This year I acted as an embedded reporter at Burning Man, a place of extreme temperatures, high winds, and white-out dust storms. The ultra-fine alkaline dust is hell on gear—so it'd seem like a good place to test some rugged stuff out, right?

The guys at Re-Char, a small startup that makes carbon-negative products, were faced with a problem. They wanted to ship products to Kenya, but the options available were wasteful, costly, and not nearly as efficient as simply manufacturing near to the customers. To do it, in a place with little industry or…

We generally hear about drone aircraft killing people in war zones. But there's a reverse side to that narrative—an autonomous copter can drop medicine and supplies to people stranded after a natural disaster even when roads have been demolished. A humanitarian group called Ideate recently tested drones' viability…

A good tail light helps a bike rider get noticed on the road at night. The front light, however, has a more difficult challenge—it has to make you a beacon to drivers, and, crucially, it has to make the darkened world visible to you.

Sometimes you have a bunch of booze, but no fridge and no ice. During a blackout. Staying at a cheap hotel. Spending a week in the middle of the goddam desert. Don't worry, though—with the right bottles of booze, you can still come up with a killer cocktail.

Most people assume Burning Man is just this mecca of sex and drugs. It isn't. Well, it is, but that's a much smaller part of the picture than people make it out to be.

There is a dream harbored by everyone who grew up playing Street Fighter. In that dream you put your wrists together, shove them forward, shout "Hadouken!" and a giant fireball flies through the air. Last night, that dream came true.

Burning Man, despite its reputation, is not just some low-fi hippie party in the middle of nowhere. The place is bursting with unique technology. Some of it blows out your eardrums, some helps you survive in a hostile environment, and some just inspires wonder, awe, and a little bit of fear.

An Oakland-based Burning Man vet is selling this absurd "Mutant Vehicle/Art Car," on Craigslist—fashioned in the likeness of a milk carton and cereal bowl—and has chopped down the price in hopes that some ambitious soul will buy and haul it over to Burning Man this year.

This time lapse video shows 5 weeks of Burning Man 2011 in 5 minutes. It covers the entire event—from set up to everyone leaving—at about 3 hours every second. It's like watching a disease spread on the face of the Earth.