pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/yellowtreehouse_08_03_2UloG_48.jpg" width="550" height="374" style="display:block;" /So a href="http://gizmodo.com/367835/bellavistas-biodigesting-treehouses-are-endor-on-earth"modern/a treehouses aren't new, but the designers of this project in New Zealand have crafted something that blends fantastically with its host redwood tree. The fungus or chrysalis-shaped buildingmdash;take your aesthetic pickmdash;will be a smallish restaurant built by, of all people, the NZ Yellow Pages. It's currently under construction from laminated pine, plantation poplar and redwood thirty feet up a giant tree in a place north of Auckland. Getting there'll be fun when it's finished though: entry is via a 120-foot high treetop walkway. [a href="http://www.contemporist.com/2008/11/17/the-yellow-treehouse-restaurant/"Contemporist/a via a href="http://www.bornrich.org/entry/treehouse-restaurant-a-romantic-hideaway-close-to-nature/"Born Rich/a]script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" galleryPost('yellowtreehouse', 3, ''); /script/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=42cf017fd05edfed2d4bf0a9540c86d4" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=42cf017fd05edfed2d4bf0a9540c86d4" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=10m78uiC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=RKgBVtQ3"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=krw12Vtt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=krw12Vtt" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=hpqalDgB"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=hpqalDgB" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/UFmHgj_TjOY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/searaser.jpg" width="494" height="370" style="display:block;" /We've mentioned a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGqX-tkDXEkeurl=http://laughingsquid.com/"ocean/a a href="http://gizmodo.com/392470/an-underwater-generator-inspired-by-sharks-minus-the-seal-killing"power/a stations a bit recently, and now here's one with a rather different approach: It can store power for when its needed. Searaser is in prototype form at the moment, and it works by bobbing up and down as waves pass by. An underwater pump uses this motion to push water into a reservoir 160 feet uphill. And there it sits until it's simply released to power a generator. Neat stuff, particularly when the inventors say a full-sized version can power about 470 homes all by itself. [a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5167812.ece"The TImes/a via a href="http://dvice.com/archives/2008/11/wave-powered_se.php"Dvice/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=fdeb1a1aabfdcc8eff18d2356f14762f" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=fdeb1a1aabfdcc8eff18d2356f14762f" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=rZ1U3Wu3"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=7HDovhGX"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=SFkRca6d"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=SFkRca6d" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=FnXNtC2p"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=FnXNtC2p" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/LsZHT5s7xJs" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/airprototype.jpg" width="800" height="281" style="display:block;float:none;" /A a href="http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=601953"Macforums/a member who bought an "as-is" Macbook Air from Ebay has ended up with some pretty strange fruit: It's actually an early Air prototype, bearing marks indicating it was built in May 2007, six months before the Air was introduced. It's got a few giveaways: the microphone positioning near the webcam is off, there's no keyboard lighting, no "MacBook Air" legend, it runs an interim build of OS X 10.5 and the bottom is black-colored aluminum, versus the usual shiny silver. Lord knows how this baby escaped Cupertino's clutches, but escape it did. Does this make it valuable like a prototype stamp to a philatelist? Only another Ebay sale will tell. [a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2008/11/18/mid-2007-prototype-macbook-air-found-on-ebay/"Macrumors/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=3b6423dfe31a3c0dd2c696851f11fadb"img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=3b6423dfe31a3c0dd2c696851f11fadb" border="0" //a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=3b6423dfe31a3c0dd2c696851f11fadb" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=SKT1cLfv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=JyBRuGTB"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=FOu7B1Tf"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=FOu7B1Tf" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=bQPQjw7J"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=bQPQjw7J" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/c-6yMROKWyA" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/maxell1.jpg" width="494" height="370" style="display:block;" /These a href="http://gizmodo.com/5039539/binaural-beats-audio-played-through-noise-canceling-headphones-supposedly-gives-you-a-drug+like-high"noise/aa href="http://gizmodo.com/5028001/lightning-review-sony-mdr+nc500d-digital-noise-canceling-headphones"-cancelling/a headphones from Hitachi Maxell are unlike many previous similar types since they don't require separate power. Instead they connect to iPods via the dock connector, and can suck on the batteries through there. They do manage about 20dB of noise canceling with an "Active Noise Rejection" system, but the design is curiously crippling: they can only connect to iPods (4th gen or later) and iPod touchesmdash;not the iPhone. And to draw power this way means you'll get reduced iPod battery life, which may be as much as 50%. iAnd/i the iPod's volume control doesn't work, so you have to use the slider on the headphones. Weird, but these HP-NC20.IPs are only about $80 in Japan, so you may still be tempted. [a href="http://66.102.9.104/translate_c?hl=ensl=jau=http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20081119/maxell.htmprev=/search%3Fq%3Davwatch%2B%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DGusg=ALkJrhi0Y1f6YtJCI0tCIXml4GSXjzvJWw"AVWatch/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=1d935825eb42c5bfeb2b9ad567d714a8" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=1d935825eb42c5bfeb2b9ad567d714a8" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=L7xRyHEH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=oqthNKno"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=C9XwESdB"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=C9XwESdB" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=EVrF6XuE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=EVrF6XuE" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/vNI2Lp2xpfQ" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/bunkerserver.jpg" width="580" height="432" style="display:block;" /This must take the record for the trippiest data-center build anywhere, ever: It's an old nuclear bunker 30 meters below central Sotckholm, and its new conversion for one of Sweden's biggest ISPs has made it truly a href="http://gizmodo.com/5085712/quantum-of-solace-is-the-perfect-bond-movie"007/a-worthy. Check it: it has simulated daylight, greenhouses and waterfalls, there're German submarine engines rigged as emergency backup generators, plus there's 1.5 megawatts of cooling for the servers. Oh, and it can survive a hydrogen bomb attack.script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" galleryPost('pionen', 3, ''); /script/p pThat's 'cause it was built into the old "Pionen White Mountains" nuclear bunker from the Cold War, though they took a year to convert it, and had to blast out more than 4,000 cubic meters of extra rock to make room for Bahnhof's infrastructure. The backup engines are two Maybach MTU diesels, and they've got the submarine emergency sound horns still in place. Meanwhile the net connections even have triple redundancy, with the fiber-optic and copper trunk lines following three different routes into the bunker. That's one massively redundant data center, no doubt about it./p pOn the human side, the 15 staff are treated to a 2600-liter fish tank, and a circular mid-air glass-walled conference room that has a moon-map for a floor. The CEO himself has confirmed that some sci-fi movie inspiration was deliberately incorporated into the design. Craziness. [a href="http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/11/14/the-worlds-most-super-designed-data-center-fit-for-a-james-bond-villain/#comment-305066"RoyalPingdom/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=fe8765935293563da7bd27d0f4f34f74" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=fe8765935293563da7bd27d0f4f34f74" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=NF0SZVIE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=ULLt8PKa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=78tqzIPV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=78tqzIPV" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=r0ewxUpG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=r0ewxUpG" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/b0vBC6UX5Gc" height="1" width="1"/