In NYC this week, for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF ). All the best designers congregate here every year to show off their latest offerings -- chairs, tables, cabinets, this sort of thing. I kind of have a thing for contemporary design. You might think a furniture maker convention would be a boring crowd -- not so. These guys can party, and the Russian studios always have the best vodka. Also, the most fashionable couches on which to pass out.

The History Channel recently sponsored a design competition for architects and engineers in Atlanta, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Competing teams were asked to envision a model for their city as it might exist 100 years from now. The catch? Designers had one week to plan, three hours to construct their models, and 15 minutes to make their case to a panel of judges. So, you know… no pressure.

We've touched on some ideas regarding the future of clothing already in this space, but a recent report in Popular Science got me thinking about it all again. There's growing interest in the concept of nanotextiles, clothing and materials that incorporate a dusting of nanoparticles for various purposes.

I've become something of a sucker for industrial design ever since I split a Brooklyn coldwater flat with Raymond Loewy back in -- well, it was a while ago. Ray was a good guy. Clearly brilliant, but very … meticulous is the polite term, I think. He could not abide an apartment that was anything less than completely spic-and-span at all times. We had an Oscar and Felix thing going. Rumor has it he designed the Leisurama style of prefab housing just to get me out of the apartment. Anyway…

Even those who are not at all handy -- or into gadgets and general tech-fetishism -- dig the Leatherman tools. They're just so cool -- an entire toolbox in your pocket, with enough options to fuel dozens of MacGyver daydreams. I once escaped from a maximum security prison in Kiev using only a Leatherman, a fax machine, and a contact lens. Long story. Still on file at Interpol, actually, so I can't go into details.

Something about the concept of alternative batteries appeals to eco-friendly tech-nerd inside of me. We recently discussed the paper battery initiative , and now I come across this new prototype initiative by Sony concerning batteries that run on sugar .

In Nürnberg hat eine Art Geisterrestaurant eröffnet: Bestellung und Lieferung laufen darin vollautomatisch ab. Oops, wait a sec. Wrong language. Sometimes I slip into German when perusing source material. Or Korean. Or Maori or Gaelic or Latin. Sucks to be icosalingual sometimes.

I so admire initiative in the young people today. And so I'm pleased to report on the ongoing development of a next-generation home-brewing machine designed to streamline the process of making your own beer.

Laundry has forever been an occupational hazard for me. Back when I did contract work for the Hanso Foundation , I used to come home covered in voracious little nanobots that liked to eat the stitching out of my lab coats. They also preferred corduroy, for some reason. I had to design a sub-molecular dry-cleaning machine to eradicate the little idiots. My patent application was denied, however, when the machine somehow caused a temporal rift near Alpha Centauri .