The last few months have seen a huge crackdown in cybercrime, particularly spamming. There has been cases over the last month or so which have seen notorious spammers either fined or imprisoned for their actions.

The punishments for spamming seem to becoming harsher and there’s no doubt that these are positive steps toward preventing cybercrimes. However, we wonder if that progress isn’t one step forward, two steps back when we hear that a man who was convicted for tax evasion and federal spamming has managed to walk away from a Florence Federal Correctional Complex in Colorado just weeks after he began serving his sentence.

Edward Davidson pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion and criminal spamming in December and was sentenced to 21 months in April. He was also ordered to pay a tidy sum of in and around $700,000 to our friends in the IRS.

Between 2003 and 2006, Davidson is rumored to have garnered over $3.5 million from spamming alone. Through his company, Power Promoters, which he ran from his home, he sent hundreds of thousands of mail messages made to look like they came from well known companies like AOL.

According to PC World, Davidson sent messages on behalf of an unnamed Houston company. He was asked to promote about 19 penny-stock companies and earned himself $1.4 million for his troubles.

Davidson is being treated as an escapee and is being pursued by local police, the FBI, the IRS and U.S. Marshals.

via PC World

UPDATE 1: According to the Rocky Mountain News, Davidson escaped when his wife came to visit him on Sunday. Will Cochenour of the Lakewood police told RMN that Mr Davidson "jumped into the car with his wife".

The Associated Press reports Davidson was last seen about 90 miles north of the prison.

UPDATE 2: 9NEWS claims Eddie Davidson was one of the victims of a murder-suicide in East Arkansas Place. Police haven’t released details of the victims’ identities, only that they were a man, woman and three year old girl. The two adults were found next to a silver Toyota and the toddler was found inside the SUV. A baby boy was also found in the back of the vehicle, unharmed. A teenage girl is in hospital being treated for a gunshot wound to the neck.

Robert Soloway, the man dubbed the Spam King and described by Microsoft as one of the top ten spammers in the world has been jailed for 47 months for his crimes.

Soloway was arrested on May 30, 2007 following his indictment on on 37 counts including charges of identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud. Soloway is responsible for sending millions of spam emails through his company, Newport Internet Marketing from 2003 to early in 2008.

The Spam King advertised that his company could send massive numbers of emails to addresses he claimed were on an opt-in list, however those receiving the spam had not given Soloway permission to send them mail.

A deal was made in March of this year whereby Soloway pleaded guilty to three charges; felony mail fraud, fraud in connection with e-mail, and failing to file for tax returns in 2005. All other charges were dropped although prosecutors wanted to seize over $700,000 that he had earned over the years of spamming.

According to a VNUnet report, Soloway admitted to using a spamming utility called Dark Mailer to send more than 50,000 emails an hour. As has been the case with other spammers, Dark Mailer altered the headers of the emails in order to make them look like they came from reputable sources and deceive spam filters.

Mr Soloway’s defense team allegedly argued for leniency because he had never advertised pornography or tried to spread malicious software.

Soloway will serve three years probation in addition to his four year sentence as well as 200 hours of community service.

The case comes just days after the news that another notorious spammer, Eddie Davidson, escaped from a minimum security prison. Davidson allegedly jumped into his wife’s car following a routine visit last Sunday. It is unclear which of the two drove home where Davidson changed his clothes and then disappeared.

Up until a couple of days ago, iPhone owners were singing the praises of one particular app called Aurora Feint.

For those of you who haven’t been frequenting the Apps Store over the last week or so, Aurora Feint is a puzzle RPG that is, well was, available from the apps store for free. You stack up blocks of the same colour, match

Unfortunately it seems the game has been pulled from the store amid fears that it’s community feature could be considered a security issue.

We think this is just a case of good intentions gone awry. Developers figured it would be a cool feature to let you know automatically which of your friends are also playing the game. Only problem is, once Aurora Feint has gone through your contacts, it then sends the information unencrypted to the AF server. This raised a few eyebrows late last week and sure enough, yesterday the developers posted a message on the Aurora Feint forums saying Apple had removed the application from the store and detailed exactly what was going on.

“When we discovered that the Apple SDK allowed us to look through your contact list we thought it would be a great idea to automatically show you which friends are playing the game. Why automatically? Well, everyone always complains about the keyboard on the iPhone and how annoying it is to type on it. So we thought, "Hey, why don’t we make this feature REALLY easy to use – no typing!" And such, the community feature was born. Some people have said that it would have been ok if we had a better notice explaining what was going on. I agree! We weren’t trying to be sneaky about how this worked. It was just overlooked. No one we showed it to even asked a question about it – nor did we. It just simply never came up as a potential issue when we beta tested the game with early users.”

The developers go on to say that they have modified the community feature to ensure it uses HTTPS to send your data over the wire encrypted and say it is in the queue and marked as “In Review” and should be back up and running soon.

If you’ve been playing Aurora Feint let us know how you feel about your data being sent around unencrypted. Many people are saying they’ll be deleting the application and not reinstalling it. What about you? Let us know in the comments section below.

Tech blogs are buzzing with about the advantages of a new service called SlyDial.

SlyDial allows you to phone directly to someone’s voicemail without their cell phone even ringing. You can return someones call without having to talk to them at all. While there are obvious advantages for this in the business world such as not wanting to disturb colleagues that may be in board meetings or after hours, there are many less obvious uses for this service, some of which the developers have pointed out to us.

Customers call SlyDial and dial the number of the person they’re trying to reach, or rather, not reach. After listening to a short advertisement, users are connected to the person’s voicemail. Depending on the service provider, users may receive a missed call as well as a voicemail or the phone might ring one or twice before going to voicemail, however you will not be connected.

This seems like it could become popular among college kids who forget to call home or similarly, want to call home without having an hour long conversation about laundry or their major. The people at SlyDial suggest other ways for using the service like dumping your significant other. Getting kicked to the kerb over the phone is probably bad enough, but we’re guessing being dumped by your voicemail would be a little more of a slap in the face. They also suggests using it or calling in sick to work, presumably so your manager can’t interrogate you about your symptoms or the state of your health.

If you have any other ideas for what SlyDial could be used for (cancelling plans, letting the neighbours know you ran over their dog, telling a friend you accidentally left a chicken rotting in their oven for a month while they were on vacation), feel free to share them in the comment section below.

It may seem like the same old story just republished, but Nintendo is once again dropping hints that supplies of the Wii console might be hard to find during the holiday season.

According to Nintendo, demand for the console isn’t as high in territories outside of the U.S., though the Wii is undoubtedly the world’s best selling current-generation games machine.

"We are really intending to increase the shipments to the U.S., especially compared to last year," says Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata to Forbes. "However, I can’t give you a 100% commitment [that you’ll be able to find a Wii this holiday season]. What I can commit myself to is that Nintendo is going to do its best to supply as many Wii hardware units as possible in order to meet demand there."

Nintendo said earlier this year that it was producing 1.8 million Wiis a month, with 40 percent of those bound for U.S. shores. The Kyoto game company plans to ramp up production even further, with 2.4 million units per month with plans to divert a greater percentage of shipments stateside.

Just last week, overall sales of Wii surpassed the Xbox 360 – despite it launching a year after Microsoft’s console – making Nintendo’s console the top seller in the U.S. and worldwide.

A court ruling earlier this week could ban the sale of certain Nintendo Wii and GameCube videogame controllers. U.S. District Judge Ron Clark denied Nintendo’s request for a new trial in a case posed by Anascape Ltd. seeking a halt to the game maker’s alleged activities.

Texas-based Anascape is set to receive $21 million in the suit that named not only Nintendo, but also Sony and Microsoft. Unlike Nintendo, however, Sony and Microsoft chose to settle with Anascape out of court, avoiding the present situation.

Should Nintendo take no action, sales of Nintendo Wii Classic Controllers and all GameCube controllers would be immediately halted. But the games maker is set to see that it not happen.

“Nintendo was already planning to appeal this case to the Federal Circuit court,”Nintendo spokesman Charlie Scibetta said in an email to Bloomberg. “The recent ruling by the trial court does not impact that decision.”

The Anascape patents pertinent to the case include U.S. Patent Numbers 5,999,084; 6,102,802; 6,135,886; 6,208,271; 6,222,525; 6,343,991; 6,344,791; 6,347,997; 6,351,205; 6,400,303; 6,563,415; and 6,906,700. The patents include details on a technology to control six types of motions with the analog sticks.

The loss of the GameCube controllers is of minimal impact to Nintendo, as production has ceased for all previous generation hardware. The Wii Classic Controller, however, is important to Nintendo strategy as many of its downloadable games from the Wii Shop Channel command a more traditional control scheme.

Interestingly, the Wii Remote and Nunchuk – which are the main controllers for the Wii console – are not affected by the suit when not attached to the Wii Classic controller. The Nunchuk has the same analog stick as the Wii Classic controller.

Gears is one of the lesser known technologies from Google but people who live in the cloud have found it invaluable to bridge the divide between offline and online applications. The technology enables offline functionality in Gears-enabled web applications, meaning you can continue to use both web application and your online content while you are not connected to the Internet. The search giant currently offers offline functionality in Reader and Google Docs but Gmail and Google Calendar are next.

Gmail and Google Calendar will add offline support in approximately six weeks. Some users have already seen the offline option "accidentally" turned on in Google Calendar. Gmail is to receive offline functionality in the same time frame as Google Calendar. According to sources close to Google, the feature will enable you to mark messages for offline viewing and editing and you will be able to compose new messages in offline mode. Next time you connect to the Internet, all changes will be synchronized and messages created in offline mode will be delivered to recipients.

Google is apparently set to enhance Gmail contacts with SyncML, an industry standard for data synchronization. It will enable two-way contacts and calendar synchronization between Gmail and web applications or devices (computer, MIDs). Google currently allows web services to securely read users’ Gmail contacts but prevents them from editing or updating Gmail contacts directly, unlike Yahoo! and Windows Live contacts APIs. This limitation is the reason why Plaxo still doesn’t enable two-way synchronization with Gmail contacts. Google is apparently using SyncML internally to enable contacts synchronization with the iPhone.

Gears copies users’ content that resides in the cloud to a secure, searchable database and synchronizes information in the background. Any changes in the local database reflect in the cloud when user connects to the Internet and vice versa. This enables users to run web applications in the browser and edit online content as if they are connected to the Internet. Such technologies are considered the next big thing in cloud computing because they remove web applications’ biggest drawback - lack of availability during offline periods. Google recently added Gears support to enable offline functionality in its Reader and Google Docs. If you use Google Reader or Google Docs, you can enable offline functionality by installing the Gears browser extension. Then, simply login to Reader or Docs and click on the offline option, usually located next to your Google Account user name at the top of the screen.

Gears is currently available for Windows XP/Vista (Firefox 1.5+, IE6.0+), Windows Mobile 5+ (IE Mobile 4.01+), Mac OS X 10.4.+(Firefox 1.5+) and Linux 32-bit (Firefox 1.5+). There is currently no support for Gears in Opera or Safari web browsers.

PND vendor Garmin has widened its gap against rival TomTom to 37 percentage points in the North American market in the second quarter of this year, compared to 23% points in the previous quarter and nine percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to the latest data available from market research firm the NPD Group. Garmin, powered by the robust sales of its 2xx-series PND devices, captured a 55% share of the PND market in North America in the second quarter, far ahead of the number two ranked vendor TomTom’s 18%, NPD said.

More here at Digitimes.

A merger of the nation’s only two satellite radio companies moved closer to fruition Thursday after the pair agreed to pay $19.7 million to settle a case alleging violation of federal rules. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin told The Associated Press the agency had reached an agreement late Wednesday night where XM Satellite Radio Holdings will pay $17.5 million and Sirius Satellite Radio will pay $2.2 million to resolve that issue.

Read the complete story here.

The legal salvos between Nokia and Qualcomm stopped months ago, part of what officials at the wireless industry heavyweights described as a truce in a long-running battle that spanned three continents. Peace came Wednesday as the two sides prepared for a courtroom showdown. Nokia, the world’s largest handset maker, and Qualcomm, the world’s largest maker of chips that run cell phones, agreed to settle a high-stakes licensing dispute and drop all legal complaints against each other in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Read the complete story here.

Booming e-book sales to drive display demand, iSuppli says Worldwide e-book display shipments will rise to 18.3 million units in 2012, increasing at a remarkable 161% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 150,000 units in 2007, iSuppli predicts. Global e-book display revenue is forecast to reach $291.2 million by 2012, rising at a CAGR of 143% from $3.5 million in 2007.

More here at Digitimes.

Juniper Networks confirmed that the man who led Microsoft’s (MSFT) bid to buy Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) is leaving the software giant to take a job as Juniper’s chief executive. Kevin Johnson, 47 years old, will lead the Silicon Valley maker of networking hardware as Microsoft scrambles to re-energize its struggling Internet business.

Read the complete story here.

With Intel introducing its new Centrino 2 platform and expecting strong growth in the notebook market this quarter, Taiwan notebook makers are stocking up on notebook-use ICs amid expectations that their shipments will increase by more than 20% this quarter, market sources noted, while adding that design houses including Ene Technology, Global Mixed-mode Technology (GMT), and Integrated Technology Express (ITE) are expected to benefit. Ene last week announced June sales of $4.38 million, and the company’s accumulated sales from January to June were NT$794 million.

More here at Digitimes.

Los Angeles (CA) - The Royal College of Art (RCA) in England has come up with several concept car designs that not only look great, but are also eco-friendly. One car is made of nothing more than aerodynamic glass, while another resembled a split chassis red rocket.

The cars have fuel efficient electric engines, and are composed of materials that are ultra-light, and even function with driver-less navigation systems; the RCA’s 2008 line of concept cars is quite amazing and intriguing.

These concept vehicles are based upon RCA’s amazing world-renowned vehicle design program that has produced amazing designs and designers over the past 40 years in existence. Currently almost every major automobile manufacturer is announcing plans for vehicles that are energy-efficient.

The Pierre Sabas Airflow concept works by encasing an electric engine and suspension. The exterior is made of all glass. Jon Radbrinks Nuaero’s car utilizes sophisticated aerodynamic principles like airfoils, a catamaran-esque underbody, and a venture tunnel designed to maximize the vehicles efficiency.

Sergio Loureiro Da Silva has designed a rocket-red Phoenix car which has great aerodynamic curves and a regenerative braking system. Another designer, Arturo Peralta Nogueras, has come up with a futuristic vehicle that runs on algae and features an evolving solid hologram technology that adapts to passengers, environment and day to day scenarios.

Los Angeles (CA) - Recently, Mazda announced that it will be unveiling its crossover vehicle the Kazamai at the Moscow International Motor Show this August. Next month they plan to reveal the sporty vehicle’s environmental performance specifics, but they are currently boasting that the car will "deliver exciting driving dynamics, frugal fuel consumption and greatly reduced CO2 emissions."

The vehicle concept is much similar to a crossover/SUV and has a compact and aerodynamic design coupled with a lightweight body. Mazda claims that the vehicle was based on their "long-term vision for technology development, Sustainable Zoom-Zoom, which aims to provide a unique balance between sporty driving fun and superior environmental and safety performance." The vehicle will be equipped with a four-wheel drive power train with a direct engine injection and transmission that was newly developed.

I’m excited to see what the Kazmai is capable of delivering, and can’t wait to see what they unveil at the auto show.

The U.S. car market may be moving toward Mini’s kind of small, fashionable and fuel-efficient vehicles, and the British brand will be ready as it prepares to launch its first electric vehicles in the United States in 2009 and a small crossover utility vehicle not long after. Mini would also like to offer a diesel engine if it can develop one that gets at least 50 m.p.g. on the highway in EPA tests and meets strict emissions standards in California and northeast states, said Jim McDowell, vice president of Mini USA.

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If you took the time to listen through Apple’s hour-long Monday quarterly conference call recording, you were a little bored with life, and you probably overheard finance chief Peter Oppenheimer dropping a hint about "a key product transition" several times. According to Oppenheimer, this mysterious product transition will cut into Apple’s hefty profit margin because the company intends to create a new, unknown product with "technologies and features others can’t match". So, he didn’t say that it was going to suck. Heavy sigh of relief from all concerned.

As you all know, Apple has hefty margins by computing standards: over 30 percent compared to less than 20 for Dell, and just under 25 for HP. So, they must have something up their sleeve, something worth cutting into their margins, and the result of the premium that Apple charges for its products. However, Oppenheimer also said Apple "never wants to create a profit margin so wide that it creates an umbrella for rivals that lets them safely undercut Apple’s pricing and steal sales." To top it all, Steve Jobs himself said in the press release that Apple is "busy finishing several more wonderful new products to launch in the coming months."

So, knowing what we don’t know, we know that Apple will bring something new and cheap to the market around September. The suggestions is that we’re looking at mass market stuff here. Your guess is as good as ours, but here’s our two cents worth on this stuff.

• Sharp price drop of Macs - I admit, this one sounds insane and is unlikely to happen. The company sold a record 2.5 million Macs in the second quarter, up almost three times the market growth rate. Macs and iPods combined now make up over 75 percent of Apple’s bottom line. Mac market share is on the rise thanks to Vista’s stumbles and the iPod/iPhone halo effect; over 50 percent of new users never owned a Mac before. According to Gartner, Apple is now the third computer vendor in the US with 8.5 percent market share. Mac market share gains came at the expense of competitors but it will be that much harder to keep the momentum now that Dell (31.9 percent) and HP (25.3 percent) are in Apple’s sight. If Apple reduces prices of Mac desktops and mobiles to match comparable Windows PCs, it could sustain growth and continue stealing market share from competitors. But don’t bet on it.

• Refreshed, cheaper laptops and a sub-notebook - Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro are approaching their end of life-cycle, according to the MacRumors Buyer’s Guide. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster also thinks there is 80 percent chance Apple will redesign MacBooks and MacBook Pros. A Commercial Times report suggests July-September as a target date for refreshed notebooks. Intel has just recently introduced the new Montevina (Centrino 2) platform so, it could be good timing. Munster thinks Apple will cut MacBook prices down to $999 (currently $1,099) and perhaps cut MacBook Air to $1,799. Besides this, Apple is believed to be developing a brand-new sub-notebook to compete with Asustek’s EeePC. It would be a logical step now that Apple’s premium laptops cover price points above $1000.

• Refreshed, cheaper iPods - Apple will undoubtedly refresh iPods around September in time for this year’s holiday season. Munster wrote in a report to his clients Tuesday that he expects "slightly redesigned iPods." The 9to5mac website reports of new multicolored iPod nanos that will feature multiple colors within the same units, double storage and new features. The website cites the same reliable sources who leaked iPod nano images that proved real and had to be removed at Apple’s request. Analyst Munster also expects "lower-cost touch-based iPods" and everyone else seems to agree. By cutting the price of iPod shuffle from $69 to $49 in February this year, Apple effectively countered deceleration in iPod sales and re-energized interest in the music player product category. The company could use the same pricing strategy to create an irresistible value proposition for iPod touch. We expect more and more emphasis on iPod touch as Apple will likely phases out hard-drive based iPod classics soon.

• Mac tablet - Some rumors never die. For a long time, a mobile phone from Apple was one of them. Despite Jobs’ repeated claims that Apple is not developing a handset, Apple made the iPhone. Now that it’s out there, the next such rumor is a multi-touch tablet aka Newton 2. Some analysts had expected a multi-touch device at the last WWDC but that didn’t happen. Apple already has all the technology to make a Mac tablet a reality. They nailed multi-touch with iPhone, their OS team can adapt OS X for practically any form factor and it even re-introduced handwriting recognition with iPhone 2.0 firmware - the user input method that made Newton famous. On top of that, Apple seems to want to use its newly acquired P.A. Semi engineering talent to make its own system on a chip for mobile devices, as Steve Jobs told the New York Times. Despite all this, many wonder why would Apple introduce Mac tablet? First of all, because Steve Jobs repeatedly said they wouldn’t, as with the iPhone. When you think about it, Mac tablet would perfectly fit the void between iPhone and MacBook Air form factors. It would be an ultra-mobile device, about 1.5-2 times larger than the iPhone, small enough to carry in your pocket. Most importantly, it would be the perfect portable content creation device (as good as iPhone is, it is not aimed at content creation on the go). Among Apple tablet rumors, the old MacBook Touch rumor re-surfaced again.

• iPhone nano - Why not? We all remember that iPod sales really took off when Apple first expanded the base hard-drive based model with flash-based nano. The iPhone nano would sport smaller dimensions: 25 percent smaller and perhaps 50 percent narrower. It should have the same touch screen featured in its bigger counterpart and the same resolution to retain compatibility with all iPhone software. A user-replaceable battery would be nice, but there are slim chances of that. The lack of 3G and GPS are almost certain. If it had a physical keyboard, that alone would be a huge boost to its popularity. We’re thinking of 2GB and 4GB models at sub-$199 price points. If it works on any cellular network, this one would be a no-brainer for most people and it wouldn’t cut into iPhone 3G sales.

Of course, we’re only guessing, I mean, speculating.

Ann Arbor (MI) - A soon to be released University of Michigan study will show that more than 75% of banking websites have serious security flaws. According to Atul Prakash, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, these flaws are design issues that cannot be quickly solved with a simple patch or upgrade.

Prakash, along with doctoral students Laura Falk and Kevin Borders, studied 214 financial institutions and found that the most serious issue was the placement of contact or security information on insecure pages. Prakash argues that this can easily lead to phishing attacks by the placement of bogus numbers that lead to scam artists.

Approximately 55% of the sites had this problem, while 47% placed login boxes on insecure pages. Prakash is recommending that banks use SSL protocol to secure their login pages. Why any bank still has a non-SSL login page is beyond me.

Rounding out the top five security problems are poor email security, broken chain of trust where banks redirect users to insecure outside sites and inadequate user id and passwords. 31, 30 and 28 percent of websites had these problems, respectively.

Of course security problems can erode public trust in banking websites and Prakash says, "Our focus was on users who try to be careful, but unfortunately some bank sites make it hard for customers to make the right security decisions when doing online banking."

Prakash’s study titled "Analyzing Web Sites for User-Visible Security Design Flaws" will be released later this month on his website here.

Los Angeles (CA) - Social networking sites are great for posting party pictures, but some of those pictures have come back to haunt two drunk drivers. In an Associated Press article, these drunk drivers took unrepentant pictures after their crashes and received two years in prison.

20-year-old college junior Joshua Lipton was charged with drunken driving after he crashed his car and seriously wounded a woman. After the crash, Lipton attended a Halloween party and was photographed wearing a prison jumpsuit and having a grand old time. The prosecutor in the case found the pictures on Facebook and the sentenced Lipton to two years in prison.

In another case, Lara Buys was found guilty of drunken driving after she crashed her car near Santa Barbara California. The crash killed her passenger, but that didn’t stop her from posting pictures of herself holding a glass of wine and joking about alcoholism. Buys pled guilty and the prosecutor was willing to give just probation, but after finding the pictures on MySpace, he recommended two years in prison - something which the jury and the judge agreed.

Read more ... Associated Press via Google

New York (NY) - A wife’s tearful YouTube rant against her husband has earned her a divorce and eviction. 52-year-old Tricia Walsh Smith filled a six minute video with lurid details about her husband’s sex life and prenuptial agreement. The husband, Philip Smith, sued Tricia for spousal abuse for the callous nature of the videos and a New York state Supreme Court agreed.

Now, Tricia has been ordered by the judge leave the New York home by the end of the month. The judge also finalized the divorce terms.

The video has been seen more than 3.3 million times and has an average rating of three stars. Yet another case of your Internet posts coming back to bite you.

View the YouTube video

Read more ... The Guardian UK

Los Angeles (CA) - The concept of developing an entire city built around the concepts of efficiency and design that is extremely future forward-thinking is exciting. That is why Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects were excited when they won first place in a competition to create a new sustainable city that would be located on the Paljassaare Peninsula in Estonia.

The city has been called Ecobay, and it is a mixed-use development project that will be a self-sustaining community that has everything it needs; housing, commercial shopping districts, daycare facilities, and schools. The city is tranquil and serene overlooking the Baltic Sea. The new city will have multiple sources of clean energy and will be able to house up to 6,000 residents as it is completed during the next 15-20 years.

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects’ Ecobay development is based upon a sustainable approach to city development. The mixed-use layout manages to integrate many different districts in effort to minimize the need for transportation because "most key destinations are just a walk or bike ride away". The idea is for the structures to be carefully laid out in an attempt to maximize solar gain while minimizing overshadowing. The residences will all be held to high efficiency standards. The energy needs of the city will be met using different clean sources including wind farms, geo-thermal energy, and hydro-electricity.

Sustainable super cities are becoming a major trend, we must keep in mind that starting from scratch in undeveloped areas gives us a unique opportunity to design developments that are completely efficient and sustainable. You must also keep in mind that these modern developments aren’t new and will always be the center of controversy. They definitely present an efficient and organized modern living experience, but they also raise a lot of questions as to how a city will properly develop under these circumstances.

Since we don’t have anything to measure by, I guess we’ll have to watch as these cities grow, develop and change. Is sustainability possible for entire cities?