Rubicon3

Botanical Twitter

Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What's up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates that reach you anywhere in the world. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and send its thanks when you show it love.

Wow - A Very Cool Time-Lapse Video of San Francisco

Watch it to the end and see the lights go on as nightfall descends .  Filmed on 2/8/08

Via The Presurfer

Now THAT is One Cool Map

From the Earth's center, to the furthest reaches of the universe. Link

How Completely and Utterly COOL

Virgin Galactic - taking the first tourist flights into space:

More than 200 potential astronauts are believed to have already paid deposits for the £100,000 flights, including actress Victoria Principal, scientist Stephen Hawking, and Princess Beatrice.

Flights will last for two hours and will include four and a half minutes of weightlessness.

Link 

Changing the World, One Loan at a Time

Interrupting Gelastic Jew has alerted me to a great site with a great idea.  She writes:

Last summer I helped the world become a better place: I loaned $25, which was aggregated with small sums from other individuals, to help a woman in Tajikistan expand her small business selling children's clothing so she can send her son to university. I did it through Kiva, which organizes microlenders like me and connects us to lending groups (often banks) which then make the loans to qualified people running small businesses.

You can go to Kiva's website and lend to someone in the developing world who needs a loan for their business - like raising goats, selling vegetables at market or making bricks. Each loan has a picture of the entrepreneur, a description of their business and how they plan to use the loan so you know exactly how your money is being spent - and you get updates letting you know how the business is going. The best part is, when the entrepreneur pays back their loan you get your money back - and Kiva's loans are managed by microfinance institutions on the ground who have a lot of experience doing this, so you can trust that your money is being handled responsibly.

Very cool.  Read more.

Update:

I have made a loan to a group of women in Peru to help them further develop their grocery store. They need $1,000.00 and have raised $150.00 so far.

Take a Seat

An interactive seat which follows the user at the library:

Flight Patterns

Watch the flight paths of planes to and from the US over a 24-hour period.