The iPod touch sure does look beautiful. Do I want one? Yes...yes I do. Will I get one...no. That's just one of the annoying things about being an EcoGeek. I get all fanboy about this stuff and then I'm all "but do I really need it?" And, of course, the answer is "no."

But the iPod touch is exciting for one ecogeeky reason. Apple has made an extremely important decision. Instead of going 80 gigs or even 160 gigs with a traditional hard drive, their new awesomest iPod is flash based.

Until now, the leading iPod has always been a hard drive model. Hard drives are inefficient and use a lot of difficult to acquire, difficult to recycle metals. Flash drives, on the other hand, consume much less power, and contain much less metal. They also have the pontential to be much more long-lived than traditional hard drives, which still use (ugh) moving parts.

Solid state is the way to go, and I think Apple's decision to go all-out with a 16 gig solid state drive, instead of a 160 platter drive is a very big deal in personal media. What's more, it could turn out to be a very big deal in computing in general. I've been waiting for the switch, and I think this may be the beginning.

The European Union has approved a UK proposal for a  £500 M  experimental fusion reactor.  The project will be one of the new-fangled HiPER reactors, which uses a focused Petawatt laser to initiate a fusion reaction within a small pellet of fuel.

Fusion fuel, for those who don't know, is just deuterium, which can be made cheaply from sea water, and the only waste product is helium, which is inert and, frankly, in demand for industrial use. The plant is building on successes at an American military project that is expected to produce more energy than it consumes within the next five years.

That will be a first for fusion power, and possibly a first step toward a world of plentiful, pollution-free power. The British plant will use a less expensive method for generating power in roughly the same way. Experts are saying that, if this pans out, commercial scale fusion plants could be going online within 20 years and producing the majority of the world's energy in less than 50.

As always, fusion promises a great deal. I can't help but feel that it's worth every penny we throw at it, but I'm not placing any bets on a fusion-powered future just yet.

Via Times Online