road

SAN FRANCISCO--For almost anyone who's visited Baghdad by the Bay, a ride on one of the city's iconic cable cars is pretty much a must.

What most people don't know, however, is that, once upon a time, these wooden vehicles, which are pulled along their routes by thick, heavy, metal cables, could be found in cities all over the world.

From Paris to Melbourne to Bogota and elsewhere, the cable car was once seen as a fantastic alternative to having horses pull cars of people around. But when electric power made trolley cars efficient, most cities made … Read more

Anyone who has ever been on a road trip knows how hard long hours on the road can be on a car, especially the interior. Road trips for me generally include one dropped/knocked-over/exploded beverage, fast food droppings, wrappers, and complimentary toys and and other bits of consumables ground into the car's interior.

A new publication "In Your Car: Road Trip through the American Automobile," chronicles market researcher Kelley Styring's 30-day, 5,800-mile cross-country research study of American drivers and their messes.

Styring, who wrote "In Your Purse: Archaeology of the American Handbag," … Read more

GRATON, Calif.--As most people know, a major reason for the current housing meltdown was millions of people buying homes far bigger than they needed, let alone could afford. To Jay Shafer, the answer is tiny.

Shafer is the creator of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, a company based in this, yes, tiny town about an hour north of San Francisco, that designs and sells very, very small homes.

How small? Tiny Houses' most petite model, the XS-House, is just 65 square feet. Yet, while you might expect to find little more than a rabbit warren inside, what you actually experience when … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Like a lot of people who live in or near the city by the bay right now, I'm trying to figure out the answer to a really tough question: how in the heck can I get a World Series ticket?

The answer, of course, is not pretty: you must have money, and lots of it. And since I don't really have any, and wouldn't really be willing to fork over hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a single ducat anyway, I'm having to face facts: I likely won't be getting to see the World … Read more

MENLO PARK, Calif.--If you've never seen a robot climb straight up an entirely flat vertical wall, I dare you not to be impressed the first time you do.

That was my certainly experience when I watched a wall-climbing robot do its thing at SRI International here the other day. Indeed, my host, who had been with me through several product and project demonstrations over about three hours, noticed how excited I was by watching this little device go straight up the wall, and, I think, began to wonder if I was actually interested in any of the other … Read more

Back when I was a young pup, I dropped more quarters than I care to admit into an arcade game called Super Off Road. It was a top-down dirt-track racer--and one of my all-time favorite coin-ops.

EA's Reckless Racing just rekindled my love affair. It's a top-down dirt-track racer that delivers all the same freewheeling fun--with vastly superior graphics and online multiplayer!

Seriously, I can't remember the last time I fell in love with a game so quickly. Reckless Racing (which should really be called "Redneck" Racing, as that's the clear motif here) is crazy fun, to the point where I keep interrupting my review so I can go back for just one more race.

The game delivers on two major counts: graphics and controls. Reckless Racing is absolutely dazzling, with vibrantly colored cars and tracks that are just shy of photorealistic. And you get to choose from five different control schemes--everything from basic left/right-gas/brake buttons to an onscreen steering wheel ("half" or "full") to accelerometer steering. I'm partial to the buttons, but I am also enamored with "tank" mode (in which your car just goes flat-out the entire time--all you do is steer).

Whatever control option you choose, you'll find absolutely perfect arcade physics. Cars skid and slide and screech around corners (in varying amounts depending on whether you're on gravel or asphalt). If you like drift, you'll love RR.… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--It's hard to imagine anything in a museum featuring hundreds of original Disney concept sketches and art pieces, including dozens of Mickey Mouse, being as impressive as the art itself.

But try visiting the Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio here and not coming away with the strong impression that the way the facility was designed, with its wide variety of beautiful digital displays, imaginative use of video screens, innovative touch-screens, audio clips of Walt himself nearly everywhere you go, and much more, is nearly as compelling an experience as the opportunity to see first-hand the origins … Read more

NAPA VALLEY, Calif.--It's 6:45 in the morning, and the crew that's just about to begin working is only picking up from where the overnight team left off.

We're here, deep in some of the most valuable terroir, or vineyard land, on the planet, and for about two days only, it's a race against the clock--actually, the thermometer--to get more than 30 tons of premium grapes off the vines in top condition.

Where I'm standing is in the middle of the Horton block, a 15-acre piece of prime winemaking real estate owned by the … Read more

When you think of automotive test tracks, you might think of flat blacktop and a course delineated by orange cones.

But Mine (Mee-NAY) Tasci and engineers at General Motors have taken testing to the extreme for the latest Buick models. They have created an innovative road scanner that makes a micro-detailed 3D digital representation of some of the toughest real-world road surfaces.

As seen in the video below, Tasci drives virtual Buick vehicles on the roads to test for quality and reliability.

"Just like a photo scanner, we can scan the surface of a road to create a 3D … Read more