British Greenbottle has developed biodegradable, plastic packaging, which is made from corn starch.  The inner-bladder is protected by fully recycled cardboard, in an innovative two-part system.

Would you give this 13 year-old entrepreneur 100k? He’s developed a chemistry card game where you control an army of elements, compounds, and nuclear reactions to create, combat and conquer.

great story about the potential of franchising for economic development and better healthcare in Africa.  Franchising, coupled with micro-lending, holds the potential for huge quality-of-life improvements in the developing world.  The is also the model Dean Kamen envisions for his water purification systems, but he says, there is ridiculous resistance for innovative solutions from global aid agencies, as well as well-funded foundations and non-profits.

There’s a new Flash Internet golf game called World Golf Tour, with free, fun gameplay and good graphics. The Company recently raised a rumored several million dollars from Battery Ventures. Hopefully, this is a sign of fun times to come - I can think of a number of incredibly fun games that could be made with Flash for online distribution.

Also, in China, there was recently an underwater golfing tournament. Five players competed in a 50ft deep aquarium tank in Fuzhou. Instead of counting strokes, the winner was determined by amount of time to complete the hole.

I’ve been beta testing Joost, the Internet-TV startup founded by Skype-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, which recently raised $45 million from Sequoia, CBS, Viacom, and Li Ka-shing. It’s essentially similar to Comcast on-demand, but through the Internet, and with comparatively terrible picture resolution, though it has vastly superior image quality to other streaming, flash-based video sites. Joost has ads that abruptly interrupt viewing, but they are relatively quick and painless compared to five or so 30 second ads every 10 minutes on television. The speed of the viewing experience is also very good, but the site currently has a very limited selection of dated offerings.

If the site offered current, HD programming, and a more vast library of offerings, and the ability to download content for re-purposing content on your other devices (ie iPod or TV connected box), in addition to fast, streaming content, that would then be a recipe for a killer app. Perhaps Joost is a baby step to that day, but until that day arrives, I think cable and satellite television is relatively safe. Joost is expected to be available to everyone by next month.

[UPDATE - Joost has signed with Creative Artists Agency to broker content deals - this is starting to get interesting!]

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Born Rich has an interesting post about its top ten picks for futuristic hotels - click here to check it out!

previous hotel related posts:

The Radisson huge lobby acquarium

Waterworld in China

Underwater Hotels

The tennis court heliport at Burj al Arab

Poseidon underwater hotel (conceptual video):

As a video guy, I have to say the following video isn’t even worth your time to watch.  However, the concept is interesting.  The building is basically pre-fab in a factory, and assembled resource efficiently and quickly.  Each floor spins like a turbine to generate power, and the tower can potentially generate enough power to not only power itself, but also 10 other similarly sized structures.

[Thanks, Gizmodo and TechEBlog]

It was Nikola Tesla, who first proposed there was unlimited energy that could potentially be tapped and beamed to earth from the ionosphere. In a different twist to a similar concept, there’s an article on Space.com about the potential to build huge solar satellites that orbit the earth and beam energy to us via microwave technology. Of course, billions of dollars would need to be spent on r and d and infrastructure, but as the article points out, we’re already spending billions securing our oil in the Middle East, and the prospective cost of global warming could be even more.

Check out the article here.

[And, in other space related news and insights, be sure to check out Roger von Oech’s post today about the “Thuban Phenomenon.”]

Scientists and engineers and a Cornell design student are developing clothing that has the potential to eliminate viruses before giving you a cold, eats smog, so you can breath cleaner air, and never have to be washed. Microscopic nanoparticles coating the garments can actively eliminate viruses and bacteria.

For more information, click here.