Google recently awarded Geoffrey Barnett a cool $1 million dollars to further research and development on his Shweeb project. The money came as part of winning the Project 10^100 - Google's call to arms for "ideas to change the world." Maybe I'm being a bit overly pessimistic but I can't help but see this and immediately think of the Segway - a device that is fine and dandy in its own right but, mostly, destroyed by its own hype. Would a capsule based transportation system modeled after recumbent bicycles revolutionize densely populated cities? Is this the first step towards pneumatic transportation... Futurama style?

Personally I'd like to see the ZORB get some proper funding for urban usage.