Zipcars - a brilliantly simple new car hire/sharing scheme - learn more today ? Save the world tomorrow - Amazing pictures !!

Zipcar explain everything on their website. Clearly and with great simplicity. Wikipedia

It is a novel international concept where you rent / carshare a car by the hour / day and pay nothing else, insurance, fuel, London congestion charge.

How does it work ? - Go here
FAQ's - Go here

Sign up. Become a Zipster (200K worldwide May 2008)get a Zipcard - hope it's more secure than an Oyster.

Then to select a car (so far only London which opened Nov 2006 and N. America) - simply click on a flag of above map - Bit thin on the ground sarf of the river .. which gives availability hourly / daily rates (incl 180 miles) ... some exclusions on age if under 21.

Select the car ...

New sites opening daily - Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Mass. has just announced a partnership with Zipcar - two self-service Zipcars – 2008 Honda Civic Hybrids – will be available for use 24 hours a day, seven days a week, parked along the campus Quadrangle. The cars will be available to all staff and students aged 18 and older, with gas, maintenance, insurance, and reserved parking included in low hourly and daily rates.

Anyone any experience / tales to tell ?

Lord Patel is NOT on a commission. This just seems a brilliantly simple and ideal use of the web, and helps to reduce car ownership. Let's hope they have done their sums right and make it work.... with current cost of car ownership it sounds good

There is even a T shirt ..

Nothing to do with the Conservative Party

Eco-friendly electric tandem wheeled city commuting bike - The Tango

An 18 year old Candian bright spark, Ben Gulak has designed and built a remarkably innovative new electric motorbike - The Tango.

An extension of the ideas behind the Segway it is a tandem wheeled bike. The rider leans forward to accelerate -- a feature used by the Segway, and can hit a top speed of 25 mph in its current configuration. The Uno also makes use of a set of gyros to enhance ease of balance, and the wheels are independently operated making turning much more precise.

“It has a range of about 2.5 hours and it is designed for the commute to work through busy towns” says Gulak whose inspiritional moment came on a trip to China and his experience of the motocycle induced choking city smogs.

Ben found help initially from Veltronics Ltd., an electrical engineering company in Brampton, Ontario, who designed the necessary circuitry to boost the horsepower of the motors by 40 percent—more than enough to get the Uno zipping along at speeds (60Km p hr) suitable for city driving. With additional support from Motorcycle Enhancements in Oakville, Ontario, which fabricated a fiberglass body for the bike.

Ben and Jason Morrow who has helped with the project , also 18, are two of Canada’s 16 brightest high-school scientists that were selected by Youth Science Foundation Canada to represent Canada at the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (IISEF) held in New Mexico in May last year.

He's looking for investors.

Odiogo - Text to speech translation of web page texts - a novel idea

The excellent commentator on taxation matters Richard Murphy, at Tax Research is using a text to speech service calleed Odiogo which is best understood by trying it on his site here - in stead of reading the post you can listen to it, record it as an MP3 or send it to i-Tunes.

They say ..."Odiogo's media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device. "

He asks for feedback.