Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

It's an old technology for storing energy that's finally getting an update, and it's appearing everywhere from power plants to Formula One race cars, and will soon be hiding in your wheels, helping save you fuel. It's a not a new battery or super-hot liquid salt .

The 20th century was highly unusual when it comes to the media and to the way people receive and exchange information. [More]

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Not all inventions need to involve new discoveries. Two new projects--one which draws power from the air, one which uses heat from servers--show that we can hack our way out of wasteful systems. Fresh research from a couple of different quarters suggests that waste isn't really waste, and that innovators don't need to discover new materials or unknown principles in order to innovate.

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Again, our bloggers produced some amazing stuff today:

Science Online London 2011 is the fourth annual meeting of people interested in the way the Web has transformed scientific research and communication.

The new Personal Genome Machine was used to decode the DNA of the deadly strain of E. coli that ravaged Europe this spring

High-tech materials and farming may seem like an unlikely mix, but new research suggests diamond-edged plows could have serious environmental payoffs. German researchers have considered the ancient science and art of plowing, and have come up with a novel solution to reduce its environmental impact: Coating the metal blades of a plowshare with diamond-like carbon.

Making purchases online is a headache: filling out your billing address, your credit card number, your zip code, and other personal details. How often have you sat squinting at your desk, slowly bobbing your head from card to computer as you henpeck away at the keyboard with one hand? But a new service launched today can make paying for goods digitally just as painless and simple as swiping your card at the grocery store.

(PhysOrg.com) -- When a spinning laser gyroscope is placed near a super-cooled rotating ring, the gyroscope accelerates a bit in the same direction as the ring, and scientists aren’t sure why.

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Robert Rodriguez was doing 3-D way before it was cool. Now he's testing out a whole crop of moviemaking experiments, including "Aroma-Scope" for his latest Spy Kids installment, and a remake of animated fantasy "Heavy Metal." Robert Rodriguez is like the filmmaker’s version of Cool Record Store Guy . Whatever it is other directors are into now, Rodriguez was into way before anyone else was into it.

Today we are starting a new feature on the Scientific American Blog Network. [More]

For the background on what Open Lab is, see this post. [More]