Normally an 8,000-nautical mile cross-Pacific voyage isn’t a noteworthy event. But it is if you’ve done it on a 20-meter catamaran built from 12,500 two-liter plastic bottles.

On July 26, 2010 Adventure Ecology and a crew of six accomplished such a feat, completing a 128-day journey from San Francisco to Sydney in The Plastiki.

The voyage was Adventure Ecology’s way of showing people that would-be waste can be used as a valuable resource. So knowing that up to 80% of total marine pollution consists of plastic materials, the group designed and engineered a boat largely composed of it as an example. The plastic bottles line the boat’s two hulls, keeping it buoyant. Plastiki’s sail is even made from recycled PET.

The catamaran is also equipped with solar panels, wind and trailing sea turbines, and bicycle generators to create onboard electricity for lighting and cooking.

And as if the eco-friendly boat design wasn’t enough, the crew took saltwater showers, captured drinking water from a rain catchment system and ate various meals grown in an onboard hydroponic vertical garden to further promote sustainability.

Autodesk Maya fluid effects technology is used by Hollywood professionals to do things like manipulate images—fire, smoke, aliens –for blockbuster and other movies. And Autodesk Fluid FX is an app that is based on Maya.

As Jos Stam, Autodesk senior research scientist, creator of the app, and, significantly, two-time Academy Award-winner, puts it, “Autodesk Fluid FX empowers a wide audience to enjoy a beautiful and immersive visual experience based on sophisticated visual effects technology and complex physics.”

Or look at it this way: You have the app on your iPhone or iPad, and as you’re playing with it during a meeting as your boss drones on and on, when you get called out, you can simply explain that you’re using some rather advanced Autodesk design tech, not goofing.

It might work.

Unlike most paper and plastics cups that end up in the trash bin—and eventually in a land fill—after being used, a new disposable cup from product design consultants The Way We See The World is designed to wind up somewhere else: Either in your stomach or as fertilizer in your lawn and garden.

That’s right, these cups, called “Jelloware,” can either be eaten or act as plant food. This is because they’re made from agar agar, a gelatinous seaweed extract that nurtures plant growth. And while seaweed extract may not sound incredibly appetizing, Jelloware cups have a flexible composition similar to Jell-O and are cast in flavors like lemon-basil, ginger-mint and rosemary-beet, so they’re intended to be eaten, too.

According to The Way We See The World, the Jelloware cups re-imagine the concept of drinking and provide a new experience in the way it feels, smells, moves, tastes and—perhaps most importantly—is disposed of. After all, some 58 billion disposable cups find their way into land fills each year.

If you’ve been watching the Tour de France, you may have witnessed a peloton turning into a jumble of broken and bent bikes. Not good. And while the bicycle design innovation from Kevin Scott, a product development student at the UK’s De Montfort University isn’t meant for venues like the Tour, his bike bends in half because it’s supposed to.

Scott’s “bendy bicycle” design features a cable that runs through two segmented tubes connecting the rear part of the bike to the front. This cable can be loosened with a ratcheting device located underneath the seat so that the bicycle literally folds in half, allowing it to be wrapped around lamp poles, trees, signs, etc. This bending allows it to (a) lock to itself with an ordinary D-lock (not clunky chains), which Scott thinks will cut down on bike theft, and (b) become more compact for home storage and public parking purposes. When not parked, the cable can be fully tightened so that the frame straightens back out and it rides like any normal bike.

The bending design may not be the flashiest element to be developed for bicycles, but it could provide a greater sense of security to the 3 million people worldwide who have their bikes stolen annually.

The RapMan 3.1 may sound more like a new rap artist than a prototyping machine, but don’t be fooled. This 3D printer developed by Bits from Bytes is a DIY kit and includes an upgrade that allows a second printer head to be added to the machine. This means two different types of materials can be printed at once, which adds much more versatility to the end product. If you already have a RapMan with one head, the upgrade is available for £149.50 (approx. $230). A new two-headed printer costs £1,050, or about $1,615.

Although the metaphor is a bit grafted, one can only wonder: Is the bloom off the rose that is Apple Design?  It very well may be now that Consumer Reports has come out and stated that it “cannot recommend” the iPhone 4.  The organization’s test lab has determined that the issue with the phone’s antenna design—which apparently can lead to dropped calls should the user happen to touch an area on the phone’s lower left side—is too big a flaw for recommendation.

They do have a solution that may not be the height to design chic, but the favorite of amateur handymen everywhere: duct tape.

The good news for Apple, however, is that Consumer Reports came out with its list of recommended smart phones and the previous generation iPhone—the 3G S (16 GB)—is a recommendation at the top of the list (tied at 74 points with the HTC Evo 4G).

The iPhone 4, as you may recall, was the one that was left in a bar and then “leaked” to Gizmodo.  Maybe the people at One Infinite Loop should have taken that as a sign to go back to the drawing board.

While it might seem that photovoltaic cells—which generate electricity from sunlight—might not be all that useful on a cloudy day, consider their usefulness at night. And consider being at 28,000 ft on an airplane powered by photovoltaics in the middle of the night. On July 7, 2010, a prototype plane from Switzerland-based Solar Impulse piloted by Betrand Piccard, the HB-SIA, flew for 26 hours and nine minutes, making it the first solar airplane to harness enough of the sun’s energy to power it through an entire night.

What’s more, Solar Impulse says it still had plenty of battery power left when it landed. (We’re guessing that Piccard was probably running on empty, however.)

Equipped with 12,000 solar cells on its 193-ft wingspan, the HB-SIA collects the sun’s energy and stores it as electricity in lithium ion batteries. The batteries power the plane’s four electric motors. The plane had a top speed of 70 mph, but an average flight speed of only 26 mph. At that rate it would take about 115 hours of flying time from New York City to Los Angeles.

But Solar Impulse isn’t stopping with the HB-SIA. The company says it wants to develop a second-generation prototype to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Then, it wants to fly around the world. Here’s hoping that the average speed is increased by then, because otherwise it would take on the order of 38 days for the circumnavigation.

One thing that most people don’t have the opportunity to do is to see a fully disassembled motorcycle of any type. And the number of those who have seen a piece of sculpture that is based on motorcycles is probably not all that much greater.

But artist Kyle Bean has put together a piece titled “The Conservation of Mass” that is currently on display in a set of windows of Selfridges department store that are located on the corner of Oxford and Kent streets in London. It is based on the Honda CBR1000 ABS Fireblade motorcycle, which looks like this:

And to see how “The Conservation of Mass” was put together, look at this:

In case you’re wondering, the CBR1000 tips the scales at 461.7 lb.

Although Polaroid may have Lady Gaga advising it on design, the camera-maker has nothing on Land Rover, which recently announced that Victoria Beckham—yes, She Once Known as “Posh Spice”—has become Creative Design Executive, working with Gerry McGovern, Land Rover and Range Rover Design Director.

Speaking of the new appointment, McGovern said, “Victoria Beckham is a talented British fashion designer and is extremely knowledgeable about great design and trends. Victoria understands luxury products—she is a Range Rover fan and has been a Range Rover owner for many years. Her fashion business is now in its third year and her designs are loved by critics and bought by many of the most stylish women in the world. I believe this appointment adds a new dimension to my design team as we continue to design products to appeal to a wider audience.”

And some people thought the Spice Girls were only going to get 15 minutes. . . .

With over 5 million Twitter followers, 10 million Facebook friends and album (15 million) and single (40 million) sales that are Beyond Platinum, if anyone can work an audience it’s Lady Gaga. Polaroid is hoping to reach a contemporary audience, too, but for its camera products. So in an effort to appeal to a new generation of consumers, it picked Lady Gaga as its creative director.

The position isn’t just a formality, either. Gaga has reportedly been sitting in on product design and development sessions to help create this line of cameras. Polaroid says its goal in collaborating with Gaga is to create products that blend fashion, technology and photography.

Presumably Polaroid has the technology and photography portions covered. Gaga evidently—and her stage outfits are nothing if not evident--knows a thing or two about fashion. The line drops in November.