Persian Water Wheel (Sakia), Rajasthan, India
While on tour in India, DrFumblefinger stopped to see how the ox-drawn waterwheel still has a role to play in Indian agriculture.
Technology
Museum find: GE's 'missing' electric car
Long forgotten except in Schenectady's science museum, the little GE electric car that could, long before Prius and Tesla. Here's its story.
New app checks you in while you sleep
Lufthansa sponsors a new website that will quickly check you in to your flight, grab your good seats and send your boarding pass...automatically.
France: Turning cheese into electricity
A pilot project in eastern France is turning wastes from cheese-making into marketable products, and into electric power.
New study: How smartphones change travel
We all know smartphones have 'changed everything,' and a Hong Kong professor is studying how they've changed how we travel.
France to free workers from free-time emails
Among a number of new laws, France is giving workers the right to turn off, tune out and disconnect from work e-mails, texts and phone calls.
NYC turns on its public WiFi system
NYC has turned on its first public WiFi hotspots, part of what will turn the city's under-used phonebooths into the world's largest free public network.
Could a mini-hovercraft be the new Paris taxi?
A French inventor believes his 'SeaBubble' can take traffic off the street and route it down the Seine to give Paris a new taxi alternative.
Is there room in the sky for a niche airliner?
Is there a market for this Russian-designed medium-haul widebody with its unusual shape and three-aisle seating? Rosavia thinks so.
Denmark's new tourist attraction: virtual reality
From games to training and simulations, Virtual Reality is big these days, and Copenhagen's Khora claims to be the first-of-its-kind portal into VR.
737MAX makes its maiden flight
Boieing's newest model, the 737MAX, makes its maiden flight. The updated 737 has new fuel-efficient engines and other new features.
Forget self-driving cars—here's an autonomous suitcase
Coming by next Christmas, its makers hope, is a suitcase that trails after you, hands-off, in the airport and tells you where it is when you're apart.
Toyota's new dream: a flying car
Toyota's filed a patent design for a possible future car, but it's a long way from that to a realistic product. For now, admire a Prius with a stack of wings!
They Googled WHAT? 2015's Top 10 Travel Questions
You can google just about anything—note the lower case 'g'—but only Google is keeping track of what people are looking for, and releases annual lists of the top searches in dozens of categories. For last year, the U.S. list of top travel questions seems very basic and location focused, whereas last year's top questions had more of a "How-To" flavor. Here's the 2015 list: What to pack for Cancun? Where is Disneyland? What airport is ORD When is whale watching season in San...
Auto-connect to airport WiFi with FLIO app
"There's an app for that" was the big tagline not long ago, but for some things there just wasn't—and FLIO neatly fills one of those gaps. If you have an iPhone; no Android version for a couple more months. And it's free. FLIO is "all-things-airport," with the kind of information you could otherwise find only by searching airport websites, or at best, by downloading individual airport apps. The publisher has worked with over 180 airports, and is adding more, to allow app-users to...