The things you find at TED

So I don't think it's too much to ask for someone to pony up the 5k it's gonna cost to send me to TED2007. Sure I have to be invited first, and I have little to offer such a brain trust, but I can be such a fanboy when I really want to.

The GM PAD. Because this is exactly the solution we've been looking for to ease the pain of population overload and the lack of government aid in low-cost housing development. I'll just live in my blunt-nosed ügleecar, wrapped in the warmth of every type of electromagnitism and radiowave bombardment I could possibly afford.

Burt 'How bout you Sideburns? You want some of this milk? Rutan. So my co-worker David claims that his side of the family has been estranged from Burt's for a while. No matter, I still feel I could drop Dave's name and get the secrets to Scaled Facial Hair, the awesome spin-off of that silly space thing Paul Allen's trebucheting money at.

The 100 dollar laptop. Sure it's designed for children in the developing world, but who says the elite can't spend 15 minutes with one before moving on to something even more beneath them. In all seriousness however, while I'm not convinced we're going to get kids in Kinshasa blogging anytime soon, we should at least find a way to get tech like this little green machine into some hands that don't have any other way of expressing themselves to the outside world.

The ELastolite: This flexible washable sheet of light looks fantastic, something Monzel and I have been dying to get our hands on in order to revolutionize snowboarding gloves. The age of Tron is upon us!

Last but certainly not least, there's the swag. The contents do look diverse and exciting, but honestly I'm more interested in the bag itself. Timbuk2 created a recyclable bag for everyone to tote around their goodies, and I really really want one. Well really two; one to use and one to recycle ;)