What if I told you, there’s an easy way to feel as hot and sexy as Italy, without leaving the country…Snazz up your ride with a Vespa Scooter.

Easy to use, easy to park, easy on the gas, and easy on the eyes.  Your best buds, accountant and mother earth will be all singing your praises…while feeling a tad green with envy.

Check out the new 150cc Vespa family — this generation can sip fuel up 75/90 mpg.  In Capri Blue, Dragon Red, Taormina Orange and my personal fave, Portofino Green.  Put a smile on your face…gas guzzling vehicles are so last decade. S 50 4V gets 85-90 mpg; S 150 i.e. gets 70-75 mpg for a fun set of eco wheels.

Innovative alternative energy companies will soon be having a bigger impact, both in our energy and transportation infrastructure, and on Wall Street.  One such company,  Envision Solar International – a global solar planner, architect and inventor of clean energy systems – officially became a publicly traded company, yesterday.

Envision Solar is the first company to invent and build structures for generating solar energy from the millions of acres of unused, underutilized parking spaces.  Parking lots that previously just provided a home for your car while bouncing vast amounts of heat into the atmosphere can now become a clean energy source with the potential to optimize power production during hot summer afternoons when electricity is most valuable.  Envision Solar is helping top companies like McDonald’s, Dell, Johnson & Johnson and Kyocera (pictured above) with their green efforts by installing solar parking arrays that visibly demonstrate their commitment to sustainable energy.

As of today, Envision Solar has designed and/or installed more than nine megawatts of solar arrays for (more…)

• This is not good…Gulf Oil Spill Could Reach East Coast Beaches – natgeo
• This is better – but the flow is still not reduced…Coast Guard: BP Caps 1 of 3 Oil Leaks – msnbc
• Turn up that AC – just kidding.  Global Warming: Researchers Find Future Temperatures Could Exceed Livable Limits – sciencedaily
• Does the Oil Spill Put Seafood Restaurants at Risk? – cnn
• I guess PETA couldn’t text those votes fast enough…Pamela Anderson Voted Off DWTS – abc
• (video) Man Purported to have Survived 70 Years Without Food – orange uk

German automaker Volkswagen has finally announced plans to plug-in to the popular crowd with a hybrid version of the Jetta, set to launch in 2012.  The car maker, who has long appeased the eco-minded with its clean diesel engines, badged TDI, is slowly shifting gears.

Currently, the only hybrid to be officially available on VW lots is a version of the ever-awkwardly-named 2011 Touareg crossover, touting an impressive lineup of gasoline, diesel, and hybrid engine options.  But new plans, recently unveiled in Berlin, (more…)

Here’s a design for a restaurant or patio table that is lit by a solar powered light.  The Firefly table features nicely integrated solar panels in the top of the table.   Pressing on the center lamp cover causes the lamp to pop up and begin lighting.

This design eliminates the need for temperamental (and romantic) votive candles, or overhead lighting.  There’s also a nice opportunity for branding and messaging via a stencil under the lamp whereby light passes through projecting a word or slogan onto the floor beneath the table.

via: industrial design served