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It's no surprise electronic garbage commonly referred to as e-waste is piling up in our nation's landfills, but the Australian National Park Service has a creative alternative: Repeat Plastics Australia just opened a new bike path made entirely out of excess plastic materials from discarded printer cartridges.

The 10.6-mile bike path stretches between Alice Springs and Simpsons Gap in the northwest territory of Australia and sees over 120,000 visitors every year. According to Parks and Wildlife Minster Karl Hampton, the bridge echoes the Australian government's commitment to sustainable development, "saving landfill, trees, and ensuring … Read more

The bottom line: Microsoft Office 2010 is a worthy upgrade for businesses and individual users who need professional-level productivity apps, but it will take some time to get acclimated with the reworked interface. Users looking for bare-bones, dead-simple office software should stick with Google's and other online offerings or continue using older Office versions they have already mastered.

The world has changed plenty since Microsoft introduced Office 2007. In that time, Google has become a major player, with its suite of online tools, and even Apple has made inroads with its iWork office suite, though admittedly within a smaller … Read more

In Windows 95, Microsoft extended the allowable length of filenames beyond the former 8.3 convention. But filenames longer than 255 characters (or 260 characters in Vista) are still a problem; typically, such files cannot be opened or run, and often they cannot be renamed or deleted using Windows Explorer. File/Folder Clean-Up Tool (Long Path) purports to solve this problem by providing an Explorer-like interface with which to find and delete files and directories with long or corrupt names. Unfortunately, the trial version of the tool disables the actual delete function. With a price tag of $19, this application … Read more

RunKeeper Pro is the paid version of the already great free fitness app RunKeeper. Like the free version, RunKeeper Pro can help track your speed, pace, distance, and location of workouts on any GPS-enabled iPhone. Whether you're running, cycling, or walking, RunKeeper can track your location so long as you have adequate GPS strength.

The simple two-button interface--Stop/Start and Pause--and a large display shows time elapsed, current speed, pace per mile (or kilometer), distance traveled, and GPS strength, with live graphs and the ability to check your current location and post pictures and status updates. You can track … Read more

Boxed In is a simple but still tricky arcade-puzzle game in which you help a cute cartoon robot escape from increasingly complex levels by pushing boxes around. Using the app's slow-paced, swipe-based interface, you can move the robot up, down, left, or right--but you can only push boxes, not pull them, so you'll have to plan out your moves well in advance to clear a path to each level's exit, while collecting required "gears" and using boxes to deactivate force fields along the way.

The interface can seem sluggish at first, but thankfully an undo … Read more

RatMaster is a fun and challenging puzzle game in which users reconfigure mazes to allow their rat to reach the cheese at the end, all while avoiding snakes and other potential dangers. The simple premise and sometimes difficult puzzles make this game easy to get hooked on.

The program's graphics and interface didn't totally blow us away, but they are definitely above average. The music and sound effects were appropriate and added to the game's experience, but they can be turned off if desired. Game play is intuitive, and a Help file explains the basic rules of … Read more

What would Google look like if you took it offline and forced it to set up in physical space?

Google's tens of thousands of commodity Linux servers would need to be scattered around the globe so as to collect and then aggregate consumer interest. A lot like Path Intelligence, in other words.

Tim O'Reilly invested in Path Intelligence back in 2007. After lunching with Path Intelligence CEO Toby Oliver Friday in London, I can see why. The idea is to set up receivers in shopping malls and other retail areas to collect mobile data and analyze consumer behavior … Read more

The launch of Apple's iPhone 3G S has justifiably caught the media's attention, what with its elegant design and speedy performance. But for all the noise that Apple is making in mobile, open source--not Apple--may well be doing the most to define the future of mobile communications, as two leading open-source projects suggest.

No, I'm not talking about the Palm Pre, with its Linux-based operating system and its new open-source applications portal. Nor am I referring to Google Android.

Rather, I'm referring to the InSTEDD project, which The Economist recently highlighted, as well as GNU Radio, … Read more

Anyone who uses a chat client frequently knows what it's like when one of your friends is on a different service. You can download the client to match what they use, but that means you'll need to have at least two chat clients running at all times. If someone else comes along that uses a third service, that's when it really starts to get confusing.

Instead of filling up your Dock with chat clients, why not just download Adium? This multiservice chat client lets you register for new services and chat with all of your friends from … Read more