The Map Room is a nice weblog devoted to maps.
Day: January 15, 2005
The FanWing: A Plane Sans Wings
The New York Times has a brief, but interesting look at a wingless airplane (seriously). The wings are replaced by a tube filled with rotating blades that reduces the drag on the top surface, allowing the FanWing to take flight. According to the New York Times,
Compared with a traditional airplane, the FanWing can fly at much lower speeds and with much greater stability. It can take off from a relatively small runway and cruise at the leisurely pace of a car. If it ever catches on, the FanWing would make a good air taxi, ferrying people on short hops from city to city, or out to airports. It is more fuel-efficient than a helicopter and potentially safer than a normal plane, since a FanWing cannot stall, no matter how sharply it points up or down. The only real danger is if the fan blades jam and cease spinning — then, [inventor Patrick] Peebles admits, “it drops like a rock.”
Source:
FanWing, The. Clive Thompson, The New York Times, December 12, 2004.
Design Site: Do As We Say, Not As We Do
This article on creating an unclutter web design is unintentionally hilarious given the grotesequely cluttered design of the site itself. As one of the commentators noted, it looks a bit like a parody at first, but, no, the site and article are serious (and with a seriously poor design).
HowToons.Org
HowToons.Org is an amazing cartoon site — a proposal for a syndicate Sunday comic that uses an 8 1/2″ x 11″ cartoon to teach kids how to make something cool that also teaches. For example, there’s a HowToon describing how to make a soda bottle rocket and another showing how to construct a basic motor – and, of course, a prototype marshmallow shooter.
The website also has videos showing people associated with the project constructing many of the devices.
All very cool.