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Well, that was quick. Just weeks after hearing that Tesla would be nixing Roadster production prior to the world ending, it looks as if those planning to blow their life savings in the next 18 or so months took issue with the intentions. So much so, in fact, that Tesla has now “negotiated agreements with key suppliers that will increase total Roadster production by 40 percent and extend sales into 2012.” Better still, the iconic electric supercar will soon be hitting Australia and Asia, so even if you hit the relocate button in the next little while, you should still be covered should you choose to buy (or lease ) in. Tesla switches gears, plans to keep Roadster …

Testing your blood might be a troublesome process, especially if you’re in countries that aren’t that well developed. It seems that Harvard chemist, George Whitesides, might have come up with a simple solution on how to tackle this issue, and it just costs a cent. This little square of paper contains comic book ink, which is water-resistant, and will push the blood dropped on it into different paper channels, each of which contains chemicals that react with the blood, and will change color to indicate if the blood contains a certain type of disease. With a low production cost, and the simplicity of its use, it certainly seems like a viable option. Video after the jump. Permalink: Low Cost …

Solar cells are cute and all , but let’s be real — these things are far too inefficient for mainstream use. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology are working hard to remedy that very issue, and they’ve recently concocted a “new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons.” The solution relies on arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded onto a polymer substrate, which uses just a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells. According to professor Harry Atwater, these cells have “surpassed the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials” for the first…

It’s still in concept form at the moment, but America’s own Adele Peters just might have a winner with Corky. This obviously cork-based mouse relies on “piezoelectric elements to generate energy every time you click or move it around on your desk,” meaning that nary a battery would ever be used to power it. In case that’s not sustainable enough for you, the whole thing is made from easily recyclable materials, so it shouldn’t mar Ma Earth when it gets tossed at the end of its useful life. Too bad that design has been trumped forty times over by more ergonomic options , but hey, there’s always v2.0. Conceptual Corky mouse gets charged through motion, doubles as a wine stopper originally appeared on Engadget on…

Are you a huge nerd? No? Sorry, I guess that solar backpack you’re wearing kind of threw me off. Looks like Playskool meets Transmetropolitan. Not exactly a babe magnet. I’m going to let you in on a secret, big guy: check out these Soular Power bags from Neon Green. If you absolutely must wear a solar panel backpack, it might as well be the coolest one out there, right? That’s a bit like being the thinnest kid at fat camp, but… what? No, I’m not implying anything. Yeah, well, I’ll keep my good advice to myself from now on! Nyah! Get outta here! Ahem. These backpacks do look pretty cool. Well, a couple of them do anyway. Mainly that white…

Topics: Odds and ends , TUAW Business All our prognostications, anticipations, best-of lists and year-end reflections — in one handy place. Our favorite iPhone games of 2009 The first full year of the App Store is coming to a close, and so let’s take a look back at our favorite games of 2009. Note that these aren’t best-selling, most important, or even the best games… TUAW bloggers post their Apple predictions for 2010 It’s the end of another calendar year, which can mean only two things. First, every blog is going to be posting lists of 2009 retrospectives, and second, there are going to be a lot of posts… January 1 reflections on my favorite things January 1 is always a little strange. A quiet time after a night out, a time to take…

Sure, you may have been able to double your hard drive’s storage space with DriveSpace back in the day, but it looks like Western Digital has now come up with a new, more foolproof way to eek out a few more gigabytes from its drives. Dubbed ‘advanced format,’ the company’s new partitioning method promises to do away with each individual sector having its own Sync/DAM header and ECC, and instead move to larger, 4k physical sectors. As you can see in the helpful illustration above, that shift would also actually increase the size of the ECC, but WD says the…

Step aside, Tesla — we’ve just spotted the hottest Earth-lovin’ supercar since the Lightning GT . Shown off to wide-mouthed onlookers at the LA Auto Show this month, the Capstone CMT-380 prototype is an automotive beast unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Rather than mixing batteries and a conventional engine, this whip combines the former with a diesel / biodiesel-powered microturbine, which is — for all intents and purposes — a jet engine. Reportedly, the car can reach 60MPH from a standstill in just 3.9 seconds, hit 150MPH before being cut off by the electronic limiter, cruise 80 miles on battery power alone and drive from Idaho Falls to Spokane on just a single tank of fuel. It’s being bruited about…

Slipknot and Simon & Garfunkel may be too far on both sides of the spectrum, so why not go for somewhere in between? Three more tracks from Green Day are hitchin’ a ride into Rock Band soon,

CompuLab has been holding it down on the diminutive front for years now, though the outfit’s latest mini PC packs even more features than ever before. Measuring just 4- x 4.5- x 1.05-inches and weighing only 13 ounces, the fit-PC2i is hailed as the planet’s smallest dual gigabit Ethernet-equipped PC. Other specs include an Intel Atom Z5xx CPU (from 1.1GHz to 2GHz), up to 2GB of DDR2 RAM, room for a 2.5-inch HDD, audio in / out, built-in WiFi, four USB 2.0 ports and Windows 7 (if you so choose). The rig is built from a 100 percent aluminum die-cast body, and even at full load…