Honestly, sometimes I even surprise myself with the subjects that I find interesting.  Quite randomly, I recently found this very short, but very cool article on work around the world (well, at least a couple of locations) to build the world’s largest ferris wheel.  A ride that had fallen out of favor some years ago, the ferris wheel seems to be suffering, you might say, a resurgence in interest since the London Eye opened a few years ago.

The larger these monstrous rides become, the greater their capacity and potential profit—and the more seriously builders take them. To start, they don’t call them Ferris wheels. “We categorize them as ‘observational wheels’ because of the capsules,” says Alexander Pieper, spokesman for the Great Wheel Corporation, which developed the Singapore, Dubai and Beijing wheels.

My bad.  The world’s largest observational wheel.  It’s hardly an article, being no more than sidebar length for any magazine publication, but I found the accompanying illustration (captured in part above) to be chock full of useless cool knowledge. For instance, the original ferris wheel, the Eagle 16 noted in the illustration, made a revolution in a mere 12 seconds.  Now, it’s around half an hour start to finish on the giants.  To borrow a phrase from Keanu Reeves – Whoa.

Technorati Tags: Ferris Wheel, Observational wheels, Singapore Flyer, London Eye, Beijing Great Wheel, Extreme Engineering

These commercials are made by some of the most creative advertising folks, I think.  Not as good as the bouncing-balls ad, but still really cool.

So odd, and so appealing.   Although there seems to be a bit of controversy behind this: Did Sony steal the Bravia ad idea?