on a few more of its …

With eco-friendliness on everyone’s mind, it’s no shock to see more and more progress being made in the realm of solar . Shortly after hearing that boffins across the way were swapping carbon nanotubes for silicon, a Tel Aviv-based startup is now hoping to push its colored panels into the mainstream…

The future, kids — we’re living in it . Sensationalism aside, we are pretty jazzed to hear that Toyota’s long-awaited , much-teased plug-in Prius hybrid will be making its bona fide debut to the public next week. The image above is expected to be near-final, though we’re reserving judgment until …

Now, this one we can all probably get behind. Amazon — which announced its “Frustration-Free Packaging” initiative back in November of last year, promising to kill clamshell plastic casings and the like — is making good on its word and stepping up the effort again. Joining the ranks of partners Fisher-Price, Mattel, …

The historians once pontificated that we’d all be cruising about in flying cars right around the year 2000, and while that whole Y2K fiasco threw us a tad behind schedule, it looks like the future may actually still be upon us. Parajet, the same company responsible for that downright unnerving personal flying machine …